Eggplant “Faux Mushrooms”

Name: Eggplant “Faux Mushrooms”
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Ukrainian cuisine
Ingredients: 5 kg eggplant; salt (to taste, for boiling); 0.5 lt well-heated sunflower oil; 200 gm ground garlic (about 1 cup); 200 gm table vinegar

September 6, 2026August 25, 2026 Kateryna Bondar

Cuisine

Ukrainian cuisine

Course

Appetizers & Snacks

Serves 4 people

The whole trick of this Ukrainian appetizer is that eggplant is coaxed into impersonating pickled mushrooms — the dense chew and the garlic-vinegar cure fool even people who grew up eating marinated wild mushrooms. And the secret isn’t the seasoning; it’s getting the water out.

Why the hanging step matters

After boiling, the cubes hang in a mesh bag for 7-8 hours (overnight is easiest). Skip it and the eggplant stays soggy, the cure dilutes, and the whole batch sours within days. Boil only until a cube pierces easily with a matchstick — go further and you get mush.

Use well-heated oil — sunflower oil fried until it just smells toasty, about a pint (0.5 l); raw oil leaves a green, uncooked taste. The heavy dose of garlic and vinegar isn’t excess: with no canning bath, they’re what keep it. Because of that, store it strictly in the fridge under a plastic lid and eat within a couple of weeks. A note for US cooks: 5 kg of eggplant is roughly 11 lb, so this is a big-batch project.

Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 464 more recipes in the section.

Ingredients

Instructions

Peel the eggplant and chop into cubes.
Boil in salted water (to taste) until done, when they pierce easily with a matchstick.
Drain, then hang in a mesh bag for 7-8 hours (convenient to do overnight) so all the moisture runs off.
Combine the eggplant with the well-heated oil, ground garlic, and vinegar, and mix well.
Pack into heat-treated jars under a plastic lid.
Store in the refrigerator.