My Easy Moussaka Recipe – A Delicious Way To Use Up Eggplants From The Garden

Looking for a delicious way to use up those eggplants from your garden? Check out my easy moussaka recipe in this video! Learn how to make moussaka with fresh eggplants from your garden in a few simple steps. Perfect for a tasty homemade meal!

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***Moussaka Recipe***
Ingredients
3 large eggplants, thinly sliced lengthwise
6-8 Yukon Gold potatoes, thinly sliced
Lots of shredded Mozzarella cheese
Olive Oil
Big bowl of room temperature water with salt

Meat Sauce
2 lb ground beef
2 large onions, diced
1 sweet bell pepper, diced
3 TBS garlic cloves, minced
2 cups fresh tomatoes, diced
3 TBS tomato paste
1/3 cup of red wine
3 cups of beef broth
1 TSP Allspice
1 TSP salt
1/2 TSP ground black pepper
1/2 TSP cinnamon

Bechamel sauce
1 stick of butter melted
1/2 cup flour
3 cups of milk
2 egg yolks
1 TSP salt
1/2 TSP pepper
1/2 TSP nutmeg
1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese

Baking sheets covered with aluminum foil.

Directions
1. Wash the eggplant and potatoes. Thinly slice lengthwise. Soak the eggplant for at least 30 minutes, up to 2 hours, in a big bowl of salted water to remove the bitterness. Once it is done soaking, lay out the eggplant slices in one layer over some paper towels to dry.

2. Wash and peel the potatoes. Then slice 1/4 inch thick lengthwise. Mix the potato slices with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

3. Prep the rest of the ingredients. Dice the tomatoes, onions, and peppers. I like to use a food chopper to get consistent sized pieces.

4. Turn the oven on to 375F.

5. Brush each side of the eggplant with olive oil. Then season with salt and pepper. Lay all the sliced eggplant and potatoes in one layer, on several baking sheets covered with aluminum foil. Roast the eggplant and potato slices for 1 hour.

6. Next, start making the meat sauce. Add 2 TBS of olive oil to a pan and cook the ground beef until brown. Then add minced garlic, and diced onions, peppers, and tomatoes. Cook this down until all the liquid has evaporated. Then add the 1/3 cup of red wine to deglaze. Then add 3TBS tomato paste. Mix to incorporate the paste. Next add all of the seasonings. Finally, add some beef broth to get to a thick bolognese type of consistency. Taste test the meat sauce at the end and adjust with more seasonings to your liking. Remove the meat sauce from the heat and set aside.

7. Next, make the béchamel. Melt 1 stick of butter. Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg followed by the flour. Whisk this quickly to form a roux. Then pour 2 cups of milk into the béchamel mixture. Mix 2 egg yolks with the remaining 1 cup of milk, then slowly pour into the béchamel sauce in the pot, all while whisking quickly. Taste test the béchamel sauce and the end and add seasonings to adjust to your liking. Lastly, whisk in 1 cup of mozzarella cheese until melted. Remove the béchamel sauce from the heat and set aside.

8. Now start assembling the moussaka, Start with 1 layer of potatoes, followed by some mozzarella cheese, followed by an layer of sliced eggplant. Repeat until all the sliced potato and eggplant have been used up. Top with a layer of meat sauce, followed by béchamel sauce. Sprinkle more cheese on top.

9. Bake the dish of moussaka at 450F until the top layer of cheese is melted and golden. Let the dish cool down for at least 30 minutes before slicing into it.

