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This Baba Ganoush Recipe (a Roasted Eggplant/Aubergine Dip) is easy, healthy and a perfect way to enjoy the awesome health benefits of eggplant, olive oil and garlic in one dip!
This is a powerhouse recipe of all sorts of foods that are amazingly good for you – but don’t let that dissuade you: try to ignore that and make it anyways 😉 Just go have some flourless chocolate cake when you’re done feeling all healthy and balance all this healthy out.
What is Baba Ganoush?
Baba ganoush, which can also be spelled as baba ghanoush or baba ghanouj, is a Lebanese dish made of mashed fire roasted eggplant that is mixed with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice and various other seasonings. It is more commonly referred to as a Middle Eastern dip, but to narrow that down and be a little more precise, it’s actually a Lebanese dish. It’s primarily served as a cold dip or spread, usually with pitas, and is also amazing as a vegetable dip. I’ve been meaning to get around to trying this at home, but the “fire-roasted” part can be a little intimidating.
Baba Ganoush is fantastic for all sorts of diets and lifestyles and fits into:
- Low Carb Diets
- Keto Diets ( high fat, low carb)
- Vegetarian Diets
- Vegan Diets
- Paleo Diets
- Regular ol’ diets where you want to eat healthy then eat chocolate cake right after
Fire Roasted Eggplant is Traditional
I *could* fire roast the eggplants over my gas stove elements, don’t get me wrong, but I try to make all the recipes on this website approachable for everyone and not everyone has a gas stove. I don’t want people giving up on making Baba Ganoush simply because they think you must have fire roasted eggplant. We roasted our eggplant in the oven – read my How to Roast and Cook Eggplant post for more information on that – and while it may not have the deep smokiness of a restaurant Bana Ganoush where they use the traditionally roasted eggplant, that can be remedied with a hearty sprinkle of smoked paprika mixed into the dip.
Broil The Eggplant in the Oven at the End
If you really want to get that smoky flavor you can broil the eggplant at the end of the cooking time until it gets crispy on the outside skin and really brown on the top. You can flip it to accomplish this!
Can I Eat Eggplant Seeds?
Totally! A lot of people will tell you to remove the seeds, but if you read that post on how to cook eggplant you’ll see that I would have removed half of my eggplant in the process. If the seeds are small, leave them in and cook them up, they are harmless and I didn’t have any bitterness from them at all. My eggplant was incredibly mild. The choice is up to you.
Baba Ganoush is very easy to customize to your tastes. I like a LOT of garlic in mine (that’s the Ukrainian in me) and lemon tang. Baba Ganoush is a fairly plain dip, the eggplant is not a strong taste, the tahini tastes like sesame (it’s sesame seed paste) and you are going to get your flavour from what you add. Baba Ganoush ingredients can include:
- roasted garlic
- raw garlic
- cumin
- smoked paprika
- lemon
- cayenne pepper
- black Kalmata olives as a topping
Karlynn’s Tips & Tricks for Making Baba Ganoush
- When you roast the eggplant, make sure you brown it well for flavour! The more you can get it roasted, the more flavour.
- When the eggplant is done, scoop it out and see how much moisture is left. I roast my eggplant cut into two to allow the oven roasting to help get rid of the excess moisture that can make your Baba Ganoush too liquidy. If it’s still liquidy, try to blot it out ( before you mash it!) with a paper towel.
- Customize my base recipe to your own liking. Like I said, I love more and more garlic – garlic paste is also one of my tricks to making this a great dip, it’s easy to use and powerfully flavoured. You can find garlic paste in a tube in the refrigerator section of your grocery store, usually near the salad dressings.
- Try the topping suggestions in the recipe below, they all match flavour-wise.
This Baba Ganoush dip was so easy to make that my 14 year old son made it – I figured since he loves hummus and baba ganoush that he needed to start mastering his cooking skills and make them, hummus is coming up soon! – and he did a great job. He also cut and roasted the eggplant in my how-to post! The kid is starting to get some good cooking skills under his belt, all part of my master plan to make the kids cook and I just take the photographs, all under the guise of “good parenting”.
Happy cooking!
Love,
Karlynn
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Baba Ganoush Recipe ( Roasted Eggplant/Aubergine Dip)
- Prep Time
- 30 minutes
- Total Time
- 30 minutes
- Course
- Appetizer
- Cuisine
- Lebanese
- Servings
- 8
- Calories
- 94
- Author
- Karlynn Johnston
Ingredients
- 1 large eggplant, well roasted and insides scooped out
- 1/4 cup tahini plus more as needed
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 teaspoons garlic paste ( more to taste)
- 3-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (plus more as needed)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin ( more to taste)
- 1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika ( more to taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt ( more to taste)
Optional Toppings
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 1 tablespoon briney black olives
- 1-2 tablespoons extra olive oil
- 1 tablespoon pine nuts
- 1-2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds
Instructions
- Place ingredients into a large bowl or a large capacity measuring cup. Using a hand immersion blender, puree all of the ingredients until smooth. You can also mash it all together by hand if you prefer a chunkier baba ganoush.
- You can also puree this in a food processor as well if you don't have an immersion blender.
- Place in a bowl, the top with parsley, olives if wanted and extra olive oil.
- Cover and refrigerator until chilled, letting the flavours meld together for 1-2 hours. This really helps the dip, try not to skip this part.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition Information
All calories and info are based on a third party calculator and are only an estimate. Actual nutritional info will vary with brands used, your measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
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Please rate this recipe in the comments below to help out your fellow cooks!
Billy says
I love this recipe. Thank you so much for sharing! Sounds so delicious.