Air Fryer Eggplant Parm | Lexi’s Clean Kitchen

This Air Fryer Eggplant Parm is the ultimate summer comfort food. It retains all the flavors of traditional dishes, but uses lighter ingredients and air frying to make it healthier. The sliced ​​eggplants are wrapped in almond flour, air-fried, and topped with fresh mozzarella cheese and marina sauce. It is truly delicious.

We hope to make as many eggplant dishes as possible when the season is in full swing, and this air fryer eggplant parmesan is perfect! My recipe is a bit lighter on traditional eggplant. The eggplant is coated with almond flour and (optional) Parmesan cheese to reduce the carbohydrate content and still full of deliciousness, and then “fried” in an air fryer. This dish is comforting, but it won’t make you feel like you just had a big meal in midsummer.

We chose to stack the eggplants to look more beautiful, instead of stacking them into a casserole. This makes it possible to make the entire dish in an air fryer and makes it look more beautiful when it is plated! If you really want to use the air fryer technique to cook eggplants, but still put them in a casserole, then you can definitely do so.

Required ingredients

This is an overview of the ingredient list. Keep scrolling to see the complete recipe.

• Earth eggplant (also known as deep purple round eggplant)
• Almond powder
• Parmesan cheese (optional)
• Egg
• spices
• Marina sauce (store bought or homemade)
• Fresh mozzarella
• Fresh basil

Substitute

Want to make this dairy product free? We recommend that you do not use Parmesan cheese and use non-dairy shredded mozzarella cheese instead of fresh mozzarella cheese.

Nut allergy? If you can’t eat nuts, you can replace almond flour with gluten-free bread crumbs or regular bread crumbs.

Let’s talk about air fryer

Over the years, we have tried a lot of air fryer.We have and use this Basket style, This Instant Pot Air Fryer Accessories and this Toaster type air fryer! They all work very well! This is a personal preference of your choice. Do you want or need a new toaster? Do you have a separate space for new equipment? All of these factors will be taken into consideration when shopping and deciding what is right for you.

However, the caveat about air fryer is that some of them can be very small. If your capacity is small, you may need to make breaded eggplants in batches. Although I guess you have been using air fryer for some time, you already know this.

How to make air fryer eggplant parm

This dish is very simple to make, but it takes several steps to get the final product. Here is an overview of the steps required to make this dish (the complete recipe is listed below):

1. Prepare the eggplant, slice it and marinate. If you want, you can skip the marinating step.
2. Put the eggplant in the egg and almond meal mixture.
3. Air fried eggplant
4. Put Marila and fresh mozzarella cheese on each eggplant, then put it back in the air fryer.
5. Serve with fresh basil and enjoy!

Why add salt to eggplant (or not salt)

There are several reasons to add salt to eggplants before cooking. The first is that eggplant contains a lot of water. Adding salt before cooking will help absorb some water. This is not so important when you are baking, but it is still a useful thing when it comes to this dish. But you must let the eggplant sit for an hour to help drain the water.

The second reason for salting the eggplant first is that it allows the eggplant to taste from the outside to the inside.

However, if you don’t want to wait for the eggplant to release its moisture and want to skip this step, then there is no problem at all! Because sometimes, we just don’t have extra time to wait for our eggplants to drain!

Service Suggestion

Add a little extra horsepower sauce to the air fryer.This can be a meal in itself, or you can pair it with Side dish salad And a large chunk of crusty bread, or we can recommend our Garlic bread.

If you like this healthy Italian dish, please check out the following other dishes:

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Air Fryer Eggplant Parm

This Air Fryer Eggplant Parm is the ultimate summer comfort food. It retains all the flavors of traditional dishes, but uses lighter ingredients and air frying to make it healthier. The sliced ​​eggplants are wrapped in almond flour, air-fried, and topped with fresh mozzarella cheese and marina sauce. It is truly delicious.

• author: Lexi’s clean kitchen
• Preparation time: 00:15
• Cooking time: 00:20
• total time: 01:05
• yield: 4 Weight 1X
• category: dinner
• method: Air fryer
• diet: gluten free

• 2 Medium spherical eggplant, peeled and thinly sliced ½ round
• 2 Egg
• 1 tbsp water
• 2 cups Almond powder
• ⅓ cup Grated parmesan cheese (optional)
• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon Garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon Salt
• Pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 (24 ounces) canned marira sauce (homemade or store bought)
• 12 oz Fresh mozzarella balls, thinly sliced ¼”Round
• Fresh basil, edible
• Parmesan cheese, edible

1. Line up the trays with paper towels. Place the eggplant balls on a baking tray and lightly sprinkle with salt. Turn them over and repeat. Let the eggplant sit for at least 30 minutes, or up to two hours to release the moisture. Finally, wipe off the moisture on the eggplant with a paper towel.
2. In a shallow container, whisk together the eggs and water with a pinch of salt and pepper
3. In a separate shallow container, whisk together almond flour, Parmesan cheese (optional), Italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt, and red pepper flakes.
4. Dip the cut eggplant into the egg, then pour it into the almond flour mixture, be sure to spread it evenly. Repeat until all the eggplants are coated. Make sure to handle them carefully so as not to interfere with the coating.
5. Preheat the air fryers to 400ºF (not all air fryers need to be preheated if necessary).
6. Lightly spray the air fryer basket with avocado spray (or a similar spray without additives) and place the prepared eggplants on one layer, leaving a space between each slice. If your air fryer is small, you may need to do it in batches. Lightly spray the breaded eggplant with extra avocado spray.
7. Air fry for 15 minutes, turning the eggplant in half, or until the eggplant is light brown and tender.
8. Put about 2 tablespoons of marira sauce and a slice of fresh mozzarella on each eggplant.
9. Return to the air fryer and cook for 3-5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.
10. Serve the eggplant parmesan cheese with extra marinara sauce, fresh basil and fresh parmesan cheese.

Key words: Air Fryer Eggplant Parmesan