Paleo Stuffed Eggplant
I love eggplant and probably my favorite way to make it is my recipe for Amazing Eggplant because it is so quick and easy. This recipe is also easy (and equally delicious), but it requires a bit more time since there are other vegetables to chop and dice.
Eggplants ready for the oven
Chopped and diced ingredients for the filling
Sometimes I’m in the mood to spend the time and sometimes not. This is a really versatile recipe and you can use whatever vegetables you like in the meat mixture. I used what I had on hand and this is what I came up with.
Filling ingredients ready to be mixed together
The eggplant “guts” scraped from the skins and added to the veggies
The empty shells ready to be stuffed
I had quite a bit of the stuffing mixture left after filling my eggplant skins and I WAS planning on using it the next morning in a frittata. Mr. Swiss Paleo, however, had other plans and ate it up as “dessert”.
Hot out of the oven
Add a little bit of grated Parmesan if you do dairy
Ingredients
- 2 eggplants
- 2 carrots (120 grams/4 oz), diced
- 1 red bell pepper (135 grams/5 oz), diced
- Button mushrooms 50 grams/5 ounces, chopped
- 1 tomato (120 grams/4 oz), diced
- 1 onion (120 grams/4 oz), diced
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed with garlic press
- 2 Tablespoons fresh basil
- Pine nuts 15 grams/half an ounce
- 300 grams/10 oz ground beef (raw weight)
- 1 Tablespoon oil of choice, plus more for brushing the eggplant. I used coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400 F (200 C).
- Slice your eggplants in half lengthwise and brush all over with oil. Place cut side down on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes.
- While the eggplant is baking, heat your 1 Tablespoon of oil in a large pan and add the onion and cook until translucent over medium to medium/high heat.
- Then add in the garlic and carrots and cook for a minute or two. Then add the red pepper and cook for a few minutes.
- Now add the mushrooms and cook for a minute before adding the tomato. Continue to cook for a few minutes to let the flavors combine and until the vegetables soften.
- Remove to a bowl and stir in the fresh chopped basil and set aside.
- At this point, your eggplants are probably done and you can remove them from the oven to cool a bit while you start on the ground beef.
- Now put the ground beef into the same pan that you used for the vegetables and brown. Add the salt, pepper and dried oregano to it at the end of browning it.
- Add the cooked ground beef to the cooked vegetables and scoop the flesh out of the eggplants and add that in as well. Stir everything up and mix well.
- Spoon the mixture into the scooped out eggplant skins and sprinkle with pine nuts.
- Return to the oven for 5-10 minutes on broil to brown the pine nuts.
- If you tolerate dairy, you could grate some fresh Parmesan over the top after removing from the oven.
Notes
You will have left over stuffing that can be used the next day in an omelette or frittata. I think that would be tasty but I'll never know because Mr. Swiss Paleo ate the extra stuffing 🙂
Featured On
Follow Us!
