Crispy Eggplant “Bacon”

I didn’t have a mandolin so had to cut the slices myself. They needed about 1.5 hrs in the oven to get crispy. The skin had a bitter flavor after the long roasting so next time I will skin the eggplant. The marinade, however, was delicious and I will definitely make it again.

I made this recipe and it’s delicious! I used a Ziploc baggie to coat the eggplant and it tastes really wonderful! I think it resembles more of a “chip” as in BBQ flavored potato chips. And I also used the whole 1 lb eggplant and doubled the sauce recipe! I now have an excellent “go to” recipe for the 4 Italian Long Eggplants I just planted in my garden this 2024 season! Thanks for sharing. 🍆❤️💋

Not a vegetarian but I don’t eat pork. Have some veg family that I will share the recipe with. Turkey bacon is meh. Beef bacon is yum but expensive. And I like eggplant. My hubs hates it, I keep trying to find some way he likes it. It isn’t done cooking yet, taking longer than the 40 mins using convection. My mandolin and eggplant are a little old … And I have trouble getting consistent thickness of slices. May have brushed too much sauce on. IDK. Smells yum, even though I had to sub steak sauce for worc (I don’t know when I ran out!?!). Licking fingers as turning and that is yum. We’ll see. Cautiously optimistic.

I had eggplant bacon on a sandwich at a vegan restaurant and it was so good that I had to find a recipe and make it myself.
I doubled this recipe because I did not want to waste the other half of the eggplant and I am so glad that I did. This is so so incredibly delicious. Some pieces were chewy ,some were crispy and some were both.. All so wonderfully tasty.
The only thing I did differently was that I used liquid amino (I didn’t have any tamari)And I also marinated the eggplant for a minute or two instead of brushing it on. I also did cook it a bit longer after I flipped it.
I believe this is a recipe you have to make your own by tweaking to fit your taste and crunch/chew preference. I will be making this recipe on repeat.
5 stars.

These are really good! You don’t need a mandolin; I sliced my eggplant thin as I could and it was fine. Perfectly crispy – especially after letting the slices cool for ~20 minutes. Subbed coconut oil for the olive oil, that was also delicious, and my tamari was just that coconut soy sauce that has like 75% less sodium (and that worked fine as well!) One thing is, you kind of have to double this recipe to make any bacon at all, because the slices shrink a lot in the oven.
The bacon would definitely be useful chopped up in a salad or wrap or something, and I think that’s what I’ll do next time. Would recommend for that kind of thing! :)

I don’t have a mandolin, so I had to hand slice the eggplant and it was a bit thicker than the recipe called for. Based on the recommendation to cook longer at a lower temperature if the slices were thicker, I put them in my dehydrator at 195 degrees for two hours. Worked really well. I used a purple long eggplant which is perfect for making bacon shaped strips and I salted the strips for about 20 minutes and then rinsed and patted them dry before dehydrating. I will play with the spice proportions a bit to meet my own tastes, but the technique works great!

I made this and it was wonderful! I used soy sauce instead of tamari and it was very salty. Next time I’ll use less soy sauce.

Super yummy! Would have been a lot easier with a mandolin, but overall great flavor and texture. Love the umami combination. I used it in the vegan BLT sandwich with eggplant bacon recipe.

First off – I love how this recipe packs a punch of flavour! It is perfect to add to a Vegan BLT.
However, I do find this recipe finicky and a little high maintenance. I don’t have a mandolin. The first time I made this I tried slicing the eggplant lengthwise and ended up with uneven results. Combined with the unevenness and getting impatient and turning up the oven I burnt them. The second time I made it I sliced the eggplant in half and then thinly sliced it into half moons which gave much better control to keep it thin and even. While it isn’t the same look and length as bacon it still has the flavour and texture! I just allow for more time to cook the “bacon” – more like an hour. I find that the last ten minutes I check them every minute or so and pull out the ones that are almost dry. They crisp up once out of the oven.
Despite the trickiness of this recipe I still make it and we throughly enjoy it!

