I would make the the coated eggplants and freeze them without the sauce. Blanch eggplant frozen and then defrosted tend to be a little delicate and they are hard to coat and fry.

If you coat the eggplant, pan fry them (or however you do your recipe), let them cool, and then freeze them, they should be pretty good to put in the oven when you want to actually eat them.

Here's a link to one of the previous discussions here about this questions that should be of help. There are several other discussions the search will pull up if interested.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Freezing eggplant

Thank you for the responses. So I gathered from reading that frying takes the place of blanching? Is that true also for other veggies (like okra?)

Yeah it is the application of heat that is the point. How that heat is applied makes no difference. It is just that many vegetables one would blanch are things that would never be fried anyway.

Dave

I bread and cook my eggplant slices, cool, separate with wax paper, package for the freezer, and freeze. You can make your eggplant parmigiana with the frozen eggplant slices, or you can make the entire casserole and freeze it. I do both. For the casserole, I put the cooked pasta and sauce on the bottom of the pan, eggplant slices, sauce and cheese on top and bake. I prepare these in meal-size pans for our family, and do several at one time. After cooking and cooling, I wrap tightly for the freezer. Everything is fully cooked and only needs to be thoroughly reheated. If freezing the fried (or baked) eggplant slices by themselves, I have the versatility of using them for other dishes besides eggplant parmigiana. such as eggplant rollatini, or fried eggplant slices (need to re-fry them a bit).

Thank you. I think I will also do both as I expect (hope) to have lots of eggplants. Jill, do you just wrap in plastic? Do you think those freezer ziplocs would work well?

Thank you Jill.
When I went into the garden today I saw some peppers already starting to form. If I fry peppers in a little oil can I put them in ziplocks and they will be OK frozen?
Thank you for the lock and lock link. I love ziplocks though especially the ones with a zip on them instead of the press and seal kind.

Lucille, peppers and onions don't need to be pre-cooked or blanched for the freezer. Slice, dice or chop your fresh peppers or onions and freeze in whatever size container you wish. When ready to cook with them, just throw them into your skillet or pot or whatever recipe you're using them for. The texture will not be the same as fresh, so I'd only use the frozen ones for dishes that will be cooked, not eaten raw.

Jill

Thank you!!

Timely thread for me. I breaded, fried and froze some eggplant slices when they were in season here in sunny FL, and I received about 15 of them. I assembled and baked an eggplant parmigiana last night with the slices, some of my canned spaghetti sauce and cheese, baked it.....and it was TERRIBLE. The eggplants were so tough and rubbery, they had to be cut with a steak knife, and BITTER....ended up throwing the whole thing out. I don't know what went wrong....I taste-tested the eggplant when I was frying it, and it was tender and not bitter at all. I typically do not salt and rinse my eggplant before cooking (I know that is supposed to draw out some of the bitterness....maybe I should have?)

Any thoughts about what could have gone wrong? (sorry if this is a hijack of this thread..)

Honestly I don't know. I've made lasagna before with some of the layers having fried slices of eggplant and when they were defrosted and baked they were good.
How long did you bake your parmigiana ?
I'm really sorry you had that experience and I'm anxious to find out what happened also before I freeze a zillion eggplants.

Hi I wrote about freezing eggplant slices last year. I blanch, coat then freeze them and they turn out great. Then you just fry up the coated slices, without thawing, assemble your dish & bake it. Or you just have fried eggplant slices.

Peel eggplant, slice 1/3" thick. Sweat slices then rinse with cold water. Blanch slices for 4 mins, Using 1/4 cup of lemon juice per gallon of blanching water.

Then I put the slices between 2 towels & patted them dry. Then I covered each slice with flour, then egg, then cracker crumbs. I placed each slice on a cookie sheet with wax paper on it. I placed that in the freezer. When frozen, I wrapped them in wax paper, then placed in a gallon freezer bag.

To coat & fry them up before freezing is just frozen leftovers to me, lol. This works great and you cannot taste lemon. My whole family thought they were great & never would have guessed that the eggplant was frozen.

I love frozen leftovers. In fact I make batches of stuff like spaghetti sauce and freeze portions, it saves time and money.
Blanching and frying both seems like more work if the frying itself prepares the eggplants for freezing.
But what is important is what works (and tastes) best for you.

lucille...I layered the frozen slices in a pan with my spaghetti sauce, covered with cheese, then covered the pan and baked at 350 for about 45min, removed the cover, and baked for about 10 min more to get the cheese good and bubbly. Considering that the eggplant was frozen, maybe it wasn't long enough. But the weird thing was that I taste-tested a few pieces when I was breading and frying them, and they tasted fine. They were nearly cooked through, not bitter, pretty tasty actually.

Based on what I've read, it sounds like my experience isn't typical, just wish I knew what went wrong so I can avoid problems (and waste!) in the future!

Maybe because they were cooked frozen? Do you have more, could you try a mini experiment and defrost one slice and cook it up and compare the taste to the ones you cooked while frozen?

