Eggplant pizza bites make for the best low carb, gluten-free and easy appetizer or vegetarian meal. Can be made vegan too with vegan cheese! Skip the flour and added carbs of regular pizza and make these instead!
I go through food spells.
Generally, I love eggplant but after overdosing on eggplant (and tofu) in China I was ready to part ways for a little while. Sorry eggplant – it’s not me, it’s you. Well it’s been over a month now and I’m ready to welcome eggplant back into my life again, if he’ll have me.
In China it was eggplant almost every day – he was a clingy boyfriend and I had to cut him loose. In Vietnam I don’t know if we had any eggplant the whole month we were there. Now that I’m in Thailand, I’m not so sure there will be too much eggplant here either. The other night I ordered a green curry dish (amazing by the way) and it had an eggplant-like vegetable but it wasn’t the eggplant I fell in love with.
Further investigation will be needed to pinpoint what exactly this eggplant impostor was. Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of it though.
Don’t get me wrong, the food in Thailand has been beyond amazing (and terrifyingly spicy at times, though I don’t let this deter me) but sometimes you just want a familiar favorite.
For me, it’s this baked eggplant pizza. I can’t take credit for this recipe though – it’s my grandmother’s and we first started making this together 10 years ago. She would work with the eggplant and sour cream/mayo mix, I’d slice the cheese, tomatoes and grate the garlic and dinner would be ready in a flash.
Now if you’re a mayo-phobe (as I know many are) just use sour cream or add a dollop of Greek yogurt instead, but I urge you to go the mayo route.
This recipe requires a bit of prep work as the eggplant needs to be baked first on one side, then flipped over and only then do you add the rest of the toppings but it’s worth it in the end. Just make two trays worth and you’ll be enjoying leftovers the next day.
I’ve got my parents coming to visit in less than a week (eeek- it’s been almost 4 months since I’ve seen them) and if there’s any eggplant to be found in the Thai islands I’ll be making this eggplant pizza dish for sure.
We just got our visas approved yesterday and booked our airfareย to Burma so the country I’ve been dreaming about for the last year is becoming a reality! Perhaps there will be lots of eggplant dishes in Burma, maybe even this eggplant pizza?
Let me know what you think of these eggplant pizza bites in the comments below!
For more veggie side dish or appetizer recipes be sure to check out my pan fried patty pan squash.
Eggplant pizza bites make for the best low carb, gluten-free and easy appetizer or vegetarian meal. Can be made vegan too with vegan cheese! Skip the flour and added carbs of regular pizza and make these instead!
- 1 eggplant sliced into 1/2 inch rounds
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2-4 ounces sharp cheddar cheese thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon sour cream
- 1 tablespoon mayonnaise can substitute sour cream or Greek yogurt
- 1-2 to matoes thinly sliced
- salt pepper to taste
- cooking spray
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees C. Spray an aluminum foil lined baked sheet with cooking spray and place eggplant in single layer. Bake 10-15 minutes, remove from oven and flip over.
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In a small bowl combine sour cream, mayo, garlic salt and pepper.
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Place tomato slice on each eggplant slice, top with a dollop of sour cream mix and a piece of cheese.
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Bake 15-20 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.
To make this recipe vegan use vegan cheese, vegan mayo and vegan sour cream
Jess says
Welcome to Thailand, Vicki! My guess is that those mysterious things in your green curry were eggplants, but there are totally different varieties here that I’ve never seen anywhere else. You can get the regular purle ones in Bangkok, but the tiny green ones that look like peas and the golf-ball sized ones that are white and green taste totally different…yet still delicious!
Vicky says
Thanks Jess! Haha yep that is exactly what I saw in the green curry! So strange! The golf ball shaped ones do kind of taste like eggplant, but kind of not at the same time — either way it is delicious! And I absolutely love the thick rice noodles. Seriously feels like they just melt in your mouth!! Love them!
Ed says
Looks really good…and I usually don’t say such things about baked eggplant…seriously I have not had luck with it!
Jean mom says
I even printed this out Vicky….I am not much of a cook but i just LOVE eggplant so maybe i will get around to trying this one…looks sooooooo good
Bree {Skinny Mommy} says
These look seriously amazing!!!
Vicky says
Thanks!!
Kari@Loaves n Dishes says
Vicky, I could eat a whole plate of just this eggplant for dinner!
Vicky says
Thanks! I have done that before myself…many times.. haha… sometimes without even a plate and just huddling over the baking tray on the stove, trying not to burn my mouth in the process!
suresh says
aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Christine says
I have not yet got sick of eggplant in China-they just know how to light my taste buds on fire and then bring it back with that silky, sweet aftertaste. One thing I took a break on here after the first month though was baozi…we were eating them for two meals a day, and then one day I couldn’t anymore. This looks amaaaazing. I may ask my husband to stop for some cheese on the way home tonight since we have eggplant. Awesome idea, and you can still *sorta* feel healthy…because there is a veggie there!
Vicky says
I was loving the eggplant dishes in China. I was always look for eggplant dishes on the menu there and even took a photo of the translation of eggplant written in Chinese characters on my phone so I could ask the servers if they had eggplant dishes!
Linda says
This looks so good!