Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce - The ultimate recipe! | The Woks of Life

Hey everyone, it's Sarah from The Walks of Life here, and today we are going to make a classic dish, eggplant with garlic sauce. It is one of my favorites. This is our ideal eggplant with garlic sauce. Sometimes you go to a restaurant and sometimes it's a little too sweet. It's maybe a little too greasy. This is really perfect. No deep frying involved, and it's actually quite easy to make. This is actually a recipe from our cookbook, The Walks of Life, recipes to know and love from a Chinese-American family. We knew that when we were choosing the 100 recipes to put in this book, that we wanted to include an eggplant with garlic sauce because it is such a classic, and in our quest to develop the recipe for the platonic ideal of eggplant with garlic sauce, we tested really quite a few versions. This was actually originally my dad's recipe, and then I kind of took it over, and we all agree that it is pretty perfect, very difficult to improve on this thing. And if you are a eggplant with garlic sauce fan, I think you will think so too. It's really easy to make. As you can see, I have basically everything I need in front of me. So here I have the sauce mixture. This has some hot water, sugar, rice vinegar, Shaoxing wine, oyster sauce, a little bit of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, and look at the book to see if I missed anything. Anyway, we'll link the recipe in the description box below. So that's the sauce, pretty simple. You just spoon, spoon, spoon, mix, mix, mix, that's it. And then I have here also some minced garlic and minced ginger. Eggplant with garlic sauce, gotta have a lot of garlic. It's two tablespoons. I have two scallions chopped. I have four ounces of ground pork. You could also use ground chicken. Dark meat chicken would be preferred, but if all you have is ground white meat chicken, that's fine too. If you wanted to make this entirely meatless, you could. You could just omit the meat entirely or you could substitute mushrooms. And then I have some dried chilies here. Eggplant with garlic sauce is not really thought of as a spicy dish, but I think a little bit, just a little kiss of, just a little bit of heat actually really elevates the dish. If you want, you can omit them. If you're just like, oh my God, spicy, no. Just omit them. I am going to de-seed them. That is going to significantly reduce the amount of spice. And then I have my eggplants and I'm gonna show you how to cut them. But what about velvety? Do I have to velvet the pork? You don't have to velvet the pork in this recipe. I am personally not a pork velveter, but to be honest, I just think it's not necessary in this particular recipe because what we're doing with the pork is we're going to pan fry it and then we are directly making a cornstarch thickened sauce with it. And in that case, I really don't think you need to velvet it. It's just not necessary. It's an extra step and it's not necessary. So the way that I describe the cutting of the eggplant in the book is to cut them on an angle, rotating them with each cut into triangular bite-sized chunks. So I'm gonna show you exactly what that looks like. So first, I'm just gonna cut the stems off and compost those. Okay, so here we go. You're gonna cut it on an angle, so pretty sharp angle. And then with each cut, I'm rotating. And this is what I mean by triangle. It's sort of like a long side and then two short sides. So it's a nice sauce, please, triangle. And then as you get to the thicker part of the eggplant, so I didn't really explain this in the book. You have limited word count and all, but as you get to the thicker part of the eggplant, if the piece is kind of quite broad like that, you can just cut it in half. It's not totally necessary, but. So like this one, it's pretty wide, so I'm just gonna, like that. And the purpose of cutting the eggplant in this kind of crazy triangular shape, I mean, this is what you see in Chinese restaurants, right? Like this is the shape of the eggplant. The reason is cutting it on an angle gives you more surface area for the eggplant to kind of cling to the sauce. And then, but at the same time, there's still heft to the eggplant. So if I were to just like slice, slice, slice, slice, slice into like rounds, you would get these really thin pieces that would just sort of disintegrate in the sauce. Instead, you get like a chunk, but the chunk still has quite a bit of surface area for sauce to cling to. I'm gonna do that again, so on a sharp angle, and then I just