Eggplant caviar in Odessa style

Odessa-style eggplant caviar is a famous recipe for a very tasty appetizer made from blueberries, peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic and herbs. The highlight of the dish is that vegetables can be lightly cooked. It is only necessary to bake the eggplants and bell peppers, and the tomatoes and other ingredients are added raw (that’s why eggplant caviar is often called “raw”).

Any Odessa housewife is convinced that her particular blue caviar is the most delicious and faithful. Naturally, like any popular dish, there are differences in both the recipe and the proportions of ingredients. But one general principle works here - eggplants are certainly baked on the grill or in the oven, but tomatoes are always eaten raw. Bell peppers are not always added; greens are also taken according to taste and mood: parsley, cilantro, basil or dill. Everything must be seasoned with vegetable oil, the amount to taste.

All vegetables for raw eggplant caviar are finely chopped with a knife. You may ask, is it possible to use a meat grinder? Naturally, it is more rational to use it, especially if you prepare many portions at once, but don’t tell Odessa residents about it, almost everyone considers this a real crime! This changes the mixture of the snack, it will turn out different, homogeneous and a little more liquid.

Ingredients

eggplants – 2-3 pcs.
reddish bell pepper – 1 pc.
ripe tomatoes, small – 2-3 pcs.
garlic - 3 teeth.
small onion – 1 pc.
sunflower oil – 1-2 tbsp. l.
sugar, salt and pepper - to taste
parsley, dill, basil – 10 g

Manufacturing

First, let's deal with the eggplants and peppers. We wash the eggplants and often pierce them with a fork over the entire surface so that they do not burst in the oven during baking. Place the peppers and eggplants on the mesh. Bake at 200-220 degrees in the oven. The blue ones will be ready in about 40 minutes, the peppers - earlier. Vegetables should become soft and fully cooked. Let them cool down.

We peel the little blue ones, cut them lengthwise and remove all the seeds using a tablespoon. Finely chop the pulp with a knife.

We peel the peppers (it can be removed quite easily), and remove the stalk and seeds. We also cut the pepper into cubes as small as possible.

Next you need to remove the skins from the tomatoes. To do this, we make cross-shaped cuts on them, lower them into boiling water for a minute and pour over ice water. After this procedure they are very easy to clean. Chop the tomato pulp finely, almost into a puree. In total, 2-3 small tomatoes will be useful. It is very important that they are excellent, mature, ground-based. But it is better to avoid greenhouse tomatoes from hypermarkets; they will not give a “real” tomato taste to our snack.

We peel a small onion and chop it into cubes, very finely. If your onions are bitter, then soak them in cool water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the water so that excess moisture does not get into the caviar. If you don’t want to chop the onion, you can grate it. We squeeze the garlic through a press or chop it with a knife. Mix with vegetables.

Add chopped herbs, salt, sugar and pepper to taste. Add oil and mix.

You can eat raw Odessa-style eggplant caviar right away, but it’s even better to let it steep for about 1 hour in the refrigerator - this will make it even tastier.

Odessa-style eggplant caviar is usually served fresh, generously spread on bread and enjoying the wonderful taste and smell of the vegetable appetizer in virtually its original form. If you can’t eat everything right away, then put it in a glass jar and put it in the refrigerator. An appetizer with a distinct garlic flavor, very pleasant to the taste. You still have to try it!

Eggplant caviar in Odessa style

Ingredients

Eggplants – 1 kg

Bell pepper – 300 g

Onions – 1 pc.

Garlic – 1 clove

Cilantro – 0.5 bunch

Vegetable oil – 100 g

Sea salt - to taste

68 kcal
40 min.
40 min.

Photo of the finished dish

Step-by-step recipe with photos

Eggplant caviar is a dish that in the summer smells from every Odessa apartment, from every house. Previously, when all the families in the yard communicated, they often prepared food together and celebrated something, or simply dined right in the yard, at a huge set table, like one big family. Everyone brought something of their own—delicious. In almost any courtyard there was a space allocated for food preparation, where they prepared barbecue, fish, freshly caught mussels or “blue caviar”. There was a special metal sheet for her, on which vegetables were baked until cooked, and on another, the same one, mussels were cooked. Every year there are fewer such courtyards, some leave forever, others move to new buildings. I would like to show you a recipe for Odessa eggplant caviar, prepared at home, which will be very close to the original, which my beloved neighbor Rosa Naumovna once prepared.

Raw eggplant caviar in Odessa style. Real Odessa recipe - 3 production options

Warm greetings to all readers of the website, now I would like to share with you a tried and tested recipe from Odessa cuisine - we will prepare blue caviar. Almost all of you probably don’t know what little blue ones are - that’s what they call eggplants in Odessa.

