One of my favorite dishes is mapo tofu, but I absolutely love making that same mapo sauce to go with eggplant for mapo eggplant. I’ll admit, mapo eggplant is not the prettiest dish out there but it is full of flavor and uses a classic mapo sauce that envelops the tender eggplant in a savory, spicy, and fragrant way. Don’t let the ingredient list scare you off… You likely have most of it in your pantry and it really takes no time at all to make. It’s the perfect one-bowl dinner. Mapo eggplant is wonderful over hot steamed rice or even atop noodles. It’s that sauce. It makes everything good!
Ingredients
Doubanjiang
Sichuan peppercorns
Sichuan peppercorns are another key element in any mapo sauce. These are a bit citrusy and incredibly aromatic, and they have a numbing effect when you bite into them. I highly recommend the Sichuan peppercorns from The Mala Market, which are some of the freshest I have found anywhere.
Aromatics
A great mapo eggplant uses fresh ginger, garlic, and green onions as the aromatics that give it plenty of fragrance and flavor. You can skip one of them if you don’t have them all, and simply increase the amount of the aromatics you do have.
Vegetarian & vegan adaptable
While this mapo eggplant recipe calls for ground meat (be it pork, beef, chicken or turkey), you can leave it out for a vegetarian or vegan meal. I did use chicken stock but you can replace that with vegetable broth or even water to make it friendly for meatless meals. If you are going in the meatless direction though, I recommend replacing the meat with 1/2 lb (225 g) chopped mushrooms to give it more dimension and a meaty texture without using any meat. Don’t like mushrooms? Then just leave them out. It will still taste amazing!
Cooking process
When you’re ready to cook, your table should have the ingredients below. Once you try the dish, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to cook it and how addictive it tastes! Grab some fresh eggplant and try mapo eggplant for dinner tonight. You’ll have it done faster than delivery would take to arrive! Want to learn more about Chinese Cooking? Sign up my newsletter to receive the 5-Day Chinese Cooking Crash Course and recipe update! If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it @omnivorescookbook on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with.
Other delicious Sichuan recipes
Chinese Pickled Peppers (Quick Pickled Pao Jiao)Sichuan Roasted Whole Chicken Chinese Bang Bang Chicken (棒棒鸡)Real-Deal Szechuan Beef Stir FrySichuan Eggplant Stir FrySichuan Dry Fried Green Beans (干煸四季豆)
Lilja Walter is a part of the Omnivore’s Cookbook team and worked closely with Maggie to develop and test this recipe.
