I love brinjal! Baked, curried, fried, in dips, lasagne’s and salads It’s a vegetable that is versatile to prepare and low in calories. Below the health benefits, in the Recipie for baked brinjal chips, see the pictures to the process involved. I hope you enjoy making and eating it as much as I do
The nutritious eggplant, also called brinjal or aubergine, hails from the nightshade family of fruits and vegetables that includes potatoes, peppers and tomatoes. Botanically, the brinjal is a fruit, not a vegetable and the brinjal plant grows just like tomatoes as vines. For its utility in the kitchen or rather, for cooking purposes, it is considered a vegetable. Just as other colourful veggies, this vegetable too has a host of health benefits. Even though not many people are fond of this vegetable, it is a wondrous vegetable with a horde of benefits. So do ensure to make it a part of your weekly diet.
Health Benefits of Brinjal/Eggplant:
- Helps keeping diabetes in control
- Helpful to the heart by lowering cholesterol levels and stabalising blood pressure
- Helpful to the brain by preserving memory function
- Facilitates weight loss as its high in water content and low in calorie count
- Helps in digestion as its high in fibre and prevents constipation
- Healthy skin and hair due to the high water content, hydrating skins & hair
- Keeps chronic diseases at bay by reducing the risks of cardiovascular diseases & strokes
- Helps quit smoking due to it’s small nicotine content that assists those giving up
- Anti bacterial properties of vitamin C content which make it an effective anti-viral and anti- bacterial source
For the purposes of this BAKED BRINJAL recipe, I used 2 brinjals, exactly like this:
- Wash, top and tail the brinjals
- Cut lengthwise with a large sharp knife
- then cut into desired width
- Lay out on a baking tray – see picture below
Sprinkle the olive oil and salt over (at this stage you may add the optional extras) and mix all well like this
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees celcius for about 20 minutes if crispiness is desired, then turn up the heat to about 220 degrees celcius in the last 5 minutes of cooking time. Depending on the type of oven, cooking time may be reduced so watch carefully. While in the oven almost cooked, the brinjal chips should look like this
Your end result – Baked Brinjal Chips should look like this
Note I deliberately left some un-crisped, to demonstrate the fleshy soft succulent pulpy inner