Chinese Eggplant Recipe: Red-Braised Eggplants - Yang's Nourishing Kitchen (2024)

Red-braised eggplants is ultra-delicious in a rich chili and garlic sauce. Made under 30 minutes, this dish is perfect for weeknight dinners. This Chinese eggplant recipe was originally written for my cookbook, Vegan Chinese Cookbook.

This is a classic dish enjoyed across China in both homes and restaurants. The tender eggplants are cooked to perfection and glazed in a spicy, sweet, and savoury sauce. This sauce also gives the dish a dark reddish-brown colour, a cooking technique famously known as red-braising or red-cooking. This dish is known in Chinese as hong shao qie zi (红烧茄子), while hong shaotranslates to “red-braised” and qie zi means “eggplant”.

Chinese Eggplant Recipe Prep Tips

In order to make this red-braised Chinese eggplant recipe properly, there are a few important prep techniques to note. The following images illustrate the key steps.

1. This is an illustration of roll-cutting. From page 6 of Vegan Chinese Cookbook: “In this technique, the ingredient is first cut at an oblique angle, somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees. Then, using your other hand, you roll the ingredient over 90 to 180 degrees and make another diagonal cut. This diagonal cutting and rolling will result in a piece whose two sides have different angles (not parallel to one another). You then continue this process for the length of the ingredient.”
2. Salting the eggplants does a few things: It draws out moisture from the eggplants;it gives the eggplants some salty flavour; andit makes cooking through the eggplants easier and reduces the amount of oil needed.
3. I highly recommend preparing the sauce mix and thickener before cooking the eggplants. Chinese wok cooking is usually fast-paced, and requires frequent stirring of the ingredients. Therefore, prepping ahead of time is necessary for ensuring a manageable workflow. For this dish, we need to make one sauce for braising and one thickener. The sauce for braising consists of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, shaoxing wine and water. The thickener consists of cornstarch and water.
4. After salting the eggplants for 10 minutes, squeeze as much moisture out of the eggplants as possible. Discard the liquid.

How to Cook Chinese Eggplants

This particular Chinese eggplant dish uses a cooking technique called red-braising or red-cooking. It features a dark reddish-brown sauce (see prep step 3 above) coating the ingredients. The eggplants are braised in this sauce mix. The following images illustrate the cooking process.

1. Heat the oil over high heat until the oil begins to smoke.
2. Add the eggplant and stir for 1 minute.
3. Then add the garlic and chili and stir for 1 minute.
4. Add the sauce and continue stirring for another 2 minutes. Add the cornstarch mixture and stir for 1 minute to thicken the sauce.

Adapting The Recipe for Gluten-Free

Most gluten-free soy sauces and tamari (typically gluten-free, but you should double-check the label) are similar to Chinese light soy sauce in flavour. Although not impossible, it will be harder to find a gluten-free dark soy sauce. If you don’t have a gluten-free dark soy sauce, to make this dish gluten-free, simply replace both light soy sauce and dark soy sauce with gluten-free soy sauce or tamari.

Vegan Chinese Eggplant Recipe

This classic Chinese eggplant dish is naturally vegan. You can find the recipe in chapter 4, “Soups, Stews, and Braises”, of my Vegan Chinese Cookbook. Red-braised eggplants is so flavourful and makes a substantial main dish for anyone who wants to eat more vegetables or is on a plant-based diet.

More Plant-BasedFavouritesfromVegan Chinese Cookbook:

• Chinese Scallion Pancakes (葱油饼)
• Eight Treasure Congee (八宝粥)
• Mung Bean Cakes (Gluten-Free, Vegan, 3 Ingredients)
• Vegan Mapo Tofu
• Vegan Fried Rice with Cumin and Potato
• Smacked Cucumber Salad

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