Ratatouille, filled or with parmesan, eggplant can be used for a variety of dishes. Eating it raw is only an option for very few, as the fruit vegetables are nightshade plants, which are known for the toxin solanine. For this reason, many gardeners wonder whether it is possible to consume the raw fruit or whether it should be avoided.
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Eggplant edible raw?
Don’t worry, the popular fruit vegetables are edible even when raw and pose no threat to you. However, this is only the case if you decide to use ripe eggplants, as these have a different composition of ingredients. Ripe fruits contain no or only extremely small amounts of solanine, which makes it easy to consume. For this reason, you should know how to distinguish ripe from unripe eggplants.
Ripe eggplants can be recognized by the following features:
- Skin: shiny, smooth
- The shell can be pressed in with little force
- Pulp: white color, soft, not mushy
Unripe eggplants, on the other hand, differ mainly in color and firmness:
- The pulp and skin are green in color
- harder pulp
With some types of eggplant, you can also recognize unripe fruits by their size. There are, for example, varieties that develop quite heavy eggplants between 500 and 1,000 grams and are definitely not yet ripe at 250 grams. However, you should always rely on the above points to determine the ripeness of the eggplant as weight is not a sufficient indicator. Pay particular attention to individual green spots on the egg plants, because sometimes some parts take longer to mature than others, even inside. Therefore, you need to check the entire fruit before eating it raw.
Eating raw eggplants: recommendable?
Now you know that you can only eat ripe, raw eggplants and that they will not harm your health. This is the case with all varieties, regardless of whether they are old or modern varieties. However, there are a few reasons why you might want to refrain from consuming it:
- Bitter substances
- Hardness of the fruit
Ripe aubergines only contain harmless amounts of solanine, but the number of bitter substances in the peel and pulp of the plant does not decrease. This means that you have to prepare yourself for an unpleasant bitter aroma when consuming it, which serves as an additional protection for the plant from eating. The amount of bitter substances differs depending on the variety, which makes some more pleasant to eat than others. If you eat the fruit vegetables raw, you also have to pay attention to the rather hard skin. If the eggplant is not boiled or otherwise prepared, the peel is harder to chew and is especially problematic for children.
Lower bitter substances
If you want to include raw eggplants in your diet, for example if you are a raw food enthusiast, you can significantly reduce the intensely bitter taste. There is a method to extract most of the bitter substances from the fruit vegetables: pickling. In many cultures, Solanum melongena is placed in salt water in order to minimize the bitter substances and at the same time to worsen the oil absorption of the fruit vegetables. This means that the eggplants are not as greasy after preparation. You can use this method to make the eggplants more palatable:
- Mix 25 g of salt and 1 liter of water
- Wash and dry eggplants
- remove the stem of the fruit
- cut in half
- put in the brine
- Let it steep for 30 to 60 minutes
- wash off thoroughly
The brine can draw a large amount of bitter substances from the vegetables within this short time. Alternatively, you can cut the eggplant in half, rub the peel and inside with salt and wash off after 30 minutes. The salt also makes the aubergines easier to eat without getting too mushy. For this reason, eating raw after this form of preparation is highly recommended.
Conclusion
You don’t have to worry if you have eaten or want a raw eggplant of any kind. Since the solanine is only found in the unripe fruits, you should be careful to consume ripe ones. But be prepared for an inedible experience due to the high amount of bitter substances it contains.