This is such a delicious snack! I substituted Worcestershire sauce with 1 tsp tamarind concentrate + 1 tsp vinegar + 1 tamari. Like others, the baking time and temp in the oven did not successfully dry out the eggplant. I actually have a dehydrator so after the oven, I dehydrated at 165 for about 4 hours. The result was a crisp eggplant chip. This is my new favorite snack. Thank you for the recipe!

Gonna cosign with the other comments that the baking temperature (and maybe the time too) are way too low. My oven barely goes as low as 225°F, and oven temperatures are notoriously unreliable below 300°F in general—Additionally, most people don’t have access to a Mandolin, and while I can reliably say I got my slices to about 1/8 an inch in thickness, I’m guessing a Mandolin gets them a lot thinner than that, because I really don’t see how you could get them crispy at the temperature recommended. I like the flavor and plan to try to adjust the recipe the next time I make it, but it’s pretty clear that 225°F is far too low.

Making this as I write this to you. The vegan worcestershire sauce that you mention is not GF. It clearly says wheat on the label. I found a brand called The Wizards that is organic, vegan and GF. Always love your recipes!! Thanks !

I was so excited to try this recipe, MB recipes ALWAYS work both with my skill set and my family’s food preferences. Like others who have posted, I believe the temp and time need adjusting. I did convection bake 225/250, parchment paper, exact ingredients, and tried a variety of slice widths. After 30 min the egg plant slices were wet, droopy and pale. I put them back in for another 10 min and then again (per another review) on to a cooling rack in the oven for 5 more mins. The final result was a little oily and slightly burnt- never got crispy on any of the widths.

I followed the recipe as is (something I’m mostly incapable of) and based on reviews used the mandolin for slicing. As another commented, it definitely tasted like the Asian BBQ pork. If my memory serves me correctly, this is not a bad thing! But there wasn’t quite enough bacon flavor for a BLT, which is what my ultimate goal is. (Before I went plant-based, a crispy BLT was the only time in which I ever ate bacon!) It was too sweet for me, and it seemed to be missing something essential I can’t pinpoint right now… Also, the slicing and such was just so tedious… I get that the point is to make it look like bacon, but next time I’ll just slice thin rounds. It’s also much faster to just dip each piece or even toss it all in the marinade rather than spooning or brushing. This is not a bad review; I’ll definitely be using it as a base and try to alter the flavors a bit next time!

I love the texture & flavor! I subbed tahini for the oil; based on comments I used a mandolin; cooked at 225 for 20 minutes, 250 for 7 minutes, & perfect. Thank you!!

Wow! This is delicious! I really think the key is using a mandolin to get the eggplant bacon-thin because my batch was done in 30 minutes. I sampled a piece right away and the flavor and texture was great! I have the rest cooling on a baking rack and cannot wait to eat it in vegan BLTs for lunch later. I also had enough liquid leftover to coat *almost* the other half of the medium-sized eggplant I used. Thanks for this recipe! It’s even better than the cocobacon(which I also enjoy!)

I really liked this! I hate eggplant in general but this made it tasty and fun and countered the general sogginess of baked eggplant. The texture and taste are evocative of bacon minus all the salt and fat.
Only thing is I might have sliced it too thick to make sure the slices were even – it took at least 1h. I eventually increased the temperature to 300°C.

I made this recipe to go along with a vegan BLT sandwich. It came out so good, the taste is unreal! I will definitely be making this from now on instead of the store bought fake bacon. My only edit is that I noticed the eggplant wouldn’t get crispy at 225° so I did have to raise it quite a bit. About 300-325° and added an extra 10 minutes. It’s possible I sliced my eggplants a little to thick or put too much sauce and that’s why it didn’t crisp up. But overall I’m very pleased with this recipe.

