THE BEST recipe for EASY Eggplant Parmigiana!

Carla is cooking with Trader Joe ingredients! Learn how to make an easy, cheesy Eggplant Parmigiana with a quick side dish of pesto pasta! This video will guide you through specific eggplant preparation for this meal. This is an impressive lunch or dinner you can make at home! Enjoy! And I’ll see you… in my kitchen! #eggplant recipe #Carlaiscooking #eggplant stack

Hey everybody and welcome back to my kitchen where Carla is cooking what are we cooking today we are cooking an eggplant Parmesan with a side of popper doll pasta tossed very simply in a pesto so let’s go ahead and get started audio jungle so eggplant Parmesan first off I

Am not doing some big cheap pan of this because I’m cooking for two so um the method and uh what you see here today uh of course if you’re cooking for four or six or more you would simply repeat the process that I’m doing and just layer

And stack and you’ll see how we’re going to do that now the preparation of the eggplant is pretty important eggplant carries a lot of water as do other vegetables um such as mushrooms um but the eggplant we need to um extract all of that water before we do our eggplant

FM otherwise we’re going to wind up with a very watery eggplant parm and nobody likes that so let me tell you how I did that I cut off the ends of the um eggplant I just phosed of them I went ahead and I sliced the eggplant in

Slices just like this okay um I had a cookie sheet with parchment paper with a little rack the same thing that you would Set uh cookies like a cooling wrap for cookies if when you’re baking so I sliced them up I set them out on my

Baking sheet and I went ahead and I salted both sides I let them set out for about 4 hours and guys when I came back guess what all of the water was extracted and there was just pools of water so much so that I saved the paper

Towel cuz I wanted to show you so these are wet wet wet paper towels they are drenched and that just goes to show you how much water is actually um in the eggplant that would have been in your eggplant P all right so we went ahead

And and we we I drained that and then I laid them all out on a paper towel and I simply lightly pressed press press press press again just to dry my eggplant um slices and that’s what we have here and now we’re ready to go ahead with the

Eggplant par so I know you know this method flour egg breadcrumbs we’re seeing it again guys that’s what I love about simple methin you can use in the kitchen you can use them throughout uh various meals so let’s go ahead and get started oh first off let’s get this pan

Going this is my wonderful pan that um we’re going to br everything in and then I’m going to we’re going to broil so we get all the cheese nice and brown so let’s go ahead and get this guy uh about medium Heat this is my pan

That holds a lot of heat it’s um it’s those you know Iron cast iron which are awesome because I can go right from the stove chop right into the broiler and I don’t have to transfer pans one less pan for me to wash I love that all right

What I’m going to do is I’m going to do a a couple turns of um olive oil get that all in there so we can gently fry up the eggplant patties okay that’s good I’m also going to use uh a little bit of garlic and I’m going to show you what

I’m using because I find it to be such a timesaver and oh so convenient uh if you’re not on this train you might want to try it out these are frozen garlic cubes they come garlic and ginger I always have them in the freezer and this way I don’t have to

Bring fresh garlic home and have to throw it out when it goes bad um so sometimes I use the Frozen sometimes use fresh for convenience we’re going to go ahead and use this today okay perfect so we’ve got oil we’ve got a garlic and I

Am going to throw just a little bit of butter oh do you guys see look at my butter holy heck yeah the butter TR tried to jump out of the pan get back in there okay so we’ve got the butter in the pan and now we’re going to just get that all

Nice and hot uh and ready for our eggplant all right we’re going to take this we’re going to flour we are going to egg it trip drip drip and then we’re going to breadcrumb okay perfect D number one is done I should say eggplant slice all right flow

Egg and breadcrumb eggplant parm is one of those things that I will order out at restaurants I love to order things out that I don’t generally make at home and eggplant perm is one of those and I don’t know why honestly um It’s relatively simple once you know once you

Understand that you have to extract the water out and this method as we know is oh so simple um you can even have the kids help you really it’s kind of a fun little assembly line thing they can help with okay and we’re just going to keep

