Eggplant in Sweet and Sour Sauce
Ingredients
2 servings
- Vegetables
- Eggplants (regular or light-skinned) 4
- Red bell peppers 2
- Red chili pepper optional
- Vegetable oil 50 ml
- For the sauce
- Ginger 1 small piece
- Garlic 3–4 cloves
- Light soy sauce 50 ml
- Rice vinegar 2 tbsp
- Brown sugar 1 tbsp (14 g)
- Tomato paste 1 tbsp (17 g)
- Cornstarch 1 tsp (3 g)
- Water 50 ml
- Chili pepper, dried herbs, spices to taste
- For serving
- Cilantro, sesame seeds to taste
Step-by-step recipe
Preparing the vegetables
You can make eggplant in sauce with any variety. Ideally, they shouldn’t have formed seeds yet, as those will show in the dish. We used medium-sized striped eggplants with light lilac skin. It’s a very interesting variety, almost always available, but for some reason not very popular here. Choose large sweet red peppers with thick walls. You’ll also need garlic and a piece of ginger the size of a matchbox.
Wash the vegetables and pat them dry.
Core the red bell peppers and cut them lengthwise into strips. Trim the ends of the eggplants and cut them lengthwise into thick sticks. Since Chinese-style eggplant is eaten with chopsticks, don’t cut it too thin: the pieces could lose their shape while cooking and be awkward to eat. If there are darkened seeds, scrape out as many as you can.
Frying the eggplant and peppers
Heat half the vegetable oil in a frying pan or wok. Chinese cooking usually uses corn, sesame or peanut oil, but ordinary sunflower oil is perfectly fine for home cooking. Add the eggplant pieces to the oil and stir well. Eggplant soaks up oil like a sponge, and the bottom of the pan will soon be dry. Fry the vegetables over medium heat, uncovered, stirring, until soft and lightly browned in spots.
Add the sliced red bell pepper to the pan. If you like, though it’s optional, you can add red chili pepper at this point, cut into thin strips. Pour in the rest of the vegetable oil and stir. Keep frying until the peppers and eggplant are soft. But don’t overcook them; the vegetables should still have a little bite.
Making the sweet and sour sauce
While the vegetables are frying, make the sweet and sour sauce. It’s easy.
Peel the garlic and the piece of ginger, press them through a garlic press and put them in a small bowl. Add 1 tbsp brown sugar (14 g), a little chili pepper and 1–2 pinches of dried herbs such as basil or dill. Stir the mixture. Add the soy sauce, the signature of Chinese cooking. It’s great for all sorts of dishes and a component of many complex sauces and gravies.
Pour the rice vinegar into the bowl. If you don’t have any, you can use white wine vinegar, but not plain distilled vinegar. Stir everything and wait for the sugar to dissolve. Add 1–2 tsp tomato paste (6–11 g) and stir.
Meanwhile, dissolve 1 tsp cornstarch (3 g) in 50 ml water and let it sit. Add the starch mixture to the sauce and stir.
Combining
By now the eggplant and peppers are nicely fried. Give the sauce a gentle stir, pour it over the vegetables and immediately stir with a spatula.
Thanks to the starch, the sauce thickens very quickly, so keep stirring the eggplant gently and constantly. A wooden spatula is handy for this.
Cook the vegetables in the sauce for another 2–3 mins, and the dish is done.
Serving
Transfer to plates. Sprinkle with a pinch of sesame seeds and finely chopped cilantro.
As a rule, the dish is served hot or warm. I’ve read somewhere that it can be served chilled too. But to my taste, the sauce sets when cold, and I don’t like that.
Eggplant fried with peppers the Chinese way is a hearty and tasty dish. You can serve it with rice as a side or as a standalone vegetable dish. Some recipes add onion, which fits nicely, as well as Chinese five-spice powder. Sometimes the starch doesn’t go into the sauce at all; instead, the eggplant pieces are dredged in it before frying.
Calories and macros
450 kcal
Serving ≈ 810 g
- Protein10 g10% of kcal
- Fat25 g55% of kcal
- Carbs35 g35% of kcal
100 g55 kcalProtein 1.3 gFat 3.1 gCarbs 4.3 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
To Get It Right
Which eggplants and peppers to use
Young eggplants that haven’t formed seeds yet — both regular and light striped ones work. Bell peppers should be large and thick-walled: they don’t fall apart when fried.
Don’t make the sauce too thick
The sweet and sour sauce for eggplant should coat the vegetables evenly, stay juicy and not pool on the plate. The starch thickens in seconds, so stir the sauce before pouring it in and stir the vegetables right away.
Hotter or with a different tang
You can make the eggplant noticeably hot by adding more chili pepper to the sauce — many people like it that way. Instead of rice vinegar, the acid can come from lemon or lime juice or other fruit juices — it changes the taste of the dish a lot.
What else to add
Besides eggplant and peppers, the dish often includes broccoli, carrots, green beans and wood ear mushrooms. For crispy eggplant with tomatoes, cut 2–3 tomatoes into wedges and add them together with the sauce.
Have your own trick for this recipe?
Questions and answers
How do you make sweet and sour sauce for eggplant?
Mix minced garlic and ginger, 1 tbsp brown sugar (14 g), 50 ml light soy sauce, 2 tbsp rice vinegar and 1–2 tsp tomato paste (6–11 g). Finally, add 1 tsp cornstarch (3 g) dissolved in 50 ml water — it makes the sauce thicken on the hot vegetables.
How do you make crispy eggplant like in a Chinese restaurant?
Dredge the eggplant sticks in starch before frying and fry them in well-heated oil in small batches, without stirring too often. Pour in the sauce at the very end and serve right away — if it sits, the eggplant will go soft.
What soy sauce should you use?
Light natural soy sauce — together with rice vinegar it is the base of this sauce. Dark soy sauce is thicker and saltier, and the dish will turn out dark.
Can you make sweet and sour eggplant with meat?
Yes, in Asia this dish is often made with meat or poultry. Fry the meat separately and add it to the vegetables together with the sauce. A similar sauce is used for kung pao, chicken in soy sauce with peanuts.
Can you cook zucchini this way?
Yes, zucchini is cooked the same way, cut into thick sticks. Fry it for less time than eggplant — it softens faster.