This was great but I think it tasted more like Asian bbq pork than bacon. I used honey instead of maple syrup (and think I will use a bit less next time as it was very sweet) and soy sauce instead of tamari. To get the moisture out the aubergine, I cut the pieces as thin as I could before coating in kosher salt and paper towels for 30 minutes. Then I rinsed with cold water and dried again with more paper towels. I think this helped with getting it to crisp up later. I cooked at 110c for 20 minutes and turned up to 120c for another 20 minutes. It didn’t appear to be crisping so I turned the pieces over and grilled at 120c for 15 minutes, watching very closely so it didn’t burn. I then removed from the grill and put each piece onto a metal rack and they crisped up nicely on that in just a couple of minutes. Delicious!

I love eggplants bibimbap we eat in korea so i decided to give a try! and I loved it and my toddler loved it too!! I reduced soy sauce to 1 TBS and omit the salt. and it was perfect for us! and i also made asian meatballs for my toddler and I used the left over sauce for the meatballs and it was amazing!! I think this sauce it the best for a lot of things!! Thank you :)

I FIGURED IT OUT! I was skeptical because MB is a straight A recipe blog for me, and they almost never has mixed reviews, but I made sure to use whatever information I knew about baking veggies so I would end up with crispy eggplant bacon. Success! They were very crispy and some pieces even resembled crumbly bacon! I only subbed Cocoaminos as I don’t have tamari. I cut down on the sweetener as cocoamino sauce is sweet already (I used a little Agave nectar)

I sliced the eggplant as thin as I could with a bread knife (sounds weird but that knife is so sharp lol) even if the slices looked like they would fall apart. I find that step to be crucial. I prepared two separate pans with ALUMINUM FOIL making sure not to overcrowd. I put one pan on the top rack, one on the bottom) at 300 degrees for 30 minutes, flipped the eggplant over then switched the pans so the top pan was on the bottom rack, and vice versa. Then I baked them for 10 more minutes. I babysat them during the last 10 minutes to make sure no burning occurred. Then I couldn’t stop eating them out of the pan. Haha! You gotta put them on a cookie cooking rack to help them get crispier.

The flavor was on point!!! My meat eating husband said, “Holy S*** that’s bacon!!” He is amazed that he can have bacon without the absurd amount of fat and calories. One whole eggplant is around 20 calories! My toddler ate 8-10 pieces and she even asked for more later in the day. I immediately made the other half of eggplant and I had great results again. Thank you Minimalist Baker!! I’m keeping this recipe for ever.

Hi i tried making this. It never got “crispy” and I cooked 2 batches the first batch I turned the oven up to 250 and cooked it another 10 min, started at 25 min. Then the 2nd batch I put in on 250 and cooked it around 45 min still not crispy.

I was trying to think of a way to flavor my Colcannon for St Patrick’s day. I have always made a mixed mash of potato, rutabaga and bacon. I would usually crisp the bacon and fry the cabbage in the bacon fat. No longer appealing but I wanted the smoky flavor. I mixed up your eggplant bacon marinade in a large pan, added 1/2 a large head of cabbage chopped and sauteed until tender. I folded it into my potato rutabaga mixture and it gave such a wonderful flavor. Happy St Patrick’s day and thank you so much!

I used olive oil, habanero infused maple syrup, smoked paprika because it was what had in the house. It turned out delicious. I used the bacon as chips for hummus. To get it extra crispy, I used a dehydrator. My setting were 135F for 7 hours on parchment paper. I flipped the bacon midway through.

I’ll probably omit the liquid smoke on the next batch. The smoked paprika will probably be enough.

as others have stated the cooking time in the recipe is off. I used a mandolin and sliced them extra thin and it still took almost an hour and I even increased the oven temp! So next I will try salting the eggplant and see if that helps.

Thanks for sharing.

Wow! This goes on my short list of awesome vegan tricks. I fed this to 4 carnivores and had to keep slapping hands for them to leave some for the vegan. You’ll have extra marinade — don’t be a fool and throw it out, save it for when you run out and have that other half an eggplant staring at you. In fact, buy more baking pans, that’s what I’m going to do. This technique works great for portobellos too. I’m actually going to buy a mandoline just for this recipe to get thinner, more uniform slices. Mine took much longer than 30 minutes and I had to raise the temp to 300 just to get dinner on the table, which burned the thinner slices… although that didn’t stop anyone from eating them.

