I usually do it in the oven, but I do the same thing for outdoors.

I used to salt the eggplant, since I was taught that way, but I find that if you have a good firm eggplant that sounds hollow when you thump it, but still has a nice dark skin, you don't get enough joy from salting and squeezing and draining and all of that to make it worthwhile. If it's softer, I'll just flame or broil the heck out of it (fork the skin all over first to vent the steam, until it's all charry and sunken floppy and roasty toasty goodness.

For grilling, I think firm eggplant works a lot better, but it takes a long time to cook and you have to be patient. I slice 1/2-3/4", and put my seasoning (sometimes with dried herbs) into a little oil in a bowl or pie plate and coat. You can just brush or spray. I find my way easier, if messier, but it's important to have enough oil that it doesn't stick, but don't leave it sit in oil or it'll soak it up. I guess what I do is more like the motion of dregging. Just kind of swing it through and make sure it's coated. It's also important to leave it on long enough, like meat, so that the bits that touch are caramelized and it releases. Anyway, once coated, onto the grill or grill pan.

I know there's a new school of thought for eating eggplant firm. If you're in that camp, salting might help you. It's at its yummiest, however, when it's mushy and looks like snot. The slices should evaporate well on the grill (which is so much easier than trying to get them to weep!!), and shrink. If you want them to remain slices, however, it's important to get them off before they turn into goo and fall into the fire. Cooked through, but still with some internal integrity. Otherwise, you could have just roasted them whole.

For skinny Japanese or Italian eggplants, I also cut them into spears--they do have to be skinny though, because you want skin on each spear. Then oiled the same way but with stronger seasonings (not essential, just what I do), and a little lighter on the oil, though maybe a little extra on the skin side. Seasoning may be garlic pepper, or herbs and citrus, or sumac (or zataar which has a lot of sumac in it). Grill/roast the spears skin side down until the flesh is all shrivelled up. OMG!! Most yummiest ever. You need to do a lot of them, though, because they tend to disappear. They're also good cold, so don't count on any left for another purpose. :)

Have fun! The only wrong way to do eggplant, really, is undercooked. Then it's disgusting.

When we bought eggplants for the first time this year at the farmer's market, they recommended peeling a few strips as the skin can be tough.

She said that since we were grilling it we didn't need to salt and drain it.

We've grilled eggplant a number of times, with just olive oil and salt and pepper.

This post was edited by jasdip on Sat, Aug 30, 14 at 16:39

Thanks for the tips and suggestions - I will make sure not to oil the eggplant too soon before cooking. I am thinking that I might add a bit of truffle salt to the oil or maybe to the eggplant before the oil. The truffle salt has an amazing flavor, but perhaps it should be added after cooking - I don't know what effect grilling will have on its flavor.

I definitely do not want to salt and drain the eggplant before grilling before I cook it, and it looks like that is not necessary. I love eggplant so much that I can't imagine it would be bad, but I definitely will not undercook it. I was planning on about 5 minutes per side, depending on how hot the fire is at the time. We will be grilling a chicken first, and so the fire may be cooler by the time we cook the eggplant.

I have some ripe chili peppers that I want to grill also. We're going to the Mar Vista Farmers' Market tomorrow, and so we may wait until after that to do our grilling.

Lars

This post was edited by publickman on Sat, Aug 30, 14 at 16:20

I would certainly keep your lovely truffle oil for a dressing rather than cook with it. I just brush with seasoned oil - very lightly and grill.

I typically steam cook the slices first.

This way I can control the degree of done-ness on the grill, as well as timing. I want the eggplant slices to be done at the sametime as other vegetables.

dcarch

I didn't use the truffle oil on the eggplant, but we did buy some fingerling potatoes at the Mar Vista FM yesterday and I put the truffle salt on those after they were cooked, which tasted great.

I brushed the eggplant with a plain olive oil and sprinkled a tiny bit of Cajun seasoning on them - just because I had just made a new batch for the chicken we were grilling. The eggplant came out fine - it was lukewarm by the time we ate it, but I don't think it needed to be hot. We also grilled some Hungarian chili peppers (I say Hungarian because the farmer we bought them from was from Hungary), but we have not eaten them yet. With the eggplant, potatoes, and chicken, we had enough food. We have leftover eggplant also, but we ate all the potatoes I cooked because I only cooked four of them.

Lars