Phoebe ChungKorean eggplant salad is a side dish. It is a very common food as a side dish for steamed rice.
However, eggplant is a food that goes well with meat dishes, so it is also suitable as a Western-style salad.
I recommend adjusting the amount of soy sauce just to make it less salty.
When I was a child, during vacations, I used to go to my aunt’s house in the countryside.
Like ordinary rural farmhouses, the house had a vegetable garden on one side of the yard, and many vegetables were grown during the summer season.
My cousins picked vegetables there and made side dishes, and I learned a lot about vegetable side dishes at that time.
This dish is one of them. It was easy enough for me as a child to cook, so I believe you can make it easily too.
About Korean Eggplant Salad
In Korean, it is called ‘Gaji namul’. ‘Gaji ‘ means eggplant and ‘namul’ means a kind of Korean salad.
The charm of this eggplant dish is its soft texture.
As mentioned before, it is eaten as a side dish with warm steamed rice.
But eggplant is very low in calories and high in moisture, so it goes well with meat dishes.
Isn’t it surprising that 100 grams of eggplant has only 25 calories?
Korean eggplant is soft. If your eggplants still have tough skins after steaming, peel them off.
The seasoning is light soy sauce, but if you don’t have it, you can season it with salt.
I like to add chili flakes, but there is also an eggplant salad that doesn’t have chili flakes. So if you don’t like spicy, skip the chili flakes.
Sprinkle the eggplant with a little salt and set aside for a while. It removes the bitter taste of eggplant and makes it softer.
Store
Store in the refrigerator and eat within 2 days.
In fact, it tastes better after a little time as the eggplant absorbs the seasoning than when it is made right away.
Korean eggplant salad ‘Gaji namul’ recipe
Ingredients
- 2 eggplants 430g
- 2 pinch pinch sea salt
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 2 tbsp chopped green onion
- 2 tsp chili flakes optional
- 2 clove garlic
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- Wash the eggplants, cut off the ends, and cut them into appropriate lengths and thicknesses that are easy to eat.
- Boil water in a pot large enough to fit the steamer.
- Sprinkle the eggplants lightly with sea salt and leave them while the water boils.
- Once the water starts to boil, place them in the steamer. When putting eggplants in the steamer, put the stems of the eggplants on the bottom and the skins facing down for cook quickly.
- Close the lid and steam for 7 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the eggplant.Eggplants are cooked when the color of the skin turns slightly brown.
- After cooling, place in a salad bowl and mix with all ingredients.
