To Salt or Not To Salt: MYSTERY SOLVED

This past weekend I visited former co-chef Zoë, among other awesome friends, in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was a real foodxtravaganza (say that 5 times fast), albeit one that was somewhat limited eggplant-wise. Shockingly enough, I think the only eggplants of the weekend were a tiny (but delectable) puddle on this amazing plate of goodies from Oasis Falafel in Williamsburg.

Zoë, plate of noms, and miscellaneous bearded person immortalized in Aubergenius history.

Ok, I know this is a tangent, but: this plate contained tomato-ey eggplant salad, falafel, dolmas, hummus, baba ghanoush, beet salad, mojaddara, fried cauliflower, cucumber yogurt salad, tahini, hot sauce, pickles, and two pitas, all for $12.  Seriously, fly to Laguardia right now, take the train to Brooklyn, and go to this place.

Anyway. On this epic trip, I met a friend of Zoë's who happened to have the ultimate definitive answer to the "should I salt eggplant?" mystery. She mentioned offhand that it was a research project she did once, and I was super excited about the prospect of a whole subculture of eggplant researchers out there -- but it turned out she had an awesome high school science teacher who assigned this mystery as a lab project. Zomg jealous.

So, you might ask, should I salt eggplant? And the answer is, yes, but not for the reason you might think. The prevailing myth holds that salting eggplant pulls out the bitterness, thus it's especially good for old, wizened, gnarly eggplants. But it turns out this is all wrong. 

Back up. What is salting eggplant? 

If you cut eggplant in slices and sprinkle them liberally with salt, within 15 minutes you get this:

Photo credit: havedessertfirst.com

The salt draws moisture from the eggplant and they sweat like crazy. You then wipe off the moisture and salt with a towel, and the bitterness is gone, like what allegedly happens to the toxins in your body after lounging in a salt-walled Korean spa for 12 hours.

BUT apparently that's not what really happens. I noticed long ago that salt didn't seem to affect bitterness much, and I had virtually stopped doing it. Turns out it's worth the effort:

The real effect of salt is to break down the cell structure of the eggplant surface just enough to prevent the eggplant from soaking up oil like a sponge. Without the salt treatment, the eggplant will soak oil until it becomes completely saturated, as this experiment by one J. Kenji López-Alt shows:

This eggplant started out at 24 grams, then weighed in at 46 after sitting in a pool of oil; i.e. it absorbed 92% of its weight in oil, as the author points out (I'm a grad student, I cite things!).

The salt-sweating destroys enough of the surface cells that a more modest quantity of oil will yield the same delicious eggplant softness, but without the extreme greasiness. Granted, I often like saturating my eggplant because I love the taste of extra virgin olive, plus greasiness doesn't bother me when I'm not especially afraid of heart failure.

Still, it's great to know that you can reduce the amount of oil and get tasty results, rather than simply adding less oil to unsalted eggplants and ending up with nasty teabag-flavored rubber discs (as I discussed in this entry from long ago).

Hint: To make the process even more effective, grind your towel into the eggplant surface when wiping off the sweat and salt. This further destroys the cells.

Bon eggplatit!