Black Bean Sauce Eggplants

This is a homely Chinese dish of eggplants cooked in a spicy black bean sauce (黑豆漿茄子). The otherwise bland-tasting eggplants (aka brinjal or aubergine) come to life by soaking up the savoury black bean sauce like a sponge. This dish is so savoury, so good with steamed rice.

See Also:

• Tutorial: How to retain the purple hue of eggplants after cooking
• Recipe: Chilli Bean Paste Eggplants
• Easy Eggplant Recipes

In this recipe, I’m using LKK spicy black bean sauce (pictured above). You can use any favourite brand, do try to get those without added preservatives or coloring. Although I do make black bean sauce from scratch, the bottled ones are delicious and a great time-saver.

Retain the lovely purple hue of eggplants in this stir-fry:

If you were to add eggplants directly to a wok to stir-fry, they will turn an unflattering brown after cooking. While it doesn’t affect the taste of the dish, the presentation is somewhat lackluster. To overcome this common problem, check out this tutorial for pre-cooking the eggplants using either the microwave, boiling or steaming method to ‘lock-in’ the purple hue. For this recipe, I used the steaming method (pictured above) to do the job.

The steamed eggplants are added to the bubbly black bean sauce where they will retain most of its purple hue after cooking.

Enjoy!~

Print

Black Bean Sauce Eggplants Recipe

Use one of the three easy methods (boil, microwave or steam) in this tutorial to pre-cook the eggplants so that they retain their lovely purple hue after cooking.

Serves: 2-3

Prep Time: 10 mins

Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients:

• 200 grams eggplants cut to 5 cm sections, then cut to smaller “logs” & arranged one layer on steaming plate
• 1 tbsp oil
• 3 garlic cloves minced
• 1 red finger length chilli de-seeded & diced
• 1-2 chilli padi (optional; for the heat) partially de-seeded

(A) Sauce

• 1 level tbsp black bean sauce
• 1 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Chinese wine (Hua Tiao/Shao Hsing)
• 2 tbsp water

Directions:

1. Pre-cook the eggplants using either the microwave, boiling or steaming method. View this tutorial for more details. Set aside.
2. Cook the dish. Heat oil in wok. Add garlic and chilli; stir fry briefly until aromatic. Add sauce ingredients (A) and cooked eggplants. Stir-fry briefly to coat the eggplants thoroughly in the sauce and cover with lid. Simmer down for 1 minute or until sauce is reduced and slightly thickened. Serve with steamed rice.

Ingredients Used: black bean sauce • chilli • chilli padi • Chinese wine • eggplant • garlic • soy sauce (light)