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hello and welcome to my Channel today I’m doing something a little bit different normally I make gardening tutorial videos but sometimes I make videos showing you how to use up or preserve your Harvest I’ve been harvesting basketfuls of eggplants and I thought to show you guys how to make musaka it’s a delicious way to use up a lot of eggplant if you struggle to grow eggplants check out my how to grow eggplant from seed to harvest video tutorial which is linked in the description below musaka is a Mediterranean dish that is basically like a lasagna without pasta instead of pasta you add layers of eggplants or other veggies like potatoes or zucchini so it’s a great way to use up a lot of veggies from your garden do you have any awesome recipes for eggplant if so please let me know in the comments below because I definitely need them my eggplants are going to produce for many more months and this is the fourth basket of eggplants that I have harvested in about 3 months if you want to grow these same eggplants that you see here I do have seeds on website this variety is called Black Beauty and this lovely lavender variety is called Rosa Bianca there are three main components to musaka a meat sauce like a bologan a creamy vegal sauce and then layers of eggplants and or other veggies depending on what you decide now I realize it sounds like a lot of work but I have some tricks to speed this up and the good thing is this recipe makes a huge batch so there is a lot of food you can make two trays and freeze one for you later to begin gather all of the ingredients which I list out in the description below and set the oven to bake at 375° F first I’m going to prep all of the veggies thenly slice the eggplant and we have to soak it in some heavily salted water because that helps remove the bitterness I have this full of water and I’m just going to add like 3 tablespoons of salt I’m using about three large eggplants here and about 6 to eight potatoes you’re going to want to slice the eggplant lengthwise because you want them to be kind of like long sheets similar to lasagna sheets probably the number one thing that people ask me with eggplant is which one is not so bitter like what variety or cultivar is less bitter honestly I think they all have some level of bitterness but when you grow it at home you can Harvest it when they’re more on the Young and tender side which means it has less bitterness and every time I cook with them after I slice them up however I need to I soak them in the salt water which also removes a lot of that bitterness these slices are about a/4 in thick look at that I only cut up one and it’s already so much eggplant seriously one or two eggplants can feed a whole family and all of these came off the same plant okay so we’re going to soak them make sure you separate each piece of eggplant so every side is exposed to the Salt Water push them all in there soak them for at least 30 minutes if you can do longer even better like up to 2 hours they have a tendency to float so I like to get another plate and put it on top of here so it kind of pushes them down underneath the water all right so set this aside and start working on the rest of the veggies all right so next we’re going to peel the potatoes it is optional but I really like the texture better when you peel them and I’m using yellow potatoes but really you could use any kind of potato once your potatoes are peeled you’re also going to slice them about 1/4 inch thick slices lengthwise place the potatoes into another Bowl but you’re not going to submerge them in water I want these slices to be as dry as possible separate each piece you’re going to add a bunch of salt and pepper and mix it with olive oil it’s very important that you season every layer of this musaka well even the vegetables all right so now we have to prep the rest of the veggie ingredients I have some onions some bell pepper and some tomatoes for chopping up all of these veggies I really like to use a food chopper like this one it works great and it will cut all of these different vegetables at the same size I like to remove the core out of any of the tomatoes before I chop them up and obviously the seeds and everything and core out of the peppers these peppers tomatoes and onions are for the meat sauce so it’s okay to dice them up and mix them together in my recipe I do list one large onion but I love onions a lot so I’m going to add to and you can use whatever kind of onion you would like yellow sweet white red I’m using red onions all right so these have been soaking for an hour now it’s time to drain them once the eggplant is done soak cing you’re going to layer down some paper towels because we have to get each slice as dry as possible and use some more paper towels to Pat the other side you want these slices to be as dry as possible so that they cook better I covered up quite a few cookie sheets or just regular baking sheets with aluminum foil to make clean up easier now the next step is totally up to you on how you want to do it the goal is to cook the veggie slices through in my case the eggplant and the potatoes so they’re not raw you don’t want to assemble the musaka with raw vegetables the final baking Step at the very end is not to cook the layers through but instead it’s just to Brown the top layers of cheese so each ingredient layer has to be cooked you can pan fry them deep fry them Grill them air fry them or roast them which is what I’m going to do because I feel like the roasting option is the easiest since I can cook them all at once and for me that’s kind of like the shortcut to Preparing this musaka so that is why I tossed the potato slices with olive oil salt and pepper because I knew I was going to be roasting this we’re going to do the same thing with the eggplant I’m going to brush them with some olive oil on each side and then add some salt and pepper I like to brush each side with the olive oil instead of mixing it all in a bowl