Greek Moussaki Classic Recipe

Kitchen appliances and utensils: electric stove, two pans, several bowls of various depths and sizes, cutting board, colander, sharp knife, kitchen scales and other measuring accessories, oven, rectangular baking dish, fine grater, wooden spatula.

Ingredients

Step cooking

Eggplant

1. 4 pieces of eggplant are cut across into circles or along into tongues. The thickness of the pieces should not exceed 1 cm.
   
2. Sliced ​​eggplants are sent to a colander, sprinkled with plenty of salt to get rid of the bitterness of the vegetable.
   
3. We cover the product with flat dishes, and put a small load on top. We leave the vegetables in this form for 1-2 hours, so that they give the juice with which the bitterness comes out. In addition, this will allow eggplants to absorb less oil when frying.
   
4. After the specified time, thoroughly rinse the eggplant under running water, and then dry it on paper towels or slightly squeeze it with your hands. In a hot pan, heat 30-40 ml of vegetable oil. It is advisable to use an olive product. We put eggplant rings on hot oil and fry them on both sides until half-cooked.
   

Meat filling

1. We take three large tomatoes and cut each into 4-6 parts, then scroll them through a meat grinder.
   
2. Using a sharp knife, finely chop 1 large onion and 2 cloves of garlic.
   
3. In a clean, well-heated pan, pour 20-30 ml of vegetable oil. As soon as the oil warms up, put the chopped onion on it and fry it for literally 1-2 minutes until transparent. There we add chopped garlic and fry the vegetables together for about half a minute until a saturated garlic smell appears.
   
4. On top of fried onions and garlic, put 300 g of minced meat. Constantly smashing and grinding the stuffing with a wooden spatula to avoid the presence of large pieces, fry the components until the color of the stuffing changes. Continue roasting the minced meat over medium heat until the meat juice is completely evaporated.
   
5. As soon as the meat becomes almost dry, pour 100 ml of white wine into the pan. Stew the minced meat over high heat until the wine has completely evaporated. Add the previously twisted tomatoes to the resulting meat mass, mix.
   
6. Salt, pepper to taste, and then add the desired amount of red hot pepper and 10 g of dried oregano. If the tomatoes are very acidic, be sure to add granulated sugar. Stir the ingredients well and then simmer them until the meat is dry, stirring occasionally. In order to pick up the remains of tomato juice, add 50 g breadcrumbs or white bread crumbs. Remove the resulting mass from the heat and proceed to the preparation of the sauce.
   

Sauce

1. In a well-heated pan, put 25 g of butter and melt it. Pour 25 g of wheat flour there and fry the ingredients for 1-2 minutes with vigorous stirring.
   
2. Pour 250 ml of milk in several doses, make sure that there are no lumps. The result should be a smooth, uniform sauce.
   
3. In the finished sauce to taste, add salt and black pepper, stir.
   
4. Pour the sauce into a separate bowl and, just in case, beat the mass with a whisk in order to get rid of the lumps of flour. Let the sauce cool slightly, and then mix two chicken eggs in it.
   

Collecting Moussaka

1. Separately, grind 100 g of hard cheese, using a fine grater, then divide it by eye into four equal parts. A small bunch of parsley is finely chopped with a sharp knife. We cut one large tomato into thin half rings. In a rectangular baking dish, lap half the fried eggplant. The bottom of the mold should be completely covered with vegetables.
   
2. The vegetable layer is slightly salted and sprinkled with a small amount of oregano and grated cheese.
   
3. On top of the cheese we spread half of the total amount of minced meat, evenly distributing it and slightly pressing it to the bottom.
   
4. Next, we lay out the second half of the eggplants, also laying them out with an overlap.
   
5. Sprinkle the oregano over the vegetables again and spread the remaining minced meat. On top of the minced meat, lay out the second part of the grated cheese and all the finely chopped parsley. Next, we lay out the halves of the tomato, after which we salt and pepper it to taste.
   
6. On top of the tomatoes we spread the third part of the grated cheese. Pour the resulting composition with the prepared sauce and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
   
7. We bake the product at a temperature of 200 ° C for about 40 minutes. In order for the moussaka to be easily and evenly cut, allow it to cool for 20-30 minutes after being removed from the oven.
   

Video recipe

This video shows step by step the whole process of making moussaki according to the classic recipe described above.