This Greek eggplant dip recipe makes melitzanosalata or ‘eggplant salad’ in Greek. The smoky aubergine dip can be spread onto pita or crusty sourdough and eaten as a snack, dished up as one of an array of mezedes – Greek dips, starters and appetisers often labelled as ‘drinking food’ – or served as a salad or side to keftedes (meatballs), souvlaki (skewers) or grilled meats.
I don’t know about you, but I adore eggplant, so I’ve been thrilled to bits that eggplants have been so plentiful and so awesome in size. I recently bought an enormous glossy eggplant that was almost a kilo in weight! As I’ve been cooking a lot of Greek food for mum this year and using those meals to spark memories of our travels in Greece, I was looking for a Greek eggplant dish to go with this souvlaki, juicy char-grilled chicken skewers, and one of our best Greek recipes.
If you can also source great eggplants, we have loads of eggplant recipes from right around the world on Grantourismo, for everything from a Middle Eastern eggplant salad on hummus with pomegranate, sesame and parsley and eggplant dip with pomegranate and pine nuts to a Cambodian grilled eggplant with savoury minced pork, Terence’s silky and spicy Sichuanese braised eggplant dip, and my grandmother’s Russian eggplant caviar recipe for ‘ikra’.
We’ve also got recipes for a surprisingly delightful Thai grilled eggplant salad with a runny soft-boiled egg courtesy of chef David Thompson from his Thai Food cookbook, Terence’s take on chef Christine Manfield’s ‘eggplant sandwich’, a stack of layers of sliced eggplant, goats cheese, sweet red capsicum and nduja, and a heavenly Indian tamarind eggplant dish from Rajasthan, also thanks to Christine.
But we didn’t have any Greek eggplant recipes – until now. I’ll tell you more about this Greek eggplant dip recipe for melitzanosalata below. If you’re a lover of Mediterranean food, you’ll enjoy this Greek meze dish a lot. Looking for more cooking inspiration? We have many hundreds of recipes you can browse in our archives, and you can click on the heart on the right of every post to save your favourite recipes and stories in your private account.
Greek Eggplant Dip Recipe for Melitzanosalata with Kalamata Olives
This Greek eggplant dip recipe is adapted from a recipe for melitzanosalata in Philoxenia, A Seat at My Table by Kon and Sia Karapanagiotidis. I’ve been cooking from their beautiful cookbook of vegetarian and vegan Greek kitchen recipes a lot this year and their recipes are often amazingly simple and incredibly scrumptious.
There are also wonderfully inspiring essays by Kon about everything from resistance to joy, his late father Leo’s gardening tips, and loads of kitchen wisdom from Sia, from cooking tips and advice on using leftovers and reducing food waste to a guide to measurements, which is cheeky and tongue-in-cheek as much as it is practical.
Kon and Sia, who I met at a writer’s festival (which I’ll tell you more about soon), are son and mother, and many of our Australian readers would know Kon as the CEO and founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). In fact, the book was conceived to support the ASRC, with one hundred percent of Kon’s fee and royalties from the book going to the Centre, while the publisher Hardie Grant is donating $1 per book.
Kon and Sia’s melitzanosalata recipe makes a luscious silky eggplant dip that is delicious as it is and didn’t need adjusting – although in the recipe intro Kon offers tips for tweaking it, making a few suggestions, such as crumbling Greek feta on top or adding crushed walnuts and Greek style yoghurt for a creamier dip.
The authors also have handy tips for every recipe on how to make the vegetarian recipes vegan and gluten-free, and how to use leftovers, as well as guides to ingredient substitutes. I took those suggestions and enthusiasm for subbing ingredients as an invitation to experiment. Plus I just can’t help myself.
I’ve only tweaked this Greek eggplant dip recipe in a few tiny ways. I added finely chopped Kalamata olives one evening, as I’d used them in a photo shoot that afternoon. They add a lovely slight tang. I also added a couple of other ingredients long-used in Greek cooking: a little ground cumin for gentle spice and some sesame seeds for texture and flavour.
Leave out those three ingredients and you’ve got Kon and Sia’s eggplant dip recipe. Just a couple of tips to making this melitzanosalata recipe, as it’s super easy.
Tips to Making this Greek Eggplant Dip Recipe
I only have a couple of tips to making this Greek eggplant dip recipe, as it’s easy to make and comes together quickly.
Kon and Sia’s recipe calls for mashing the eggplant with a fork. That works, but I’ve also used a mortar and pestle. (My favourite is this beautiful hand-crafted KROK mortar and pestle.) I don’t recommend blitzing the eggplant in a food processor as you want a more rustic texture.
Use a great quality extra virgin olive oil. If you can’t source a Greek extra virgin olive oil, use a another Mediterranean-style olive oil.
This Greek eggplant dip makes a fantastic side for chicken souvlaki and tzatziki. Serve with plenty of warm pita bread and a Greek salad. For a proper Greek feast, you could also make some taramosalata, this artichoke dip, these roasted cherry tomatoes on goat’s cheese, this pan fried feta cheese, and a batch of Greek meatballs.
Greek Eggplant Dip Recipe for Melitzanosalata
Ingredients
- 1 eggplant - large
- 1 garlic clove - minced
- 6 black Kalamata olives - pitted and finely chopped
- 2 tbsp flat leaf parsley - finely chopped
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 tsp white vinegar
- ¼ tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp sesame seeds - black or white or a mix of both
- ¼ tsp salt - or to taste
- ¼ tsp black pepper - or to taste
Instructions
- Turn your gas burner or hotplate onto high heat and place the eggplant directly onto it to roast the eggplant over the flame. Use large long tongs to turn the eggplant occasionally until it’s completely charred and black. You could also use an outdoor grill or barbecue.
- Set the eggplant aside to cool, and, depending on what kind of eggplant you’ve used, you could either peel off the charred skin (if it has thin skin) or slice the eggplant in half (if it has a thicker skin) and use a large tablespoon to scrape out the flesh.
- Whatever method you use, transfer the smoky, soft eggplant flesh to a bowl and use a fork to mash it into the consistency of a dip. Don't be concerned if a little charred skin goes with the flesh as it adds even more smoky flavour and gives the dip a richer colour.
- Add the minced garlic clove, finely chopped Kalamata olives, flat leaf parsley, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, white vinegar, cumin, sesame seeds, salt, and pepper, and continue to mash until everything is combined. Taste and adjust the spice or seasoning to suit your palate.
- Transfer the dip to a plate or bowl, drizzle with a little more extra virgin olive oil and serve with pita bread as a snack, as one of an array of mezedes, or as a side to souvlaki, meatballs or grilled meats.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the Comments section below if you make this Greek eggplant dip recipe as we love to hear how the recipes we share turn out for our readers.