In Odessa, any self-respecting housewife prepares eggplant caviar, and each housewife has her own unique and most faithful recipe for blue caviar. The highlight of Odessa eggplant caviar is that the vegetables themselves can be slightly heat-treated, this applies to eggplants, and other vegetables are added completely raw. Hence the name, raw eggplant caviar in Odessa.

The highlight of Odessa eggplant caviar is that the baked eggplant and all other vegetables are chopped with a knife. Those who use a blender or meat grinder for this, but this is a completely different story, such caviar will be liquid and completely the wrong mixture. Odessa residents specifically chop all vegetables with a knife, and do not use any kitchen accessories.

Each housewife has her own recipe for this wonderful summer appetizer made from eggplant, and now I will share my recipes for eggplant caviar, and I have several of them, and they are all successful, tested and indescribably delicious.

Eggplant caviar with baked tomatoes and bell peppers
Odessa-style eggplant caviar with eggplants fried in a frying pan
Eggplant caviar on the burner (fire) without onions
Some aspects of making blue caviar

Eggplant caviar with baked tomatoes and bell peppers

In this version of caviar, vegetables will be baked in the oven. Salt, pepper, garlic, and sunflower oil are added to your taste, which is why you won’t see a clear amount of these spices in my recipes.

Ingredients:

Eggplant - 2 pcs.
Tomato - 3 pcs.
Bell pepper (reddish, fleshy) - 1 pc.
Onion (medium) - 1 pc.
Garlic - to taste
Salt - to taste
Ground dark pepper - to taste
Sunflower oil - to taste

Manufacturing:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Wash the eggplants, peppers and 2 tomatoes and place on a baking sheet. Place in the oven to bake for approximately 20 minutes.
The bell peppers will need to be turned over when they are browned.
When the vegetables are baked, you will understand this when you pierce the eggplant with a knife and it will be very soft, the tomatoes will also be soft.
Let the vegetables cool slightly. Then the vegetables will need to be peeled.
Remove the skin from peppers and tomatoes, cut out the stem of the tomato, and remove the core and seeds from the pepper.
The best way to clean an eggplant is to place it on a board and make a cut in the center of the vegetable. Open it and use a large tablespoon to scrape out the pulp. This is the fastest and most successful option.
Chop all the vegetables with a knife on a board. With all this, you will release a huge amount of juice, which will also go into the caviar.
Transfer the chopped vegetables with juice into a bowl. Now we will season the caviar.
To season the eggplant caviar, I use the freshest tomato and onion, which is cut very finely. Tomatoes can be cut as coarsely as possible (my husband likes very coarsely chopped fresh tomatoes in caviar). Squeeze the garlic through a press and add it to the bowl with vegetables, add onion and fresh tomato. Salt, pepper and add sunflower oil.
We adjust the taste of caviar to our own taste. This caviar can be eaten warm, but it is best to let it steep in the refrigerator.

Odessa-style eggplant caviar with eggplants fried in a frying pan

In this recipe, eggplants are fried in a pan, and all other ingredients are also added raw.

Ingredients:

Eggplants - 2 pcs.
Tomato (large) - 1 pc.
Onion (medium) - 1 pc.
Garlic - 2-3 cloves
Ground dark pepper - to taste
Salt - to taste

Manufacturing:

Place the washed and dried eggplant in a heated frying pan with a small amount of vegetable oil. Fry the eggplant over medium or even less than medium heat, covered, for about 30 minutes. The eggplant must be twisted and cooked until it is soft.
When the eggplant is ready, let it cool slightly.
Cut the cooled eggplants in the center and scoop out the pulp using a tablespoon.
Chop the pulp with a knife. You can chop the pulp as coarsely as possible or, on the contrary, very finely.
We remove the skin from the tomato: to do this, we make a cross-shaped cut on the tomato, where the tomato has a stalk. Pour boiling water over the tomato so that the water completely covers the tomato. After 5 minutes, you can easily remove the skin from the tomato.
Remove the stem from the tomato and grate it on a small grater.
Cut the onion into small cubes.
Mix all the caviar ingredients - eggplant pulp, grated tomato, onion, squeezed garlic, salt, pepper and vegetable oil. Stir and taste the caviar. If something is missing, we adjust the taste.

Eggplant caviar on the burner (fire) without onions

Another version of the truest Odessa blue caviar is probably this one. Modern housewives hardly cook like this anymore, but this particular taste of caviar is as if it came from the fire and can be considered bright and ordinary, with the corresponding smoke - this is something!

Try this option and it will pleasantly surprise you.