and then tossing it with olive oil salt and pepper like I did with the potatoes because eggplants absorb liquid super fast so if I put them all in a bowl pour olive oil on it literally they absorb a lot of that olive oil oil in one spot before I have a chance to like mix everything so that’s why I’m going the extra step of brushing on this olive oil now you don’t have to add this olive oil and all that you could seriously just bake it as it is but I find that it helps give it more of like a roasted grilled type of flavor and just throwing it in there without the olive oil salt and pepper all right so sprinkle some salt follow by the pepper I’m going to transfer each slice onto a cookie sheet but I’m going to FL flip over the side that I already brushed on with the olive oil flip it over that way I can brush more olive oil salt and pepper and all that on the other side all right we flipped them all over onto the trays now I’m going to put olive oil salt and pepper on the other side and be generous because these can soak up a lot of oil and we’re going to do the same thing with potatoes just line them up in one single layer the cooking time is going to vary depending on the kind of potatoes and eggplant you’re using and how thinly slice while everything is roasting we’re going to work on our meat sauce and the bashal cook the ground beef until it’s thoroughly cooked I like to use a potato Smasher to get my ground beef all separated into nice little pieces once the beef is all browned up add the onions peppers and tomatoes we’re also going to add in the minced garlic I really like garlic so I’m going to put like three heaping tablespoons mix everything up and then we’re going to put the lid on it to let this cook down for 10 minutes we just want the veggies to soften up all right so it’s been about 10 minutes most of the water has evaporated so we’re going to De glaze with a little bit of red wine next we’re going to add the tomato paste I find it’s a lot easier to mix in tomato paste when it’s still you know just ground up meat if you start putting in the beef broth and other stuff the tomato paste plumps get kind of lost in there and it just becomes harder to break it all apart one of the main features about the meat sauce for musaka is that it has to be thick it cannot be watered down kind of like regular pasta sauce so that’s why we use tomato paste as you can see this is a much thicker type of sauce now we’re going to add all of the seasonings for the meat sauce salt pepper cinnamon all spice mix it all in now I said this is supposed to be a thick sauce which is correct but this is too thick so we’re going to add a little bit of beef broth just to make it a little more Saucy the amount of beef broth broth will vary so just eyeball it this is the consistency I’m looking for it’s like a very thick bologan all right I think I’m done but you have to taste test it because like I said every single layer needs to be properly seasoned it has really good flavor but I think it could use a little bit more salt and again you’re going to season this to your legging all right the meat sauce is done and now we’re going to take it off the heat and just set it aside now we’re going to start working on the Bal we’re going to start by melting down a stick of butter we’re going to add in the seasoning salt pepper and Nutmeg and then half a cup of flour because we’re making a rue whisk this very quickly to make the Rue The Rue is ready when it’s really bubbly and fluffy looking next we’re going to start pouring in the milk this is 3 cups of milk and let me just explain a little trick here to make this bashal you’re going to add two egg yolks into the whole mixture I’m going to pour pour two out of three cups of this milk into the bom right now leave the remaining Cup in here so that I can stir in my egg yolks and kind of loosen them up so that when I pour them in here I don’t scramble the egg yolks so I’ve mixed in two out of three of the cups let’s pour our egg yolks into here and then mix this up the egg yolks just add an extra bit of creaminess to your vegal sauce stir this really quickly as you pour in the egg yolk and milk mixture this bmel sauce looks nice and creamy I think it’s done but I’m going to taste it make sure you like the flavor I think it needs a little more salt and Nutmeg I like the flavor of the vmall so now I’m just going to add like a big handful of shredded mozzarella cheese now I’m checking on the veggies it took me like 50 minutes for these to be roasted enough to the point that I like it’s finally time to assemble everything start with a layer of potatoes first because the potatoes will soak up all of the juices from our sauce then we’re going to sprinkle on some cheese basically you’re going to put a little bit of cheese in between each layer follow that with the eggplant repeat each layer of potato eggplant and cheese until you’ve used up all the veggies now we’re going to put a layer of the meat sauce now we’re going to put a layer of the bamel sauce sprinkle some more cheese on top and it’s ready to bake set the oven to 450° so that way you you can bake this for a little bit just until the cheese is nice and golden all right the cheese is nice and melted and golden let this sit for at least 30 minutes to cool down just a little bit before you decide to slice into it if you were to slice into it right now it’s so hot that all of the liquids would just pour right out finally cut into this look at all those layers of veggies this was so delicious I don’t even miss the pasta get a little B bit of that eggplant and potato this is great it doesn’t even seem like I’m eating a bunch of eggplant for real this is a great recipe to use of a lot of eggplant and there you have it musaka if you enjoyed this video make sure to give me a big Thumbs Up And subscribe to my channel for more inspiration on what to do with all the veggies harvested from your garden I hope you enjoyed following along with me today and thank you for watching for