Do you peel eggplant?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
It depends on what I'm making. With eggplant from the garden, I pick them young and don't generally peel them. With ones I get from the store, I generally will peel them because they are usually more mature than the ones I pick from the garden.
 
I always peel. Can't digest the peels. And I always salt. It prevents the excess juices from releasing into the oil and thus foaming keeping the oil a little purer. And it also helps to remove the bitterness. :)
 
I'm easy with both aubergines and courgettes; but that may be because I find different languages fascinating and have at least one French cookbook (and a parent whose first language is French, but I doubt Daddy has any idea what an aubergine, courgette, eggplant or zuchini is ... and I don't know what it says about me that I can spell courgette just fine, but always mess up the "English" (I guess it's really Italian) spelling.
 
I don't peel it, I don't peel most vegetables, I'm all for more texture, more fiber, more colors.
 
As you age, and your innards age right along with you, you will find that the skins on veggies are no longer your friends. If I tried to eat fresh veggies like I did as a child, I would spend the rest of my life in the hospital. I have fond memories of running into the kitchen garden and eating veggies freshly picked. For root veggies, (carrots, beets etc.) we would wash them off with the garden hose and eat them right on the spot. Unfortunately, this is no longer feasible for the elderly, such as myself.

If I am going to use the raw veggies for someone else, I peel them into stripes. It looks prettier. I also run a fork down around the veggie. For myself, I avoid those veggies. I avoid anything that has the skin on it, cooked or raw. :chef:
 
Addie, I don't doubt you one bit.
I wonder what the average onset age of not being able to digest fiber to the point of serious discomfort is?
I've seen people able to eat hot peppers anyway, any amount, to those same people not being able to eat them at all. People that could eat salads day in and day out, to not being able to tolerate lettuce at all. People, like myself, who could eat a big bowl of homemade baked beans, to where I almost exploded and now can only tolerate a 1/4 cup at best. People that had no intolerance's to anything, to gluten intolerance, milk products intolerance, and diverticulitis that they did not have in their youth to middle age.
 
blissful, it kills me that I can't have a nice bowl of sald without paying for it later. I grew up on raw veggies. And so did my kids. I always kept a tall glass full of salted water with carrots and celery sticks in the fridge for a snack. Maybe about once or twice a year I say to hell with the diet and will eat a salad. One with even the kitchen sink in it. I love cole slaw. If I get KFC, I will eat that small cup of slaw that they give you with a meal. Sometimes I get through that without too much discomfort.

But as I get older, I keep meeting folks my age who no longer can handle roughage. I truly wonder if roughage is all it is cracked up to be. Has eating so much of it as a child done damage to my innards? Sure it gives us the nutrients in the purest form. But at what cost? There are some veggies that we simply do not digest. No matter how healthy our innards may be. The skin on corn and peas comes to mind instantly. They exit our systems completely undigested. Even for healthy folks who say they eat everything. I truly believe that man was meant to be primarily a meat eater. We had a plum and cherry tree growing in our yard when I lived in Tacoma. My son would climg up them and sit there eating them to his heart's content. None of the skins would digest in his system. But feed him a couple of burgers, and his system worked just fine. Even when the skin is cooked with the whole fruit or vegie, our system cannot handle the skin when left on. Give me a nice big steak cooked to medium rare. :yum:
 
Pfft. It's true. When I was little we kids got to help plant the garden. Always spilled seeds too thickly and had to "thin" the carrot and beet rows. It was good to just rub off the dirt and chomp away on the babies as you worked. Had to do this a couple times during the early growing season. We also inter-planted radishes, which were harvested long before the carrots were ready, but you usually got a bonus carrots too, and we didn't bring them up from the garden that's for sure. While it was probably ok to run them thru the garden hose, I don't think we stopped long enough to do that. Also used to eat young peas, pods and all. Parents problably thought the rabbits got those. Not so.

Now, I too mostly peel veggies I didnt' use to do, like cucumbers.

Eggplants, I peel becasue that's how I learned to eat/ cook them. Except for caponata which I should make more often.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom