Nasu Dengaku recipe: Fall in love with Japanese styled eggplant

My friends!! If you love oriental styled cooking, then you’ll love this Japanese styled eggplant. This is an awesome Nasu Dengaku recipe. Travel to Japan without actually going to Japan!

It is a super simple recipe and will be easy to impress who ever you have over for dinner.

Nasu Dengaku recipe

So what is Nasu Dengaku? It means nasu means eggplant if you translate it in English. Dengaku stands for a miso glaze thats put on Japanese dishes like tofu. Together Nasu Dengaku means miso glazed eggplant.

This Nasu Dengaku recipe is smoky, sweet, and ofcourse a little savory too!

Pair this with plain rice of your choice or if you want more oriental flavors, make a vegetable fried rice. It’s perfect.

For this Nasu Dengaku recipe you’ll need:

• Eggplants – savory and sweet
• Miso paste – sweet and savory
• Sake – gives dryness
• Sugar – helps to caramelize and lighten up flavors with out being too intense
• Sesame seeds – nutty flavors
• Mirin – rice wine balances everything out

Kitchen appliances:

• Oven
• Pan
• Seasoning Brush

How to make Nasu Dengaku Recipe and ingredients

Ingredients:

• 2 eggplants
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons oil (neutral flavored for pan)
• 1/4 cup miso
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• 1 tablespoon sake – if don’t have sake, can consider using rice wine as a substitute
• Optional – pre glazed brush of sesame oil
• garnish with sesame seeds and green onions

1. First cut the eggplant in half and then start to cut each half with an x or criss cross pattern as seen below. This recipe is super easy and will be done in about 20 minutes.

2. Next add your oil to pan and cook the eggplant on a non stick pan with high heat.

3. Put the eggplants on the purple side until the edges have browned uncovered. About 3-5 minutes.

4. Then flip and leave covered x criss crossed side down on the pan for 3-4 minutes. Should be golden brown.

5. Preheat oven to 200 celsius

6. Create your miso glaze while eggplants cooking. Mix mirin, sugar, sake (or rice vinegar), and miso into a bowl.

7. Brush eggplant with sesame oil (optional – if using) and then put the miso glaze. Put onto a baking tray to prepare to put into the oven.

8. Broil for about 5 minutes. The miso glaze should be sizzling/bubbling when you take it out and that’s how you know it’s done.

9. Garnish with sesame seeds and green onions and serve immediately by itself or paired with rice.

Let me know in the comments if you get to try it! Would love to see pictures too. If you want to make other food, make sure you check out my other recipes:

• Anchovy salad
• Spanish tomato bread
• Spanish easter desserts

Happy cooking! See you in the kitchen. 🙂