- One thing you'll notice about Lebanese dishes,
we have a lot of stuffed recipes like stuffed grape leaves,
stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers.
I'm pretty much an expert stuffer by now,
and today I'm sharing my latest stuffed eggplant.
First, I'm Yumna, AKA FeelGoodFoodie.
I share wholesome nutritious meals
that make your body feel good.
This stuffed eggplant dish is made with short grain rice
and spiced beef, and then cooked in a garlicky tomato broth.
The flavor is rich and unique,
but the ingredients are simple and approachable.
You'll just need to get your hands
on some nice, small eggplants.
Let's get started.
You'll need some baby eggplant, the smaller, the better,
some ground beef, onions, short grain rice,
tomatoes and garlic and tomato paste for the sauce,
along with Seven Spice, salt, pepper, and olive oil
just to cook everything together.
We're gonna start by cooking the mixture.
A lotta people don't cook the ground beef
because it's getting stuffed and then cooked after,
but I like to cook it with some onions
just to get a little bit more flavor
and just not be dealing with raw meat.
So we'll add some onions, the ground beef,
and then we'll add some salt, pepper, and Seven Spice.
And now we'll go ahead and add the short grain rice
on top of the cooked beef.
And we'll need to add another teaspoon of salt
just to flavor the rice.
Give that all a good mix, and the stuffing is ready.
Now we'll transfer the stuffing to another bowl
and we'll use this big pot
to cook the garlicky tomato broth,
because that way, the beef that was cooked in here
is really gonna flavor that tomato broth.
We're gonna make the tomato broth now.
So we're gonna start with
just a little bit of chopped tomatoes, woo,
a whole bunch of tomato paste.
Then we'll add some crushed garlic,
one teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of black pepper.
Now we just wanna stir it together
until it's nice and fragrant,
and now you can add chicken broth to it or beef broth
or just water.
So I'm gonna add about six cups of water,
and you're just gonna stir it together
until the tomato paste dissolves,
and then let it simmer for 20 minutes or so
while you're stuffing the eggplant.
To stuff the eggplant,
we wanna first take off the stock from the top.
And then I have here an apple corer.
So I'll use this
to basically push into the eggplant like this, twist
and then remove like that.
Now what's gonna happen is
you can remove as much or as little as you want,
but if you just do this,
there's still a lot of eggplant flesh on the inside.
To really clean it out, I like to use this vegetable corer.
So just basically use it around the walls of the eggplant,
and this is what'll come out.
And be sure to save that flesh
that comes out of the eggplant
because it's super delicious in stir-fries and stews,
and even in omelets.
So next what we'll do is,
we'll take some of the rice mixture
and using a little spoon or even using your hands,
just stuff the rice mixture inside the eggplant.
And don't stuff it all the way
because that rice is going to expand when it's cooked.
So you wanna make sure to leave a little bit of room
inside the eggplant.
Once I'm done stuffing,
I like to use a small tomato wedge like that,
and then just put it inside
to create a cork for the eggplant.
So this is not necessary,
especially if the beef that you're using is not cooked,
it's all gonna stay in there anyways,
but I like to do this just to make sure
that nothing pops out when I'm cooking it.
So we're gonna go ahead and repeat this for 12 eggplants
and then put them in the tomato broth,
and let everything cook together.
All right.
I went ahead and I stuffed the rest of the eggplant
and I also put some tomatoes inside,
so we've got 12 stuffed eggplant,
and now we've got also this tomato broth
that's been simmering for the last 20, 30 minutes.
So we're gonna go ahead and drop all the eggplant in here.
And then, because we're not using a pressure cooker,
I just use a handy plate and I push it down
so that everything kinda stays together,
and you don't have eggplant flying all over the place
while it's cooking.
So we're gonna cover the pot
and cook it on low heat for 45 minutes,
and then the rice should be nice and cooked
and the eggplant will be nice and tender.
All right, now we'll remove the plate
and scoop up some eggplant.
Let's see how they look.
So you could see that the eggplant
has kind of shriveled up a little bit.
It's gotten more wrinkly.
And then on the inside,
the rice is nice and cooked and fluffy.
So now we're ready to serve them.
And this tomato broth is gold,
so don't forget to drizzle some on top.
We're gonna cut into it now
and see what the inside looks like.
So you can see the rice is nice and fluffy,
very well cooked, and it looks so tender on the inside,
just perfect.
So now I like to add just a little bit of parsley on top
since it's been cooking for a long time.
And there you have it,
stuffed eggplant dish that's super delicious,
very flavorful, and just a nice hardy, cozy meal
that the whole family absolutely loves.
So if you're used to stuffing peppers or stuffing cabbage,
try stuffing eggplant.
It's a fun way to eat eggplant
and just gives you a nice variety for dinner time.
Thank you for watching.
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See you guys next time.