When I made mine I blanched, then coated them, then put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. Once they were frozen, I wrapped them in wax paper & put them in freezer bags. When I was ready to make my dish, I fried up the slices, without defrosting, then assembled the dish. I heated the tomato sauce a little. I covered the dish, cooked at 350 for about 15 minutes, then uncovered, then cooked for about 10 more minutes.
They were probably bitter because you did not sweat the eggplant. Sweating is where you put salt on the slices, let them sit for approx 15 - 20 minutes, then rinse in cold water. I let the slices sit in cold water for a little bit, then drain.
My family thought it tasted great. They never would have guessed the eggplant was frozen.

I would think that bitter is bitter, but gmgdvm says that her fried eggplant tasted good. I'd like to hear why you think they would turn bitter later related to sweating?
I think the defrost experiment is worthwhile if there is an extra frozen slice.

lucille, I think that is what I am going to do...I have a couple more bags of the breaded eggplant in the freezer. I will probably try to fry up a slice or two and do another taste test. Don't want to toss everything if it can be salvaged!

And I agree. I know about sweating/salting the eggplant to draw out the bitterness, but I would have thought that it would have been bitter even before it was frozen.

Thanks for your input!

Jill is there a list of what veggies need to be blanched and which ones can be frozen without frying or blanching?
I spent some time researching the sweating of eggplants and could not find out why it works. If anyone knows please do tell.

I use the Ball Blue Book and Ball Complete book of home preservation, which includes instructions and recommendations for canning, dehydrating and freezing. I also use the cookbook put out by the University of Georgia, "So Easy to Preserve" which basically contains the recipes/instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP), but more in a cookbook-friendly style. These books are my go-to references (along with this site) and they advise you not just on canning, but which products have best quality when preserved by certain methods.

If you don't have these books (and I often look at the instructions in all three for comparison and if different, pick the method that fits my situation best), then search at NCHFP.

http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html

I also have good luck searching for something specific by doing an advanced google search and for site/domain, I search in ".edu" domains only, which will pull up state extension services. Those sites will often include an entire brochure of detailed information on a specific vegetable that may have been just a blurb in a cookbook. I also find good information about how and when to harvest different fruits and vegetables.

In reviewing the mentioned canning/preserving books, I see that they do include blanching instructions for onions and peppers, but I have always been told those didn't need to be blanched prior to freezing. Since I have good luck with the quality the way I'm doing it, I won't make any changes. I'm pretty sure I got that info at this site.

You cannot go wrong with any of these books, and if you are new to canning, they are "must-haves" for your kitchen library.

I see you are in Houston. As I'm only about an hour from Houston, we will have similar growing conditions/climate. It also means the varieties that grow well for us should be the same. I'm fortunate to have excellent sandy-loam soil when most of our area has clay.

Happy to answer questions, but be warned that I am not an expert. I just consider myself someone who is gaining experience and learning a little more each season.

I can't tell you why "sweating" the eggplant works, but I usually do that step. Bitterness in an eggplant can be a result of being a little too mature. For the person who had bitter eggplant in the casserole, but not while taste testing, I can't imagine the reason. I'd think that if they tasted okay for the taste test, I don't know why they would be bitter later, unless the spices added to the casserole might have intensified. I almost always peel my eggplant and I wondered if the eggplant slices were rubbery due to the peel being left on. All guesses on my part.

To address the comment one person made about not wanting to precook the eggplant prior to freezing, as it would be like freezing leftovers, my opinion is that I have less mess to clean up and it is faster if I bread and fry them all at once, then freeze. I'm only doing it once, as opposed to cooking each batch when removing from freezer. But that's just my personal preference, and if a different way works for someone else, that's fine, too.

Jill

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - blanching and freezing vegetables

Jill,
thank you. I think I still have the canning book from my unsuccessful foray into canning and have heard of the site your cited so I will check them prior to doing anything.

In answer to the question, yes, the eggplant was peeled. It could have been a little too mature, but I don't know. And it may have been that one (or more) of the eggplants were too mature and therefore bitter/tough, and others (like the ones that I taste-tested) were ok. Haven't had a chance to heat up and taste the slices that are still in the freezer.

Interesting discussion. This is my first foray into freezing eggplant, so I'm still learning, for sure.

Those eggplants in my garden (have not even flowered yet) better get a move on. I'm starving for a warm succulent slice of fried 'plant from a freshly harvested Ichiban or Black Beauty.

refreshing this thread. I posted about some of my frozen breaded eggplant that was bitter and tough when I tried to use it in an eggplant parmesan. I used the rest of my breaded frozen eggplant a couple of weeks ago. This time, I defrosted, and crisped up the slices in a skillet, then layered and baked with the sauce and cheese...turned out great this time. I think that it may have been that I had a couple of fruits that were a little too mature, and I didn't bake them long enough the first time. Lesson learned! I want to thank everyone for their suggestions when I posted of my difficulties. :-)