Ingredients:

Eggplant - 2 pcs.
Tomato - 2 pcs.
Garlic - 2-3 pcs.
Salt, pepper, vegetable oil - to taste

Manufacturing:

We will bake the eggplant on the stove burner. To do this, cover the stove with foil around the burner where you are going to bake the eggplant.
Turn on the burner and place the eggplant on it, just like that on the heat. Let him bake. The eggplant needs to be twisted. And when it already has burnt skin and juice is oozing, and when pierced it is all soft, then this is a signal that the eggplant is ready. Remove it from the heat.
Now it needs to be cleaned. You can let it cool slightly. You need to clean it with your hands, removing the burnt skin with your hands.
When you have peeled the eggplant, chop it with a knife on a board.
Transfer to a deep plate and season with sunflower oil.
Now it's the turn of the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the stem. Grate the tomato on a small grater. This is done like this: put the tomato pulp on a grater and rub it until the skin remains in your hands.
Transfer the grated tomato to the eggplant pulp. If you see that the tomatoes are very liquid, then do not add their juice. If on the contrary, then add the juice from the tomato to the caviar.
Now add spices to taste - garlic squeezed through a press, salt and pepper. Stir, taste and adjust to taste to your liking.

Some aspects of making blue caviar

Eggplants for caviar can be fried in a frying pan, either regular or grilled. You can bake it in the oven, or fry it over an open fire or on the fire of your stove on the burner.

When adding tomatoes, look at the amount of juice, it is better to add the tomatoes first, and later add tomato juice at your discretion.

In any of these recipes, you can add parsley or cilantro to season the caviar. This is done at discretion. In our family we don’t add greens; we like caviar without it.

It is better to refrigerate caviar; when it is cool, it is more delicious. When warm, the taste of caviar may not seem so rich to you, but everything will change when you cool the caviar.

It is better to chop the pulp of vegetables with a knife than to use any accessories. Almost everyone even recommends using a wood knife, because... iron ones can change the color of eggplants. Although this has never happened to us.

Onions in caviar are also used to taste; if you don’t like them, you can only add garlic. But garlic gives caviar that unique taste, so without it it’s unlikely to be possible to prepare real Odessa caviar.

Real Odessa eggplant caviar is the pride of any Odessa woman

Juicy, fragrant, special eggplant caviar in Odessa will always be appropriate on the table - in the summer or in the winter. This recipe with a photo will tell you and show you how to prepare a snack for any day, so you can try it right away, or prepare it for future use - for the winter.

The main highlight of Odessa eggplant caviar is the preparation and cutting of vegetables, and thanks to certain manufacturing subtleties, the appetizer acquires a pleasant smoky smell. Try it - it's very tasty!

Ingredients:

eggplants – 500 g;
tomatoes – 250 g;
onion – 50-70 g (1 small onion);
sweet pepper – 150 g;
garlic – 1 clove;
green cilantro - a bunch;
vegetable oil – 50 ml;
table salt – 0.5 tsp. (taste).

How to cook eggplant caviar

Wash the eggplants and peppers well, wrap in foil and bake in the oven until tender (20-30 minutes at 180 degrees). Before baking, you can scorch the vegetables over the burner fire by placing them on a fork with a long handle. Thanks to this simple manipulation, eggplants with peppers will acquire a slight smoky smell. While the vegetables are roasting, chop the other ingredients. Peel the onion and chop into small cubes.

Wash the tomatoes, cut each one into 4 parts and grate on a large grater so that the skin remains in your hands (no need to grate it). You can blanch the tomatoes in boiling water, peel them and puree them in a blender - whichever is more convenient for you.

Thoroughly wash the cilantro, dry it and chop it with a knife.

Cool the baked vegetables and remove their skins. Cut the eggplant into cubes.

Remove the seeds from the pepper and cut the pulp into squares.

Place eggplant, pepper, tomato puree, onion and cilantro in one deep bowl. Add salt, pressed garlic, oil.

Stir and the caviar is ready to serve.

To prepare Odessa-style eggplant caviar for the winter, you need to slightly change the production method. All products should be baked and chopped as described above. Only the onion needs to be fried in vegetable oil until soft, then add the baked eggplants with peppers and tomatoes, mix and simmer until tender, stirring occasionally, for about half an hour.

5-7 minutes before the end of stewing, add herbs and garlic, salt, pour in 1 tsp. table (9 percent) vinegar and dump in a pinch of sugar. Place the fried caviar in clean jars and sterilize in a saucepan with bubbling water for 7 minutes after boiling. Then seal the jars, wrap them in a blanket and, after completely cooling, hide them in the cellar until winter.

Eggplant caviar according to this recipe comes out very juicy and special - try it! Bon appetit!

Try the eggplant and tomato recipe for the winter, it’s super delicious!