You only need a very small amount of bacon or bacon to add very much flavor to a dish. Replacing that taste experience with something plant-based is not a given.

Fortunately, one of the first books of vegan recipes I bought - The Happy Pear: Vegan Cooking for Everyone - offered a solution to that: a recipe for bacon based on fried eggplant. That's exactly what I love about plant-based cook : you take something that is lol but not necessarily healthy and instead make something that gives a roughly similar taste experience based on vegetables. This recipe has a different preparation method: instead of frying the eggplant in the pan, it is slowly cooked in the oven . If you are in a hurry, you can choose to pan-fry the eggplant.

The idea of this recipe is that bacon is not only salt but also a touch sweet, sour and a little spicy. The marinade contains all of these flavors, making eggplant a great substitute for bacon. The longer you marinate the eggplant, the stronger the flavor becomes. Basically, 10 minutes is enough; a few hours (or overnight) is really better, though.

This eggplant bacon is delicious with (vegan ) pancakes ️, but certainly doesn't look out of place with a plate of pasta pesto either. It is also very tasty with this pasta with spinach and vegetable béchamel sauce. Or how about a burger?