Tzatziki is good on so many things, but I don’t think I have ever tried it with eggplant. I need to fix that! So my Greek-inspired recipe week continues with Baked Eggplant Fries with Greek Tzatziki Sauce. How good does that sound? I made the tzatziki sauce and served it with Marinated Greek Chicken Skewers, and WOW! The stuff was magical!! But don’t worry, I have plenty left over for these eggplant fries, and I’m dying to try them out.
In this recipe, eggplant batons take on a simple seasoned breading and quickly softens in the oven, resulting in the perfect eggplant fries–crisp on the outside, and velvety, tender on the inside. Simply addictive! For a little side dip, I like to use Greek tzatziki sauce. But you can also simply use a store-bought dip of your choice like marinara or a light ranch.
The Ingredients
Most everything I needed for this recipe was easy to find. I even had a lot of them on hand, so all I had to buy were the vegetables and dairy items. However, the one thing I had trouble with was the English cucumber. It took a little research, but I found out they are also called hothouse cucumbers and sold individually wrapped. Additionally, they have fewer seeds, thinner skins, and a sweeter taste than regular cucumbers. I highly recommend using this type of cucumber if it’s available. If you do need to use a regular cucumber, I would completely peel it instead of striping it and also seed it.
The Process
Making these eggplant fries wasn’t difficult, but it was time-consuming. I spent a total of 55 minutes making them, which was far more than the 40 minutes I expected. Most of that was spent on steps 1-4, which took me 40 minutes. That includes 20 minutes for salting the eggplant slices and allowing them to sweat.
Most of the remaining time was for breading the eggplant. I had to take my time with that because the egg (and then the breadcrumbs) didn’t want to stick to the flour, as you can see in the picture below. I also had to crack an extra egg so I had enough for all the fries.
Once the eggplant was breaded and arranged on the wire baking racks, I popped it into the oven for 10 minutes. It wasn’t very golden when the timer went off, so I gave it another 5 minutes, for a total cooking time of 15 minutes. That seemed to do the trick, but I think another 5 minutes would have been better (I like my eggplant well done).
The times listed above do not include the tzatziki sauce, which took 15 minutes to prepare, just as listed in the recipe.