I took a chance on this recipe. I am trying to prepare more plant-based meals. Not a vegetarian. Not a vegan. But absolutely loved this recipe. I’ll be making an eggplant bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado sandwich later. Great for snacking too. I’ve eaten 5 pieces just tasting alone. Lol. Thanks for keeping this carnivore honest for a meatless Monday meal.

These were wonderful! I had to bake them for a lot longer in the oven, though. I baked them for about 50 minutes, but I think that might be because I didn’t use a mandolin, and my pieces might have been too thick. It was still lovely! I will definitely make this again, and possibly with a tiny bit less liquid smoke next time. It’s the perfect amount if you are only going to have 2 pieces or so, but if you plan to eat more then it might be a bit heavy on the smoke. Thanks!

The sauce is wonderful! The time and temp didn’t work out for me but knocked it down to 170° F and let it ride till it was crispy. Over an hour not sure exactly how long. It eventually got crispy and I was I heaven! The whole fam approved! Love your recipes! Keep up the his work sister!

Hi – use the dehydration method for cooking it works well – did it at 165 F for 2 hours

Flavor is great. The first time I tried the recipe, my eggplant didn’t crisp up. The second time, I had more pieces, so I used a second baking sheet. After about two hours in the oven at 225, the pieces on the the second baking sheet (which is a bit thinner and has no raised edges, so maybe conducts heat better?) had crisped up nicely, while those on the original baking sheet remained limp. So for people with limp eggplant, maybe try a different baking sheet and a longer cooking time.

Tried the eggplant bacon. Not a fan. My eggplant slices were probably too thin but didn’t like the smell well enough to try it with bigger slices.

Made this today – I used the 1/8 inch setting on my mandoline and a two convection ovens since I didn’t want half an eggplant leftover. At 40 minutes, the oven with one tray was perfectly crisped, and the top tray in my oven with two racks was also perfectly crisped. The lower tray took another 20 minutes – I think that tray had some slightly thicker pieces on it. I had a tough time getting the pieces off my parchment paper – the thinner edges liked crackling off. We used it in an ELT sandwich, and it was a hit for two of three children and a winner for me. I’ll use the crispy pieces on salads for flavor bits, and enjoy some more sandwiches with the rest! Thanks for the recipe and thanks to your readers for reviewing their successes and failures.

Just FYI 107 C is NOT 250 F, it is 386 F. Let this cook for 30 mins before I realized. It would be helpful if you corrected this above.

This was super tasty. I agree with the other comments about temperatures; I turned mine up to 350 and they still weren’t crispy after a while, but they were yummy anyways.
I didn’t have Worcestershire or maple syrup… so I subbed 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar snd 1 tbsp soy sauce. I really like how this turned out, and how it leveled in with the flavors. I put the “bacon” strips on a black bean-beet-quinoa burger I had made a few days ago. Great combo with arugula and sautéed leeks ??

First off…I really like eggplant & I did try this recipe. My slicing skills leave something to be desired so I had various thicknesses of pieces therefore not all crisped up. I only did half if the eggplant “just in case”. I must say, I loved it….even the limpies. I will definately do this again…maybe in my air fryer or convection oven. I did omit the oil and lightly spray the sliced pieces with spray oil to make it a zero point food on Weight Watchers. Even with the limpies, I give it a 5 star. I could eat the whole eggplant fixed this way.?

First off, I love this recipe. The marinade is spot-on perfect as is, but is also very agreeable to the modifications most cooks eventually make to any recipe. I used soy sauce, a mix of vinegars (balsamic and ACV for bite and red wine and rice wine for a dash of sweet), added a few of my usual “house” spices (tumeric, cumin, and coriander for example) and it turned out fantastic.
My only criticism is of the cooking method and temps. I don’t like using parchment paper, mostly because I don’t like generating trash. And I think a lot of the crunch controversy probably stems from there. Parchment paper tends to make things crunchy ?

