Skip The Messy Dredging With A Simple Eggplant Parm Hack

Just about every recipe for eggplant parmesan — a dish consisting of breadcrumb-coated eggplant slices that are layered with cheese and marinara sauce — includes a step of dredging the eggplant in some kind of egg mixture before dipping it in the breadcrumbs. The coated pieces are typically fried on the stove before the dish can be assembled and finished in the oven. Any time a recipe calls for dredging, it's a messy affair, to say the least. And, as it turns out, dredging the eggplant is actually an eggplant parmesan mistake — in reality, you don't actually have to dredge the veggie slices to get the same outcome.

Instead, all you have to do is roast the eggplant slices in the oven to get them nice and tender with a slight crisp on the exterior. Meanwhile, toast the breadcrumbs in a frying pan — either on their own or combined with spices and parmesan cheese. Then, when assembling the entire dish, you'll pour the toasted breadcrumbs over the roasted eggplant. The result is extremely similar to the outcome of the dredging method because both the eggplant and breadcrumbs are cooked to perfection, even though they were cooked separately.

There's really no losing with this hack — it's hassle-free, simple, and results in a super-tasty, breadcrumb-topped eggplant. It's so tasty, in fact, that you may just want to incorporate it into other dishes that include eggplant, even if they don't typically call for breadcrumbs.

For example, eggplant is a great ingredient to include in veggie lasagna, which has plenty of similarities to eggplant parm. Next time you make veggie lasagna, you can toast breadcrumbs on the stove, then layer them over the eggplant and other vegetables in the lasagna to take the dish to the next level. Or, add toasted breadcrumbs to eggplant gratin, which is essentially a cheesier version of eggplant parm, to infuse the toasty goodness of the breadcrumbs into another eggplant-centric dish. Another great dish featuring eggplant that could use an upgrade is homemade ratatouille — add those toasted breadcrumbs to make this dish a bit more unique.