We all love a good eggplant recipe, and this one is certainly no exception! It features eggplant stuffed with a well-seasoned ground beef mixture, but adds an exciting little flourish – the eggplants look like flowers! All of that tastiness gets served with oven-baked potato wedges and a homemade tomato sauce that’s bursting with flavor – yummy!
Stuffed Eggplant Flower with Homemade Tomato Sauce
Eggplant stuffed with a well-seasoned ground beef mixture, served with oven-baked potato wedges and a homemade tomato sauce.
Equipment
- Casserole Dish
- Immersion blender
Ingredients
- 2 long, thin eggplants
- 1 qt water
- 1 tbsp salt
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 10 oz ground beef
- 1 red onion, diced
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp rosemary
- 1 egg
- salt & pepper to taste
- 7 cherry tomatoes
- 8 oz tomatoes, diced
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- fresh rosemary, chopped
- 3 tbsp water
- potato wedges
- olive oil
- salt & pepper to taste
- yogurt sauce
Instructions
- Cut the eggplants lengthwise into strips from left and right, about 7 times altogether. Make sure you don't cut all the way to the top of the eggplant so that it stays in one piece.
Place the sliced eggplants in a flat casserole dish. Sprinkle salt on top, drizzle the lemon juice on the eggplants, and then fill the casserole dish with water.
Combine the ground beef with the red onion, egg, rosemary, salt, pepper, and paprika.
Remove the eggplants from the water and allow them to dry. Roll one of the eggplant slices inward and fix it with a toothpick. Repeat this same process with each individual slice until the eggplant looks like a flower! - Form small meatballs from the ground beef mixture and press each meatball into a hole in the eggplant petals.
Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and press one half each (with the cut edge facing upward) on the ground beef mixture in the eggplant.
Place both eggplant flowers into a casserole dish or a deep baking tray. - Add the diced tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and water to a bowl and puree everything with an immersion blender. Pour the tomato sauce into the casserole dish with the eggplants, then cover the casserole dish with aluminum foil.
- Place the potato wedges on the aluminum foil and brush them with a salt-pepper-olive oil mixture. Put everything in the oven and cook at 325°F for 30 minutes. Serve the eggplant flowers with a yogurt sauce.
VIDEO
You can whip this one up any night of the week. The tomato sauce and yogurt add a lot of bright freshness and round this stuffed eggplant out beautifully. And the eggplant flower aesthetic is truly one for the ages!