Stuffed Eggplant

I’m glad to see you guys are loving my Larabar giveaway! Because there’s been so much interest, the kind people over at Larabar are allowing me to pick a second place winner who will get a 4-pack of bars on top of the first place winner who will get the variety box! Keep those entries coming up until midnight tomorrow and good luck!

Now I know many people are hesitant to turn on their ovens right about now, but I promise you it’s worth it for this.

Vegetarian Stuffed Eggplant

Recipe yields 2 servings, 5 pts+ each. Printable version here.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium eggplant
• 1/2 large onion
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 shallot
• 1/2 cup white beans (or other beans)
• 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
• 1 oz part-skim mozzarella
• salt and pepper

To start, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Next, cut your eggplant in half length-wise.

Make diagonal slits through each half of the eggplant, staying about 1/4” (or so) away from the edge like this:

Now, make slits going the other way so they crisscross:

At this point, you want to remove the flesh from the middle of the eggplant halves. You can do this with a spoon:

Or you can pull the pieces out with your fingers. I did a combination of the two:

Don’t fret if you mess up and make a little hole in the eggplant shell like I did:

You can just patch it up with a little piece of eggplant from the middle like so:

No one will ever know.

Take your two eggplant shells and place on a greased baking sheet (or sheet pan if you don’t have a baking sheet like me…)

And bake in your preheated oven for about 15 minutes while you make the filling.

Chop up your veggies:

And also chop up the meat of the eggplant a bit so it looks like this:

To start the filling, heat a pan up over medium heat and then use some nonstick spray before adding in the onion.

After 3-4 minutes, the onion will start to get a little translucent and then you want to add the rest of the veggies – garlic, shallot, and eggplant.

Stir everything around and then cover it and let cook for about 10 minutes. You want all the veggies to be cooked through and the eggplant to start looking a little translucent:

Once it looks like that, add in your beans and some salt and pepper:

Mix to combine and let cook for about 30 seconds until heated through.

By now, your eggplant shells should have cooked for 15 minutes and are ready to be stuffed.

Divide the veggie mixture between the two halves:

Then top each one with half the cheese, 2 tbsp panko crumbs, and a touch of salt and pepper:

Now they are ready to go back in the oven, so place them in there for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. After those ten minutes are up, turn the oven up to 425 and let them cook for another 10 minutes until the top is browned and the stuffed eggplants are cooked through.

And then they are ready to eat!

These are seriously so delicious and filling, that I didn’t even eat anything on the side and I was satisfied for hours. They also hold up amazing as leftovers, and were just as filling for lunch the next day. The panko crumbs gave it a nice crunch, and the cheese got all melty and tied everything together.

Every bite is full of flavor and deliciousness, and the possibilities for flavor combinations with these are endless.

You can try them with different veggies, different protein, different cheeses, different spices, and I’m sure any way you do it they will be amazing, filling, and super healthy.

Enjoy!

Do you ever turn on the oven in the summer or do you tend to mostly do stovetop or no-cook meals?