A Healthy Eggplant Parmesan

A Healthy Eggplant Parmesan Starts with Your Oven

A classic eggplant parmesan might just be a last meal meal for me, to be honest. I absolute love the stuff and used to make a pretty killer version of it a few times a year, always to great cheer from my family. Gooey cheese. Saucy saucy tomatoes. Hella garlic. Tender eggplant. Salty parmesan all layered up into a stratified behemoth of a casserole that is better than most things. But alas, it takes a long time to make said behemoth and it also involves a ton of greasy frying oil, which makes for a pretty caloric, heavy eating experience. In this Healthy Eggplant Parmesan, we’re going to both lighten things up AND reduce the cook time of a typical eggplant parmesan. So, a true win-win if there ever was one, me thinks.

Since this is, in fact, a roasted eggplant parmesan and not a fried one, we’ll be putting fine use to our our ovens here. Don’t get me wrong, I love the end results of pan-frying the batches of individually breaded eggplant slices, draining them, and then layering them all up in the dish. It’s nothing but delicious, sure. But it’s also very time consuming. It’s frankly a more labor intensive commitment than I’d ever feel good about signing up for on a weeknight. But this Healthy Eggplant Parmesan is a different story entirely.

Kitchen Little Essentials

For this recipe, you’ll need:

A trusty baking dish

A nice quality marinara sauce

Sheet pans

A Pastry Brush

A food processor

The Skinny on This Roasted Eggplant Parmesan

To create this much simpler, much lighter version of eggplant parmigiana, we’ll begin by slicing our eggplant and layering those slices on baking sheets. A generous slick of oil goes on both sides of each eggplant slice to ensure that they get tender and wonderfully flavorful as they roast away in the oven. Sprinkle on a little dried oregano or Italian seasoning if you happen to have something like that living in your spice drawers, a little S & P, and send the pans into the oven so the eggplant can do its thing.

Meanwhile, we’ll make a simple (yet utterly delicious) breadcrumb topping to help mimic that fried breadcrumb coating of a traditional eggplant parmesan. If I’m being totally honest, the bread pictured in these photos is Rye, which is weird and not at all what I’d probably recommend, but I needed to use some up. But, it was really really good and just proves that you can use about any bread you like.

So. Throw your bread of choice into a food processor and whirl it up to create crumbs. Add some garlic and basil then a drizzle of oil and mix a little more. This mixture will toast up real nice in the oven, creating a truly delicious topping for this roasted eggplant parmesan that just might be my favorite part.

Here is a ready made pin for you! Simply save it to your “Healthy Meals” or “Vegetarian Recipes” boards and you’ll be all set when the craving strikes.

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