10 Budget-Friendly Eggplant Recipes

If you’re making some of these recipes because you need to stretch your budget and ordering out or buying prepared food is just getting too expensive, but you’re new to cooking, The Ultimate Guide To Saving Money By Cooking At Home is filled with great tips, recipes, and ideas.

Budget-Friendly Eggplant Recipes

As we add more eggplant dishes to the blog, we’ll be adding them to this post. So, be sure to save this post (pin it, bookmark it, however you save posts) and come back from time to time to see what easy eggplant recipes we’ve added.

Eggplant Parmesan Pasta

Eggplant Parmesan Pasta has all the flavors of eggplant parmesan, plus pasta. You combine eggplant chunks, mozzarella cheese, bowtie pasta, tomato sauce, and parmesan cheese in layers in a pan. Season, bake, and enjoy. It’s a really simple recipe that will please the whole family.

When we have a lot of fresh eggplant from our garden, we make this recipe. But you can use store-bought eggplant as well.

Sausage Stuffed Eggplant

Sausage Stuffed Eggplant is one of the best eggplant recipes on this list.

You cut an eggplant in half, scoop out the inside, drizzle the eggplant boats with a little olive oil, add some seasoning, and roast in a baking dish. Cook the insides with sausage, mushrooms, garlic, and marinara sauce. Stuff that back into the roasted eggplant, top with mozzarella cheese, and bake until soft.

Grilled Eggplant, Prosciutto & Mozzarella Roll Ups

One of our favorite summer appetizers are Grilled Eggplant, Prosciutto & Mozzarella Roll Ups.

Slices of eggplant are seasoned and grilled. A slice of mozzarella cheese and prosciutto are added, then it’s rolled. You keep it on the grill, just until the cheese is melted. It’s such a great recipe for your next backyard barbecue.

Pasta Alla Norma (Sicilian eggplant and tomato pasta)

Any time I talk about Pasta Alla Norma, I say, “I don’t know who Norma is, but I love her pasta.” I’ve looked it up, and Norma is actually an opera and there’s a whole history on why this pasta bears that name.

Anyway. This recipe combines fresh tomatoes and eggplant, plus fresh herbs and a little pasta water, to make a hearty sauce that’s served over pasta. It’s a great alternative to using store-bought marinara sauce to top your pasta.

Traditional Eggplant Parmesan

This list would absolutely not be complete without a Traditional Eggplant Parmesan recipe.

The eggplant is sliced, dredged in flour, egg, and bread crumbs, and fried in a nice amount of oil until they’re golden brown. Those fried eggplant slices are then layered in a baking pan between mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce. Fill the entire pan, top with fresh herbs and parmesan cheese, and bake.

Baked Eggplant Parmesan

If you want eggplant parmesan, but don’t want to deal with all of the frying and oil, this Baked Eggplant Parmesan is for you. It’s the easiest way to make eggplant parmesan since you don’t cook each piece of eggplant before baking the entire dish.

You bread the eggplant, as usual, and skip the frying. Add some sauce at the bottom of the pan, then a layer of eggplant slices, and a single layer of mozzarella cheese. Alternate those layers until your baking pan is filled. Bake. Just a quick note: The total time you bake this is longer than a traditional eggplant parmesan because you’re not cooking the eggplant in oil ahead of time.

Chicken & Eggplant Teriyaki

If you like chicken teriyaki, but you don’t want to make all the vegetables that go along with it, try our Chicken & Eggplant Teriyaki. The only vegetable in the whole thing is eggplant. We usually use regular eggplant from our garden in this recipe. We do grow Asian eggplants in the garden, and this is an Asian recipe, but we don’t use those in this because they’re not meaty enough to hold up to the chicken.

What’s great about this recipe is the teriyaki sauce is homemade from really simple ingredients that you can easily find at the grocery store.

Sautéed Eggplant With Panko

Sautéed Eggplant With Panko is such an easy way to cook eggplant. You can serve it as a side dish or use it to top ravioli or other pasta dishes to add more vegetables and make them a complete meal.

You chop the eggplant into pieces, add it to a pan with chopped garlic and a little drizzle of olive oil, and sauté until they’re soft. Toss with panko breadcrumbs and that’s it.

Baked Eggplant Meatball Parmesan

One of my favorite eggplant recipes is Baked Eggplant Meatball Parmesan. Despite the name, there isn’t any ground meat in it. The meatballs are actually ground eggplant.

The recipe is really good, but it’s definitely not a quick weeknight meal. You have to soak the eggplant to remove some moisture, then cook them on the stove for a few minutes, then grind them in a food processor with other ingredients, chill the mixture for 30 minutes, form into balls and let them chill in the fridge on a baking sheet for an hour, then assemble them in a casserole pan, and bake. It’s a long time from start to finish, but it’s so good.

Breaded Eggplant Parmesan Bites

If you want a light lunch and have a ton of eggplant from your summer garden to use, make Breaded Eggplant Parmesan Bites. You cut the eggplant into bites, coat them with egg and breadcrumbs, then bake. Of course, you’re going to season them and top with parmesan cheese. Serve them with a side of marinara sauce for a tasty treat.

We make this in the oven, but you could do it in the air fryer too if you’re pressed for time.