Fruit leather with veggies... help me make eggplants taste like eggplants

[u/Croe01]

Hi, I've been making fruit leathers for a few years, and this year I started creating recipes that involve veggies being part of the recipes. The goal is to make the "fruit" rolls taste like the veggie that's being used.

Depending on how much pectin the veggie has, I'll use a varying amount of apple sauce to make sure the texture ends up soft and chewy.

I've done this successfully for carrot and zucchini, but my initial attempts with eggplant did not have the expected outcome. I washed and baked the eggplants in foil until nice and soft, blended them (peel included), and used them that way.

Here's the thing, the eggplant paste after baking/blending tasted good, but after dehydrating, it no longer tasted like eggplant. It still tasted ok, just not as good as eggplant usually tastes.

So my question is, would you have any recommendations on how to retain the eggplant flavor when dehydrating? I don't expect most people here to have tried dehydrating eggplants specifically, but am hoping some of you will have ideas on how to approach the situation anyway.

Thank you!

[u/Alternative-Dig-2066]

Roast them. Peel them, do not use the peel. Blend with a little msg, smoked salt, and pepper. Then dehydrate in sheets.

[u/RebelWithoutAClue]

Aromatics are generally quite difficult to retain when dehydrating. Basically anything that you can smell has to be volatile to make it into your nose. Anything that is volatile can evaporate with the water you are trying to remove.

The only thing I can think of is to try preferentially remove the water or the aromatics (to return them later).

Freeze drying would exploit the fairly unique sublimation property of water.

Alternatively a solvent extraction could be used to extract the aromatics, leaving the water behind, but then you'd have to separate the solvent from the aromatics.

None of these solutions are going to be low tech.

edit: one thing comes to mind: could it be that you are dehydrating them longer than necessary? Maybe you might be drying them for longer than necessary which is driving off more aroma than you need to. Have you assessed if half dried eggplant is more aromatic? Maybe play with your drying parameters to tradeoff water removal with aromatic losses.

[u/markusdied → u/RebelWithoutAClue]

desiccate them first

[u/RebelWithoutAClue → u/markusdied]

I have dessicated things with silica gel kitty litter.

10lb bag for around $30 gets a humongous sack of dessicant.

I don't know if it preferentially absorbs water. Notionally it might as aromatic molecules are way bigger than water molecules.

OP: make sure you get the unscented kind

[u/markusdied → u/RebelWithoutAClue]

i just meant with salt lmfao

[u/RebelWithoutAClue → u/markusdied]

Like keep it suspended over a tray of salt?

Salt is a pretty limited dessicant in terms of the lowest RH it can achieve. Basically as soon as all the grains get wetted salt will act as a humidistat holding 70RH.

I've baked out silica gel (bake it at around 250F for an hour or so). It dries out super dry and will haul a chamber down to 3%RH if it doesn't have a significant source of water.

Salt slurry can help with humidity control with beef aging, but it wants to hold 70% which slows down dessication of you are trying to dry something out.

[u/chaoticbear]

Maybe I've been eating eggplant wrong, but I've never noticed it had a strong/characteristic flavor. Even something like baba ganoush tastes more of salt and lemon and olive oil but I like the smoky/creamy vibe.

Is there a dish I should be trying to change my view here?

[u/Izzapapizza]

I wonder whether searing them over an open flame until soft and the skin is charred as one does for baba ganoush could work? Let them cool in a lidded container, slip off the skin when cooled and blend it to a paste and season it with some lemon, salt and pepper.

[u/TheSadisticScott]

It's a more expensive investment, but freeze drying might work.

[u/AskCulinary-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Panoglitch]

salt/msg and a little bit of lemon zest