rotate, triangle. Rotate, sort of a triangle. And it really, I mean, don't be too like, don't be too worried about it looking exactly like a triangle. Obviously, this doesn't really say triangle to me, but I guess the triangle, the point of the triangle comparison is just to make sure that you're getting these sorts of sharp angles. So it's pretty important to actually use a Chinese or Japanese eggplant. These are the long eggplants that actually have quite a bit of a thinner skin than those regular globe eggplants that you can get at the grocery store. So it's gonna cook up more tender, has fewer seeds. The flesh of a globe eggplant is quite a bit denser. That said, if you can only find regular globe eggplants, that is totally fine to use. I'm just saying, if you have the choice, go for one of these. And next, I will show you what I do with the chili. So I'm just gonna open it up by cutting it in half crosswise. And I'm just gonna sort of like open it up like this. And I'm just gonna like dump the seeds out and just squeeze it as I'm dumping out those seeds. Just removing the seeds is gonna make the chili less hot. So I don't really want the dish to be spicy. I just want it to have sort of a hint of spice. The chilies are there for a little kiss of heat, but the other reason I put them in is the chilies, when cooked, have this really toasted and fragrant flavor that it adds to the dish. But again, if you really wanna avoid all spice entirely, you can omit these. So I'm just gonna finish slicing these and then we're gonna go to the wok. All right, so I've just turned on the flame and I'm gonna wait for the wok to start to smoke lightly. And then I'm gonna add the oil. The reason why you wait for the wok to smoke before adding the oil is you actually get a better nonstick surface that way. So hot wok, cold oil, that is the mantra. So there's the smoke. You see sort of like wisps of smoke here. I'm gonna add about a tablespoon and a half of oil and I'm gonna add the eggplant. So this first step is to sear the eggplant and get it most of the way cooked. So I'll just stir it around, coat it in oil. And if you have a smaller wok, you may wanna do this in two batches. This is a very large wok. It's about 20 inch diameter. So if yours is a standard 14 inch wok or even a 12 inch wok, you may wanna do this in a couple of batches and the eggplant will fry more evenly. Turn on the fan. So it's important to keep the eggplant in one layer. I'm gonna reduce the heat to medium now and we're gonna cook for three to four minutes. I'm gonna stir it every so often until the eggplant is lightly brown. And as you can see, the eggplant absorbed all of the oil. So after about three or four minutes, I'm going to add a little bit more oil. You're gonna add the oil in stages so that it doesn't absorb it all at once. The oil is going to cook it and help cook it and make it tender. So this is pretty different from how you might see eggplant with garlic sauce cooked in a restaurant. In a restaurant, the eggplant is deep fried. That's why the dish is generally thought of as a somewhat oily dish. As you can see here, I'm using a lot less oil, but it does take a bit longer in the wok to just sort of sear the eggplant and cook it through until it is tender. In a deep fryer, you just sort of drop it into that hot oil. It doesn't necessarily need to fry for as long, but you are gonna get some oil absorption in that case. Here, we are, obviously, it absorbed that tablespoon and a half of oil that I put in, but we're using a lot less. So I'll keep stirring it occasionally. And if you want to be somewhat fussy with it, if you just flip the eggplant pieces so that it's cut side down, that way you can try to retain some of that purple color in the skin. Not necessary. It's really just sort of a fussy thing to do. Okay, so it's been about four minutes. I'm gonna add the other tablespoon and a half of oil. That was probably a little more. Whoops. That's okay. I'm just gonna keep stirring it. You wanna cook it again for another four minutes or so. And what you're looking for for the eggplant to be done is that it's pretty tender. It should be pretty tender and slightly translucent. So you wanna avoid the eggplant being raw in the middle. This eggplant is already pretty tender. I can almost cut into it, but every so often you'll get an eggplant with very dense flesh. And when that happens, you're gonna have to cook it a little bit longer to get it tender. So definitely don't follow just the time here. Just make sure that the eggplant is pretty soft. So I'm using about three tablespoons of oil here to cook this