But I used my pizza rounds (with holes in them). That worked pretty well, but at 250° it took f..o..r..ever ? and still didn’t crunch up right. So I shifted strategies with my next batch (made 3 back to back).

What worked for me was 350° for 5 minutes, then back off to 250° for 5 minutes, then back to 350° for 5, and so on. Once they’re close to “done” you have to watch them very closely (else they’ll burn a bit -still taste great to us but may not be everyone’s best taste). Setting the temp to 250° at that point and leaving it there for while would probably work. I also turned them over in the last 5 minutes of cooking, to aid crunchiness.

This took cooking times from 50+ minutes with no crunch, to 15ish minutes and perfect crunch.
They’re also fantastic reheated in a toaster oven for a couple of minutes.

A+ recipe that’s going into our regular rotation ??

I have the eggplant in the oven right now. It’s been at 225 degrees for 20 minutes and far from crispy so I bumped it to 250 degrees for 10 minutes and basically no change. So I just bumped it to 400 degrees for 10 minutes and we shall see! It smells amazing! Just need it to get crispy.

You are the only person whose gotten me to eat and enjoy eggplant, first with the queso and now the bacon. Well played, Dana. This stuff was awesome, did my my happy dance while eating the BLT.

Hi Dana! This was a FLOP…
I’ve made several of your recipes and they always turn out great. Thanks so much for sharing. I don’t know what happen with this recipe but I followed the recipe as written and I came out with floppy eggplant never crispy. My oven is at correct temperature. I will continue to follow your recipes because everyone 8 tried was awesome until This eggplant bacon.

The sauce was incredibly tasty but I could not get the texture right. I sliced the eggplant very thin and baked it as the recipe suggested and all of the eggplant was still soggy. I turned up the heat to 350 and baked it for 10-15 minutes more and it was still soggy. I love the taste, but I can tell it would be so much better if I could get it a bit more crispy.

The flavor of this was nice, but the eggplant didn’t get crispy, even after increasing the cooking time 3x. After the initial recommended time, the eggplant was very spongy and soft. In the end, it came out texture wise of eggplant leather or jerky.

I made this, in fact, it’s been several times now but I have to admit that I did have a problem with the eggplant crisping up— in the oven. But problem solved. I got a food dehydrator and I started making my eggplant bacon in it, and OMG, wonderful!!!! We love it. The flavors intensifies. I read somewhere that if you store your bacon in glass jars it will remain crisp so that is what I do. I don’t know if it will keep beyond the 5 days, because ours has yet to last that long. I crave the vegan French toast casserole that I make and “bacon” comes to breakfast. When I cook greens or beans, “bacon” is my “meat”. I make “BLT’s— delish! So 2???? Up and 5 stars Dana, for a wonderfully satisfying recipe. (Also, I am able to use 2 eggplants with my dehydrator, and I just have an average size one.)

I love your recipes, but not this one. I’ve made it twice and both times I’ve gotten limp, slimy slices after following it exactly. Even 30 minutes cooking time at 250… not even close. Eggplant was sliced very thin so it’s not that. Tried higher heat and it burned. We left the last batch in the oven on lowest setting for almost an hour and they *still* were limp. Everyone at my fake bakin competition liked the flavor, but the texture was too disappointing (luckily I had also made rice paper bakin, so I still won!). I won’t make it again, but my suggestions would be to salt and press the water out of the eggplant slices first and then fry.

I made this tonight! Pretty tasty but my eggplant did not crisp, even after pan frying it. I wonder if I saturated the eggplant with too much sauce? Will try again, this time with a longer cook time. Still tasted good on the BLT.

