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The other day I made eggplant fries but saved 3, 1/2" thick slabs from the fat end of the fruit for this. I made my mistakes today and the following recipe is the corrected version. What did I do wrong? What did I change for the posted recipe? I cooked the entire dish in the toaster/broiler, the eggplant being in a raw state. It'll be more foolproof if the slabs are cooked first and the T/B just used for the final warming and melting of the cheese. The picture is from the extended baking time required to cook the eggplant.

I also used the 3 slabs of eggplant and for me that was one slab too much. The recipe reflects the new amount. Could you use more? Maybe make enough for an entire family? Of course! In that case I would use it as a side dish since it has very little meat. But that could be easily corrected and it would give even more flavor to the dish.

While it's keto folks not on keto will still find it tasty. It's also much easier to make than the traditional version that gets flipped in egg wash, breaded, fried, and then assembled.





Keto Eggplant Parm, single serving

A Brian original recipe. But OK, just how original can eggplant parm’ be? Heck, I didn’t even use hard aged cheese the first time and it was still tasty.

This goes together incredibly fast and the result is very good.

Ingredients:
2, ½" thick round slabs from a medium size eggplant, peeled or not, the skin is edible
Slices of domestic provolone, mozzarella could be substituted
EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
Sauce (I use pizza sauce because it comes in small jars and I think it has more flavor than marinara sauce. Whatever you use just check the carbs. Some sauce has sugar added and you don't want that.)
Thin sliced pepperoni
Parmesan or romano cheese (used sparingly)

Equipment needed:
oven safe single serving dish

Directions:

Precook the eggplant and allow to cool. Sauteed in EVOO works fine, or in the same toaster broiler you’ll use for the dish; bake, broil, or air fry it. Mist or brush with EVOO first though.

Preheat your toaster broiler. If baking set it to 350°. If baking with convection 325°.

Take your single serving baking dish and put a small amount of EVOO and sauce in the bottom. Layer in some pepperoni. Put a slab of eggplant on top of that. Put a few tablespoons of sauce on and a slice of cheese, some aged cheese if you want that. Layer some pepperoni on that and another slice of eggplant. More sauce, cheese, aged cheese, pepperoni, and finish with a last slice of cheese. More sauce and make sure it covers the last slice of cheese. If desired push more slices of pepperoni between the dish and the slabs of eggplant.

Bake on a baking tray to prevent a mess if the dish should boil over. Bake long enough to heat through and melt the cheese, 20-30 minutes. But be aware that cooking temp’ and time might be different in your T/B. Toward the end of baking if you'd like to add another layer of cheese, shredded or grated, on top of the dish and brown it to please the eye that would work fine.

Notes: If you’re on a salt restricted diet the pepperoni and aged cheese has enough salt for the dish. If you aren’t you might want to add a bit of salt to the eggplant in the precooking step.

What do I serve it with? A glass of red wine is good. It’s a pleasant little meal for a light eater. Big eaters would find that it makes a veggie side for something else. Maybe pasta.

The eggplant itself is about 6g of carbs (100g) and check your sauce to figure out what it has for carbs. When I made this the entire dish was well under 20 grams of carbs and low sodium too.

ShadowsDad So now that I have a collection of flank and skirt steaks, I might just hoard them for myself along with the tbones and ribeyes. If I can fix it right.

So after soaking in the sous vide bath for the appropriate time and temp, how can I finish them? Keep in mind I just have standard seasonings with grills and a griddle at my disposal. I dont have a torch.

I think a quick browning on the gas grill would be fine.

I'm also thinking these would be great for a Carne Asada plate of seasoned meat.

Very good, cooking brisket tonight.

You want to develop the flavor more. And it's not difficult to do. What you don't want to do is use it out of the bag without doing that. Trust me on this. Use it out of the bag and you'll cuss me out. Put just a bit more time into it and you'll wonder why you even have a gas grill.

