Baba Ganoush Recipe (Roasted Eggplant / Aubergine Dip)

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This Baba Ganoush Recipe (a Roasted Eggplant/Aubergine Dip) is easy, healthy and a perfect way to enjoy the awesome health benefits of eggplant, olive oil and garlic in one dip!

This is a powerhouse recipe of all sorts of foods that are amazingly good for you – but don’t let that dissuade you:  try to ignore that and make it anyways 😉 Just go have some flourless chocolate cake when you’re done feeling all healthy and balance all this healthy out.

What is Baba Ganoush?

Baba Ganoush, which can also be spelled as baba ghanoush or baba ghanouj, is a Lebanese dish made of mashed fire roasted eggplant that is mixed with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice and various other seasonings.

It is more commonly referred to as a Middle Eastern dip, but to narrow that down and be a little more precise, it’s actually a Lebanese dish.  It’s primarily served as a cold dip or spread, usually with pitas, and is also amazing as a vegetable dip.

Baba Ganoush is fantastic for all sorts of diets and lifestyles and fits into:

• Low Carb Diets
• Keto Diets ( high fat, low carb)
• Vegetarian Diets
• Vegan Diets
• Paleo Diets
• Regular old diets where you want to eat healthy then eat chocolate cake right after

Fire Roasted Eggplant is Traditional

I *could* fire roast the eggplants over my gas stove elements, don’t get me wrong, but I try to make all the recipes on this website approachable for everyone and not everyone has a gas stove. I don’t want people giving up on making Baba Ganoush simply because they think you must have fire roasted eggplant.

We roasted our eggplant in the oven – read my  How to Roast and Cook Eggplant post for more information on that – and while it may not have the deep smokiness of a restaurant Bana Ganoush where they use the traditionally roasted eggplant,  that can be remedied with a hearty sprinkle of smoked paprika mixed into the dip.

Broil The Eggplant in the Oven at the End

If you really want to get that smoky flavor you can broil the eggplant at the end of the cooking time until it gets crispy on the outside skin and really brown on the top. You can flip it to accomplish this!

Can I Eat Eggplant Seeds?

Totally! A lot of people will tell you to remove the seeds, but if you read that post on how to cook eggplant you’ll see that I would have removed half of my eggplant in the process. If the seeds are small, leave them in and cook them up, they are harmless and I didn’t have any bitterness from them at all. My eggplant was incredibly mild. The choice is up to you.

Variations

Baba Ganoush is very easy to customize to your tastes. I like a LOT of garlic in mine (that’s the Ukrainian in me) and lemon tang. Baba Ganoush is a fairly plain dip, the eggplant is not a strong taste, the tahini tastes like sesame (it’s sesame seed paste) and you are going to get your flavor from what you add.

Baba Ganoush ingredients can include:

• roasted garlic
• raw garlic
• cumin
• smoked paprika
• lemon
• cayenne pepper
• black Kalamata olives as a topping

Karlynn’s Tips & Tricks for Making Baba Ganoush

1. When you roast the eggplant, make sure you brown it well for flavor! The more you can get it roasted, the more flavor.
2. When the eggplant is done, scoop it out and see how much moisture is left. I roast my eggplant cut into two to allow the oven roasting to help get rid of the excess moisture that can make your Baba Ganoush too liquidy. If it’s still liquidy, try to blot it out ( before you mash it!) with a paper towel.
3. Customize my base recipe to your own liking. Like I said, I love more and more garlic – garlic paste is also one of my tricks to making this a great dip, it’s easy to use and powerfully flavored. You can find garlic paste in a tube in the refrigerator section of your grocery store, usually near the salad dressings.
4. Try the topping suggestions in the recipe below, they all match flavor-wise.

This Baba Ganoush dip was so easy to make that my 14 year old son made it – he also cut and roasted the eggplant in my how-to post!

Happy cooking!

Love,

Karlynn