How to Grill Whole Eggplants

Grilled eggplant turns up in countries as varied as Japan, Iran, Israel, and Trinidad and Tobago. Most often the eggplant is charred in the skin to make some sort of dip—baba ghanoush in the Middle East, for example, or choka in the West Indies. Elsewhere, as in Turkey and Israel, it’s diced and mixed with other grilled vegetables to make smoke-scented salads.

Cooking whole eggplant is one of the first things I teach in my grilling classes. The reason is simple: It’s one of the few foods you can burn and still come out looking good. Indeed, not only can you burn the skin, you should burn the skin, for this is what gives you the smoke flavor.