Unless you have an IR gas grill ditch the grilling idea; cooking will take place before you get significant Maillard reaction IMO. Said another way, a regular gas grill will cook the meat before developing much flavor. If you have an IR broiler that would work, but they are few and far between. They are recognized by a flat platinum screen and they glow blue in operation. They are VERY hot! Much hotter than a standard broiler. A super hot pan or piece of 1/4" steel would give a much better tasting result than grilling. If you have a grill that can handle real wood lump charcoal (not briquets!) and you can get the meat super close to the roaring fire that will do what is needed. What's needed is lots of heat over a short time so that the meat doesn't cook but the surface browns and gets the Maillard reaction. (google it to know what needs to be done)

Make a saturated solution of 50/50 dextrose/Sodium BiCarb and brush that on the meat generously before browning (or dredge it). The sodium Bicarb drops the pH and that enhances the browning. The dextrose reacts with the proteins in the meat to make the "grilled taste" everyone loves. But really, butane torches aren't expensive, the Iwatani is what I use. Why not buy one? With it you can brown the meat and it won't affect the doneness of the finished product. If you don't have dextrose DO NOT use table sugar, it won't work. But corn syrup will. It must be a reducing sugar and both dex' and corn syrup are reducing sugars.

The bag juices? What to do with those? I've heard of people using them for soup. I just give them to the dogs on their kibble.

You can also freeze the cooked meats in the same bag it was cooked in for a very long time. To reconstitute it and lose no quality just put it into the same temp SV bath they cooked in for an hour to warm it. No cooking will take place if the bath is the same temp'. Remove it from the bag and finish it to develop the flavor. I do this frequently and it's rare for me to cook anything less than 10# of meat. More is better. My cooking vessel is a smallish camp cooler on which I modified the lid to accept the SV machine. But an open pot would also work. For warming a bag I use the pot quite a bit.

OK, now graduate class... I have been giving this a thought but haven't done it yet. Add some dry milk (whey protein isolate would also work IMO) to the sodium bicarb/dextrose bath. That puts protein in direct solution "contact" for the browning to get the most Maillard reaction and flavor. As I wrote (basically) at this time it's just a thought that I haven't acted on yet.

Good luck. Let us know what you did and how it turned out. Just don't eat the "boiled beef" straight out of the bag. My brother did that with his wife and she never wants to see another piece of SV beef.

Oh, don't forget to slice the beef across the grain.

FWIW, I rewarmed 2 year+ old frozen flank steaks just the other day and treated them exactly as I suggested to you and they are delicious and can't be distinguished from freshly cooked. I use this technique all the time. One difference, I thawed them in the refrigerator and browned them cold, sliced and put them back in the refrigerator. We take out what we need as we need it. In fact, that's what I'm having tonight, maybe in a salad. No. I have a new keto flour and I haven't had bread that tastes like bread in 1 3/4 years. I'm going to have it with some bannock to test the new flour.

OK, so as an update, I put 1 flank, 1 skirt, and a "gooseneck round" steak in the sous vide pot and let it go for 24 hrs at 131 deg. After having had dozens of cows custom butchered for my freezer, this cow went to a " new to me butcher". I never had a gooseneck round steak before. But I am here to tell you that tbone has now moved down the list to #3 or 4 as my favorite. (ribeye rate higher though)
I dried them, seasoned them, and browned them on my griddle (I was feeling lazy) for just a couple minutes each side. That gooseneck is the shiznit, I'm here to tell you. Google tells me it is cut from the back (hamstring area?) of the cow's thigh. I didn't see more than 2 so I am guessing it came off the big 1300lb heifer. I am wondering if they can only get this cut off a massive cow. From here on out I will specifically ask for this cut, even if it goes by a different name from a different butcher.

I am sad though that a cow has a limited number of flank and skirts to give up. Those are the cats meow.

ps my wife is into the keto stuff and is trying your recipes. Thank you much for them!

(thumbsup emoticon goes here) I think they should breed cattle specifically to maximize for ribeyes and skirt and flank steaks. They can add a mess of briskets per cow in that breeding as well. The better the cut the less time it needs in the bath. Something like brisket might require days to tenderize.

I'll post more keto recipes as I find good ones that pass muster. But she can as well. The keto thread isn't mine alone, it's for everyone to post in. Keto isn't easy and we support each other.

T-Bone and a Ribeye with the obligatory beer while manning the grill. The dog and me are eating good tonight

Scallops for appetizers, salmon main course.

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Scallops for appetizers, salmon main course.

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Nice, sea scallops is what the wife has when I have steak. That was momma's dinner tonight

An early dinner today, takeout Chicken Pad Thai with rice and 'Crab Delight' (pot sticker things with crab-cream cheese inside). Then later, with our DVD movie from the library, we'll skip right to the vanilla ice cream-caramel sauce-cashews treat.