This is a very delicious and satisfying recipe for home-canned pickled eggplant (aka aubergine.)
Try serving this as an antipasto salad: drain jar, toss eggplant in two tablespoons of good quality oil (olive, avocado, etc.), let marinate for a few hours in the fridge, serve room temperature garnished with some chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, chives, oregano, etc., or, some chopped capers.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Half-litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz)
Processing method: Water bath or steam canning
Yield: 3 x half-litre (US pint) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes (all jar sizes)
Pickled Eggplant
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons garlic (minced)
- 4 tablespoons basil (fresh. chopped, loosely packed. 5 g)
- 750 ml white wine vinegar (5% acidity or higher. 3 cups / 24 oz)
- 1 kg eggplant (2 lbs)
- 2 tablespoons salt
Instructions
- Mince the garlic; set aside.
- Chop basil leaves coarsely; set aside.
- Wash eggplant. then peel.
- Cut eggplant into 2 cm (½ inch) cubes; set aside.
- Put vinegar in a stainless steel pot, bring to a boil.
- Put one-fourth the eggplant in the vinegar, bring back to the boil, and let boil 2 minutes, then remove with a strainer spoon and put in a bowl.
- Repeat in similar batches for the rest of the eggplant.
- To the bowl with the par-boiled eggplant, now add the garlic, basil and salt, and toss.
- Pack hot into half-litre (US pint) jars.
- Fill jars with the hot vinegar.
- Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a month of jar time.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.
Recipe notes
- If you don’t have easy access to fresh basil, use 2 teaspoons dried basil.
- [Optional] Add a bit of sweetener to the vinegar before heating it for a bit of a sweet / sour taste. Maybe a few tablespoons of sugar or honey, or a teaspoon of liquid stevia.
- Instead of the salt, you can use a non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub. We have found Herbamare Sodium-Free performs well in that regard.
Recipe source
Pickled Eggplant Cubes. In: Ziedrich, Linda. The Joy of Pickling. Boston, Massachusetts: The Harvard Common Press. 2016. Page 206.
With a pH of 3.42, Linda Ziedrich has given us another quality, safe and tasty pickling recipe. Well below upper safety cut-off of 4.6 pH
Nutrition information
Regular version
Per 100 g (¼ jar):
- 36 calories, 114 mg sodium
Salt-free version
Per 100 g (¼ jar):
- 36 calories, 5 mg sodium.
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
* Pickle Crisp ® is a registered trademark of the Newell Corporation.
Vince Demauro
Is it OK when you pickle egg plant can for the Click?When pressing on it and does that mean it’s not good
Healthy Canning
A click on the lid means you don’t have a seal. Put in fridge.
Saria
I’m a little confused as to why I ended up with so little vinegar left over to fill the jars, so little that I had to quickly heat about another 300ml of vinegar just to fill them?
Healthy Canning
It’s all so phase of the moon with pickling brine quantities! And next time, you’d likely have too much! I’ve rarely done any canning where the quantities worked out exactly right. The trick of course is to do what you did, to quickly make up more in the ratios called for in the recipe (and a microwave will heat it quickly — be careful when removing from microwave as microwaved liquid when surge when moved.)
Sk
Do you think it would be okay to swap 4 tablespoons coriander/ cilantro for 4 tablespoons basil since they’re both leafy fresh herbs? I’m looking to use this as more of an Indian pickle.
Healthy Canning
We can’t think how that would cause a problem.
Caitlin
Can I process this recipe in a pressure cooker, or do I have to do water bath?
Healthy Canning
For home canning, you use a pressure canner, not a pressure cooker. And you would not want to pressure can this, it would turn it to moosh and no one would want to eat it.
Agnes
Hmm missed the above comment…pressure canned these yesterday! How long until they’re ready to test? Hoping for not mush but we’ll see.
Healthy Canning
There are no tested directions for pressure canning, so sorry no idea.