On going here I’m keeping an eye on that pan okay perfect right right and we’re going to repeat this process again you can I you do this for chicken parm I did it for the chicken Marcella I do it for chicken pakata uh it’s just a nice easy way to bread

Things okay and a couple more trying to keep one hand free so I can uh grab a spatula oh and I’m going to need more breadcrumbs I’m using seasoned breadcrumbs guys because I don’t like to have to season myself basically they’re just Italian style breadcrumbs um sometimes I add extra

Shaker cheese because I feel like you can never have too much cheese although in this dish there is going to be a lot of cheese so I’m going to refr from that okay we’re almost there fantastic by the way this is just one egg um for one eggplant obviously it’s

All relative um I had a mediumsized eggplant and it was beautiful so I picked out a nice beautiful eggplant all righty perfect and wow that came out perfectly because it’s the bowls are empty so let me wash my hands okay perfect and I am going to grab my little

Spoonula thing and just stir in that garlic okay perfect and now I’m just going to lay in you know what I’m going to use the rest of my butter here cuz I can tell that I’m going to want more maybe a little bit more olive oil too I was a

Little shy on that but we really want to get it in there so it has room to cook up our eggplant Palm all right so you can see guys look at the slices look beautiful right okay just going to lay them in the pan just like

This and I might have to I’m going to have to leave a couple out and that’s okay cuz I want to leave room in in the pan so I can flip all right now remember we said um I said we’re going to do just

A little side dish you can do a lot of things with eggplant parm a lot of side dishes you could do a side salad um you could do you could do a side of veggies but since obviously the eggplant is a vegetable I thought it’d be nice to add

A starch and I love these um noodles they are the uh pepper doll uh pepper doll pasta from Trader Joe’s basically they’re just really nice um ribbon noodles see that there and they cook really quickly so um I like to use them so let me go ahead and get the uh water

Going on this guy cuz I want it ready for us all right I’ve got the lid there and I always salt my water for pasta so that’s that and that will get working there um it will just take minutes to cook so uh when I after I

Strain it we’re just going to use a little bit of uh pesto I had this in the fridge left over from another dish and I thought why not it’s something different um we are going to have red sauce on our eggplant parm so you could just as

Easily uh toss the pasta in the red sauce that you already have you can do that too again I had pesto in my fridge and I don’t use it often so I kind of want to use it up I thought it would be something different okay guys this is

Looking really beautiful and I think it’s going to be time to take it out let me show you um what this looks like because it’s just so gorgeous look yeah right so nice m and it smells delicious you can smell those breadcrumbs that’s why I love Italian cheese and breadcrumbs they’re

Just so good all right let’s go ahead I’ve got a dish with a paper towel um just to kind of um soak up a little bit of that uh oil and butter okay these are looking really beautiful okay okay perfect and there’s that and remember

We’ve got two more so we’re going to go ahead and get these guys going just a little more perfect and now we can cook these guys up as well cuz I’m going to have the perfect amount for two people so I really do need those all right let’s check on this

Water we’re going to need that to move just a little quicker for us so we’ll wait for that all right so when the water is ready we’re going to put the pasta in got my pesto uh and now we’re going to cut up a chop up a little bit of parsley

Because we are going to garnish with the parsley but not just garnish actually we are going to use uh a bit of this in the dish so while we’re waiting and these are going to go faster right cuz now the P pad pan is super hot so actually we’re just going to finish

These off here first this is looking great okay now go ahead and wipe off cutting board all right all right great I’m going to get this parsley going no stems in this dish uh as well sometimes I get impatient but you know what I prefer not having this

Right in my dish all right let’s go ahead and get some of these guys off I’m going to turn the heat off of that cuz I can tell a it’s hot and B this is almost ready for us all right and now that I’m saying it

We’re just going to go ahead and get these out perfect all right gas off um eggplant cutlets are ready for us they look oh so lovely we’re going to move this guy oo squeaky move that back that guy has a little more little more time all right so going to grab my

Parsley who okay okay who are we kidding right now yeah you see why you want to take the stems off yeah that ain’t going in the eggplant all right go ahead and do that okay we’ll set that aside I’m going to do a little bit more cuz like I said

