Recipe for slow cooker Punjabi eggplant with potatoes

In summer, we soak our feet in cold water, swim in cold lakes, and eat cold food to cool us down. People raised in hot countries -- equatorial countries -- know better; they eat hot and spicy food, which encourages perspiration, the body's natural response to too much heat. Cooks have a few options to keep the heat down in the kitchen, too: grill outside, or use a slow cooker indoors. This Punjabi eggplant with potatoes cools you down in two ways; it's made in a slow cooker, and contains just enough chile pepper to get your body's natural cooling system going. Adjust the heat level to your own taste. When you get eggplant in your CSA box or at the farmers' market, try this recipe served with rice, or topped with some plain yogurt or raita.

Slow cooker Punjabi eggplant with potatoes

From the pantry, you'll need: onion, ginger, garlic, ground cumin, ground chile pepper, garam masala, turmeric, canola oil.

Slightly adapted from The Indian Slow Cooker, this recipe serves 8 (can be halved).

Ingredients

2 medium eggplants, stem end removed, cut into 1/2-inch dice (approx. 10-12 cups)
1 large Idaho or Yukon Gold potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 medium yellow or red onion, peeled and chopped
1 tsp ginger paste (or grated fresh ginger root)
6 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 jalapeño chiles, seeded and minced
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp ground red chile pepper
1 Tbsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 cup canola oil
1 Tbsp kosher salt, or to taste
1-2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro, to taste

Directions

Combine eggplant, potato, onion, ginger, garlic, jalapeño peppers, cumin, ground chile pepper, garam masala, turmeric and oil in a 4- or 5-quart slow cooker. Stir as best you can to distribute the spices and oil. (The smaller cooker will be frighteningly full, but don't worry; the eggplant will cook down.) Cook on HIGH for 2 hours, stirring after 1 hour.

After the first two hours of cooking, stir well. There should be a nice amount of moisture in the cooker, and the eggplant should have collapsed a bit. If there is plenty of liquid in the pot, continue cooking on LOW for 30 minutes, uncovered. If there's not much liquid, cook on LOW for 30 minutes with the cover on.

Add the salt and cilantro, to taste. (Salt added during the cooking will draw more moisture out of the eggplant, so it's best added at the end.)

Serve at room temperature, over rice or topped with raita, or make ahead.

[Printer-friendly recipe.]

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Slow cooker chicken vindaloo
Pakistani "old clothes" beef curry (nihari) in the slow cooker
Slow cooker Indian-spiced butternut squash
Salmon tikka
Mushroom bhaji (mushrooms in tomato-onion sauce)

Other recipes that use these pantry ingredients:
Tatsoi with garam masala, from Andrea Meyers
Vegan garam masala cookies, from Everybody Likes Sandwiches
Masala turmeric squid with coconut cream, from Rasa Malaysia
Roasted eggplant with a yogurt-turmeric sauce, from Fearless Kitchen
Grilled halibut with cumin and lime, from Kalyn's Kitchen

Comments

Oh, I thought that was meat a pork or beef perhaps but it's an eggplant! This is such a healthy dish, I would want to try this at home. Thanks for sharing this!

Hi. Looks great. Is there something else I could use instead of buying garam masala?
Thank you.

I think I have to try this with sweet potatoes! (And I have those Japanese eggplants in my garden.)

Awesome! My husband is Indian and we love Punjabi food! I'm just not very good at making it :) Can't wait for our eggplant to be ready to pick in our garden. This will be perfect!

I'm saving this to make when I return home from Portland. Such great spices!
I agree about eating hot, spicy food when it's hot out. I drink hot tea almost every afternoon when the temps soar. It has a very cooling effect.

Berneda, garam masala is a blend of nearly equal amounts of cumin, cardamom and coriander, plus black pepper, some cinnamon and cloves. So to substitute for it in this recipe, you can use what you probably already have on your spice rack, and improvise to your own taste.

Kalyn, sweet potatoes and Japanese eggplant would be a perfect combination. Send me some when you make this?

Amy, I'm jealous of anyone who has eggplant in the garden! You'll love this dish; it's super easy.

Christine, counterintuitive though it seems to me, eating spicy food really does cool you down. After it heats you up!

Makes me hungry, and I just finished eating. Beautiful!

Susan, this is your kind of dish, and you can dress it up or down. Enjoy!

I love Indian food, and eggplant is one of my favorites. Another nice slow cooker recipe and I like that it can be enjoyed at room temperature, perfect to keeping cool during the summer.

Looks delicious. This will be great topped with yogurt.

I have it in the crock pot right now, but after 4 hours on high, it's still not soft enough. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,

Elina, you're not doing anything wrong -- each slow cooker is a bit different, so just keep cooking!

Hi! Just found you and love love love your recipes! Just needed to clarify the amount of eggplant in this recipe: 10 to 12 cups ? Thanks!

Haifa, yep! It cooks down a lot.

It's been in the slow cooker for over 3h and it's still not soft. My eggplant hasn't gone down that much either. It looks pretty dry (yours looks like it has some kind of "sauce"). I'll keep cooking like you advised a previous poster. I can't wait. It looks soooo yummy!

Hello! Sounds like a lovely recipe. Are you peeling the eggplant? Or is the skin edible?

Thank you!

Christina, I do not peel the eggplant. The skin is edible and gets quite soft in the cooking.