eggplant. If you wanted to reduce your oil intake, what you could do is steam the eggplant. So you could steam it until it's fork tender and then over very high heat, just add oil and then sear the eggplant. That would ensure that the eggplant is tender without using as much oil. All right, we are almost there. So as you can see, this eggplant is starting to wilt down. It's pretty soft. It's starting to get that translucent look. See if you could see that. It's starting to look pretty translucent and soft, and it also has some browning on it. That's exactly what you want. So I'm gonna turn the heat off and I'm gonna take it out. Okay, that is our seared eggplant. Now we're gonna start building the sauce. Okay, so at this point, you're supposed to add a little bit more oil to the wok. I actually added a little bit of extra just now, so I'm just really gonna, just a tiny bit. Okay, that's all we need. I'm gonna add the pork now. Pork is traditional, but you can use ground chicken again. And I'm just gonna immediately break it up. The sauce comes together super quick as most Chinese sauces do. So once this pork is completely opaque, which should be in another several seconds, I'm going to add the ginger, the chilies, and I'm gonna add half of the garlic because the other half of the garlic is gonna go into the sauce. Stir that. Just gonna cook that for a minute or two. The goal here is to take some of the sharpness off the garlic and ginger and just help those chilies and the aromatics release their fragrance. And meanwhile, I'm gonna take my sauce mixture and I'm gonna stir in the rest of this garlic. Ooh, that was so close. Saved it. Ooh! I had the appropriate reaction. Yes, you did. All right, now we add the eggplant back in. Any remaining oil or juice, you definitely wanna get in there. Stir it around. I'm gonna increase the heat a little bit. It's already starting to look like eggplant with garlic sauce. We just need the sauce. I'm stirring the sauce to make sure that the cornstarch is well incorporated and I'm gonna add it in. And you're gonna see it immediately thicken because that cornstarch is in there. Now it legitimately looks like eggplant with garlic sauce. And once that sauce has thickened enough to coat a spoon, I'm gonna add the scallions, which you do not have to separate whites and greens. I don't know why I did that. I just automatically do that. Sometimes you do need to separate them. Oh, well. They all go in at the same time in this recipe. And you're just gonna stir them in. And that's it. That's the dish. So simple to make, so tasty. It really is like, for us, the ideal restaurant version, the ideal restaurant eggplant with garlic sauce. If you're a fan of this dish, you are going to love this recipe. So I'm gonna plate it up. This is the same plate that I had the eggplant in before. No reason to wash two things. Look at how beautiful this sauce is. It is clinging to every piece of eggplant. Remember, this is the move. For getting that last bit of sauce off of your spatula, you put the plate down, you tip this over, and you hit it on your hand. That's a Bill and Judy lesson right there. And that is eggplant with garlic sauce. You guys saw how simple that was to put together. This will taste just like any restaurant version you've ever had, but maybe a little bit less oily. And we really think that the balance of flavors in this recipe is perfect. Oh, the rice is ready. Oh, boy. See, this is what I would describe as a saucy dish, but there's no pooling sauce here, everybody, okay? Because when I hear, when people are like, there wasn't enough sauce, I'm like, the dish is not supposed to be swimming in sauce. The dish is saucy. The whole dish almost is a sauce in a way, right? But you don't want sauce to be pooling around your, like, there's no, like, there's a little bit here, but it really shouldn't be pooling. It should really be clinging to all of the eggplant. That is the proper way. It's the perfect eggplant with garlic sauce, in my opinion, everyone. It's savory. It's a little bit sweet, a little bit tangy. Not too sweet, not too tangy. Has just a hint of spice in there. And it is just like that four ounces of pork. It really is not very much pork, but this is what the beauty of Chinese food is that you don't need a lot of meat. There is some meat in there, and it's giving a lot of flavor to this dish, but that's four ounces of pork distributed in a vegetable dish. So, like, if you think about it, if you buy a pound of ground pork, you can make this dish four times, which is pretty cool. Hope you enjoy it, everyone. So good. All right. Okay.