Don't Suffer Bland Eggplant - Spice It Up With A Store-Bought Twist

The auspicious aubergine is delicious, nutritious, and a useful ingredient in a number of easy recipes for any night of the week. At its best, eggplant bears a mildly sweet flavor and a spongy consistency not unlike squash, but with a bit more firmness. This combination of taste and texture means that the vegetable is best suited for use alongside strong sauces and spices as it will easily take on these flavors. If you don't already know how to pick the best eggplants at the grocery store, you may very well run the risk of grabbing a bland one, which simply means you'll need to level up whatever seasonings you're using to counterbalance the blandness. The next time you're worried that your eggplant might be "blah," grab a jar of chili crisp and use the pepper-infused oil as a simple addition to spice up your eggplant and impart a pleasant amount of heat and umami into the mix.

There are plenty of creative ways to use chili crisp in your cooking and adding it to eggplant is no exception. Chili crisp is typically made with a neutral oil such as olive oil, peanut oil, or vegetable oil to which ingredients such as chile flakes, ginger, garlic, and other spices are added for infusing. The result is a powerful condiment that balances savory, sweet, and a fair amount of heat. Depending on how you're preparing your eggplant, you can determine how best to incorporate the oil into your cooking.

When using chili crisp oil in your cooking, it's important to first figure out how to get the most flavorful impact for your dish. For example, you can use the chili oil as a marinade to brush on sliced-up rounds of eggplant prior to pan-frying or grilling on the barbecue. If you want to try a riff on a traditional eggplant marinara recipe, you could both brush the oil onto your eggplant prior to roasting and incorporate a helping of chili oil into the marinara sauce for an extra spicy twist. This would also be excellent for dressing an eggplant caponata recipe. Even a classic baba ganoush recipe could benefit from mixing in a kick of chili crisp oil or a little bit of heat.

When it comes to choosing the best chili crisp, there are a number of brands on the market including FLYBYJING Sichuan Chili Crisp, which ranked highly on Tasting Table's list of the best chili crisp brands. Be sure to review the list of ingredients on any container of chili crisp you're using to make sure that all the flavors will play well together to accentuate your favorite eggplant dishes. With so many eggplant recipes to experiment with, you'll definitely want to keep a jar of your favorite chili crisp on hand at all times.