This eggplant is too far gone, but smaller brown and orange skin patches can be OK

What you see: Brown/orangish colors in your eggplant’s skin.
What it is: Likely chilling injury.
Eat or toss: The eggplant pictured above was too far gone to save. But if you only see a small patch of orange, you’re good to cut it off and eat the rest.

So, can you eat an eggplant like this with squishy orange areas? Is it rotting? Here’s the story.

This eggplant had it rough.

It was refrigerated at the store, then, en route to a medley of roasted vegetables, it was refrigerated at home. Eggplants are finicky and don’t like temperatures as cold as most American fridges (here’s a less dramatic consequence of too-cold eggplant storage).

So, most likely, this eggplant’s cells weren’t up to the repeated chilly challenges and they started to go a little haywire, with things leaking out of their membranes, which reacted with each other and oxygen, ultimately creating those icky, soft patches on the eggplant’s skin.

Too-cold temperatures in transit, at the store or at home are bad for eggplants

Based on the pattern of the orange splotches, Chris Gunter, vegetable production specialist at North Carolina State University, suspects that, on the truck ride to the store, the eggplant could have been stored at the edge of a box close to the refrigeration unit. That could have caused an oxidation reaction in some of the particularly chilled outer cells.

“It’s not ideal when we see this kind of damage,” Gunter said. “One side was probably laying on the colder part of the cooler and the turnover wasn’t high. I’m guessing when she bought this it probably stayed in their fridge quite a while.”

But, sometimes you can cut around soft areas on an eggplant

If you see this kind of bronzed skin on your aubergine, and it isn’t too widespread, you’re fine to cut it off and eat the rest. But, if it’s formed a wet lesion, as this one has (see that mushy spot), you probably don’t want to eat it as microbes could be making their way in. Before you start cooking with any eggplant with orange or brown patches, you’ll also want to do a careful inspection for any mold or signs of rot.

In your home garden, orange spots on an eggplant could be a sunburn

One more thing—since this eggplant was purchased at the store, it likely developed those brown patches long after it was harvested, and even after it landed in Tina B.’s fridge in Oak Park, IL (thanks Tina, for your field research and photography!). But, if you see an eggplant with similar colors on its skin in your garden at home, you could be looking at a sunburn. Under intense sunlight, eggplant cells can die, leaving behind brown areas and tough, leathery skin.