I made this the night before to minimize prep for eBLTs and it was all I could do to stop eating it and leave enough for the next day. The marinade is amazing and the bacon is so, so tasty! The only change I had for the recipe is that it took me longer than 30 minutes to get mine to the right crispiness/color – more like 50 minutes to an hour. When I tried turning up the oven at the end to crisp up the bacon it got away from me and I burned the batch. It’s certainly more of an art than a science, but worth it! Will make again.

This ended up tasting pretty good, but it would not crisp up! After about 45 minutes at 275F they were still floppy, so I upped it to 375F, which did the trick.

OMG! I Can’t Stop Eating Them!
I too met with wimpy pieces after baking. Luckily I had a dehydrator and in they went for 24 hours. Whala, perfect! Then I put the left overs in a brown paper bag and put in fridge for snacking at work. Well that bag didn’t last very long! I used to do something similar with zucchini, but don’t think I’ll be going back.
Thank you for your experimenting,
Laura

I made this and it was delicious! I left out the liquid smoke and just upped the amount of smoked paprika. My first batch was chewy more than crispy, and I had cooked that batch at 225 for 30 minutes in a regular oven. So for the second batch, I was stingier with the sauce and just brushed a bit on. I cooked it at 250 for 30 minutes. And it was perfect! It crisped up nicely. I did use a mandolin to slice the eggplant and it was a regular oven.

Amazing recipe! I’m not a fan of mock soy meats, so when I saw this recipe I was instantly sold. I’ve since made this 4 times and keep coming back. The first time I made this I didn’t add as much sauce coating, which still turned out well, but the next few times I drenched them and they were amazing. However, this did require them to be in the oven longer, but it was definitely worth the wait!

So good! I realized during the process that I was out of parchment paper so I used a baking stone, and was delighted when they did not stick to it! Since the bacon recipe calls for half an eggplant, I used the other half to make a batch of your cashewless queso. This was my first attempt at either recipe, and they were delicious together, on top of a big pile of nachos. You rock my plant based world!!

I am an absolute MESS in the kitchen and pretty much butcher everything I try to cook :)
BUT THIS BACON worked out and was absolutely delicious! I put it in a BLT with spinach and veganaise. Extraordinary. Even gobbled up by my carnivorous boyfriend!

Thank you so much for this recipe! Living in a high altitude I bumped the oven temp to 400• cooked for 20 minutes on each side for thicker pieces, 15 for thinner pieces and the about a minute or two under the broiler for ultimate crispness. My boyfriend commented all of the flavor without any of the cruelty. Bravo and thank you for being a pioneer in cooking.

So many have said they didn’t get crispy. My thoughts on this are you’re not necessarily “baking” to crispness, but dehydrating the eggplant. Soooo be cautious in raising the temp. I used the low temp, and kept watching to make sure none were burning. In a reg. oven, it helps to leave the door slightly ajar so the moisture escapes, otherwise it’s too limp or burn. That’s the key, that’s why a dehydrator or air fryer work well. Once I they look brown enough, I take them out onto a paper towel, and within a min they either crisp up or limp. The limp ones I put back in the oven a few min. Voila, it worked well and I didn’t raise the temp.

Thanks for this recipe, it’s going to perk up my sandwiches & meals for sure!!

I was so excited to try this recipe and while the glaze was delicious, the recipe failed in my oven. I would recommend convection only. It did not crisp up at 225/250 degrees and then burned at 300 degrees.

I did this without the liquid smoke and it tastes really good! Lots of flavours even without the smoky tast it’s delicious.

I absolutely love this recipe. The flavor is awesome. I did make some minor adjustments – rather than using liquid smoke I use the South’s african Smoke spice from Trader Joe’s and I added a touch of garlic and onion powder. As for the cook time – I found it not to be substantial enough to crisp it up so I bake at 225 for 1.5 to 2 hrs. I tried slightly higher temps but it got too dark. But it was still great tasting. I also cut it by hand as the mandolin made the slices to thin for my liking. Great work on pulling these flavors together. I even use some of the leftover glaze on things such as Salmon and tempeh bacon that I had in the fridge.