Last updated on January 11th, 2018 at 07:28 pm
Eggplant Salad is a traditional Romanian eggplant dip or spread, known as salata de vinete, served with bread and with a side of tomatoes. Super delicious!
I’m really happy to share this recipe with you today because it’s one I grew up with, it’s my mom’s recipe and we’ve been making this for as long as I can remember.
I mentioned before, I’m not crazy about eggplants, but this dish is one of my favorites, honestly. I would say it’s more of a spread or a dip than truly a salad, but you serve this salad on some nice crusty bread with some sliced tomatoes on the side, oh man, it doesn’t get better than this. It is the simplest recipe in the world, only 4 ingredients and it’s just to die for. I grew up eating this salad, and it’s probably one of the first things I ever learned how to make.
You can serve this salad with a nice crusty bread, toasted or not, and just add some sliced tomatoes on the side, and you’ve got yourself a meal.
Now there are other variations of this salad, you could add mayo, or mustard, but I’ve tried it and this simple recipe is still my favorite version of it.
If you guys love this recipe, and most importantly make it yourselves, please let us know. Take a picture and tag it #jocooks on Instagram so we can see it. I always love to see what you guys come up with!
Eggplant Salad (Salata de vinete)
Ingredients
- 4 large eggplants
- 1/4 cup sunflower oil (do not use olive oil, doesn't taste good in this salad)
- 1/2 onion chopped
- salt to taste
Instructions
- You can either grill the eggplants or bake them in the oven at 375 degrees, by placing them on a cookie sheet, poke some holes in the eggplants, this is a very important step, once I forgot to poke holes in the eggplants, and they literally exploded in my oven. So just bake them in the oven, make sure they are baked really well, and you'll have to turn them from side to side. Once they are done, let them cool off.
- After they've cooled off, remove the peel, using a knife, if you've cooked them enough, the peel should come off easily. You may wash them, to remove any of the dark peel, but make sure you use paper towels to soak up the excess water.
- Place them in your food processor, add the onion and the salt, and pulse a few times, slowly adding the sunflower oil. It should end up like a paste as you can see in the picture. And that's it, if the salad is still a bit warm, just put it in the fridge and let it cool off, it's better cold.
I’ve never had it with mayo mixed in either. A juicy tomato and a good piece of bread is all you need. I can eat this salad by the bucketload.
You and me both!
Dears,
you must let the eggplants get drained in a stainless steel sieve after peeling. 5-10 minutes to remove the bitter juice. It is a must do.
Lovely dish, indeed.
The recipe is close to how I make it, only you need to put mayo in there. But I make the mayo, I don’t put the store made mayo. That’s actually the Romanian version, with homemade mayo 🙂
Hi Ramona,
My mom never put mayo in hers, so I never did either, until I got married and discovered others do, so sometimes I put mayo in mine as well, homemade of course, but other times I don’t. Can’t really tell you which version I like the most, I really like both, this salad really is one of my favorites.
Ramona you use the yolk and oil correct but how much oil if I may ask?
I’ve always known how it tasted and looked like but this is the first time I’ve attempted to make it myself since mom doesn’t live with me. It turned out great and I was surprised that it was the same as my mom made it and everyone else! Thank you for posting and the pics for this are super, exactly what it should look like!!
I don’t have a food processor. Could you please tell me how to cook this dish poor people style?
Hi Mike,
Traditionally this salad is chopped up with these wood knives, but you won’t find these here. You can use any regular knife to chop up the eggplant, or even if you have a wood spatula, try using that, that should work fine.
I mashed it with a fork because I did not have one either ? It worked just fine.
This looks incredible. A perfect dish for a wedding because its elegant and seems like a crowd pleaser.
Your picture looks gorgeous. I have to say I never tried this eggplant before, and I like you are not a big fan of eggplants, but this does look delicious. I will definitely have to try it.
I love this recipe, this was delicious. Thanks for posting it.