Uh I want some for garnish but I also want some to sprinkle in between the couple layers that I’m going to have again you guys I’m just doing this for two and uh if you were doing had more people just keep going with with the layering of cheese sauce and eggplant that would

Probably require definitely I’d say two or three uh eggplants okay okay guys um pepper doll pasta is boiling and now we’re ready to build this eggplant parm we are going to uh set the broiler at 500 we’re going to start that so it’s ready for us we’re going to go ahead and

Um uh start building we’re going to build in this pan because then I’m going to just slide right in in the same pan and broil so let’s go ahead and get this guy on um um basically everything is cooked right the eggplant perm the cutlets they’re already cooked up but I

Just want to get the sauce hot I want to get the cheese kind of all melty so what I’m going to do I’ve just got some very basic tomato basil marinara sauce um and I’m just going to go ahead and put that in our hot pan because I want that eggplant Farm to

Have somewhere to like you know go I want it to be submerged in this sauce and now I’m just going to lay in the pan these little guys now I’m going to salt pepper salt and pepper I’m going to ease up on the salt simply because there’s a

Lot of cheese in this dish and cheese is salty so I’m going to use two cheeses I’ve got a shredded mozzarella we’re going to do that so what I’m going to do here guys is just kind of layer this okay it’s a little untraditional in that again we’re

Cooking for two I didn’t want a ton of leftovers with this dish okay but I want you to see how I’ve done this okay I want you to see this so basically I have two patties in there I’ve got it in the sauce the parsley and

Two cheeses in there okay these salt and peppered going to keep my eye on this pasta too cuz I told you it goes fast it goes fast I can tell that we’ve got maybe a few more minutes on that guy so we’re just going to kind of let it

Gently sit in there you don’t need to have it boiling okay and all right we’re good there back to this I’m going to go ahead and just tap these with another one all right and then I’m going to do ah actually I’m going to do the sauce

First I want some sauce on top I want the cheese on top because I want it beautiful brown all browned up in the brailer and I want you to see it so I want to soft SAU and then cheese I want cheese on top all right so now I’ve got

Sauce I’m just going to kind of scoot it around like that perfect to shred some more cheese up keeping an eye on that pasta cuz I think she’s almost ready for us okay all right and this cheese this is just it’s a try a three cheeses parmesan

Romano Iago I love that it’s kind of like thickly kind of it’s the right size it’s not shredded but I love this cheese for salads it’s when you really want some nice kind of just a different texture of cheese so we’re going to go ahead and do

That and I’m going to sprinkle in a little more parsley okay and I’m going to let that go for a minute now I’m going to grab this pot we’re going to turn the water off we’re going to strain this guy perfect okay great and I’ve got a bowl here I am

Going to put the drain pasta into the Bowl O pasta facial uh into the bowl I’m going to do a little olive oil just a little bit cuz we’re putting the pesto I’m going to salt Sal it just a little bit I know I did the

Water and I’m going to let that rest for just a minute okay back to this guy he’s all good and sizzling now I want to hit it in the broiler so we’re going to get this guy in the broiler look how gorgeous this looks oh

So good you guys right okay again it’s a little untraditional and that we’re not doing it like a lasagna stacking it in a pan you could certainly do that for a larger group or a larger family or if you want leftovers no problem same method it’s just you’re doing more

Lering okay all right okay guys so I’ve got the boyfriends this is like this is the hungry man’s dish okay definitely plenty there one eggplant he’s got two little stacks but it’s filled with all that sauce and cheese and garnished with a little bit of parsley so this is the

Boys okay now for mine got a little bit of pasta and I’m gonna go ahead and grab myself a stack oh and this cheese and this sauce looks absolutely fantastic there you go still a really nice portion um all right I’m going to hit it with a little bit of parsley just

Because I want it to look pretty and now I’m going to have to go ahead and go in for this guy right all right let’s see how we did with a eggplant Palm for two all right so really tender easy to just kind of cut through which is so

Nice it’s no no water no leakiness none of that stuff here we go this is delicious this is so good I’m so glad that I just decided to just do an inpl par this was a request actually From