Name: Eggplants stuffed with vegetables and ham
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: española
Ingredients: 4 medium eggplants; 2 onions; 3 tomatoes; 1 red pepper; 1 green pepper; 100 g of ham; 60 g grated cheese; Olive oil; Salt; Pepper; Rosemary

Today we bring you a delicious dish, perfect to surprise our family at the table. Eggplants stuffed with vegetables and ham are perfect for those who don't like vegetables very much since by mixing it with ham and cheese we camouflage the vegetables that some people may not like. Also perfect for small children.

Preparation of the vegetarian stuffed eggplant recipe

We remove the stem from the top of the eggplants and cut the eggplants lengthwise, obtaining two halves for each eggplant.
To soften them, we make fine mesh cuts in each of the halves of the eggplants and roast them in the oven at about 180ºC - 200ºC for 30-40 minutes.
While the eggplants are baking, cut the peppers and onions. We peel and cut the tomato. The amount of tomato will depend on how juicy they are.
Once the vegetables are cut, we first add the onion to a frying pan with a splash of oil. It is important to add the onion first since it is what takes the longest to cook.
When we see that the onion begins to brown a little, we add the green and red peppers. We wait a few minutes for the vegetables to begin to cook.
Once the aubergines are soft, remove the pulp, making sure not to break the skin as we will use it to put the filling. Add the aubergine pulp to the pan with the rest of the vegetables and stir. At this time we can also add the pieces of ham.
We add the cut tomato and rosemary. If we see that the vegetable mixture is not juicy enough, we can add a little bit of any brand of fried tomato.
We leave the whole mixture over medium-slow heat for 10-20 minutes until we see that the vegetables are practically ready to eat.
Remove the stuffing from the pan and fill the skins of the aubergines with the mixture of vegetables that we have prepared.
We put a little grated cheese on top of the stuffed aubergines and leave them in the oven at 200ºC until the cheese is gratin.
We already have our delicious eggplants stuffed with vegetables! We serve and enjoy.

Keys for preparing the best stuffed aubergines

One of the main problems when we prepare all types of recipes with eggplants, whether stuffed or otherwise, is the bitterness produced by contact with air. Eggplants contain molecules inside their pulp that when they come into contact with the oxygen in the air, they oxidize and produce the typical bitter taste that can deduct points from our recipe for stuffed eggplants.

To avoid this we must make some deep cuts in the pulp of the eggplants and then salt them (with coarse salt if possible) and leave them face up for about 15 minutes. Right after they turn around and put on top of a rack for about 15 more minutes. In this way the bitter juices produced by oxidation with the air will come out of our eggplants and in this way their taste will be much better when we prepare the stuffed eggplants.

It is also important to use stainless steel knives when cutting the eggplants to also reduce oxidation of the eggplants. Another important factor to take into account when we are going to prepare the recipe for baked stuffed eggplants is the type of eggplant that we are going to choose for our dish.

We recommend trying a rarely seen type of eggplant called white eggplant. White eggplant is a variety of eggplant that is very characteristic for its color, but it is also different from other eggplants for its meat, soft, creamy, honeyed, sweet and very pleasant to the palate. Surely it will not leave you indifferent.