What to Do With All That Zucchini: 7 Easy Garden-to-Table Ideas
There comes a point every summer when growing zucchini stops feeling like gardening and starts feeling like a practical joke.
You check the garden one afternoon and see a perfectly reasonable little zucchini growing beneath the leaves.
You come back approximately twelve minutes later and somehow it's the size of a baseball bat.
By September, many Pacific Northwest gardeners have reached the same stage of zucchini season:
Please. Someone. Take. The. Zucchini.
Before you start leaving anonymous bags of squash on your neighbors' porches, we've gathered seven easy ways to turn that garden abundance into something delicious.
1. Make Crispy Zucchini Fritters
This is one of the easiest ways to use several zucchini at once.
Grate your zucchini, sprinkle it lightly with salt, and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Then squeeze out as much water as possible using a clean kitchen towel.
Mix the zucchini with:
Eggs
A little flour or breadcrumbs
Parmesan cheese
Garlic
Chopped herbs
Salt and pepper
Form the mixture into small patties and cook them in a lightly oiled skillet until they're golden brown on both sides.
Serve them warm with sour cream, Greek yogurt, tzatziki, or your favorite dipping sauce.
Garden tip: Fresh chives, parsley, dill or green onions from the garden are wonderful additions.
2. Turn Zucchini Into "Noodles"
If you have a spiralizer, zucchini noodles—or "zoodles"—are incredibly easy.
But you don't actually need special equipment.
A vegetable peeler can create long zucchini ribbons that work beautifully with pesto, tomato sauce or simply olive oil, garlic and Parmesan.
For the best texture, don't cook zucchini noodles for very long. A quick sauté is usually enough.
Better yet, toss them with fresh garden tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil for a meal that tastes like late summer.
3. Bake a Loaf of Zucchini Bread
This is the classic answer to an overflowing zucchini basket for a reason.
Zucchini adds moisture to quick breads without giving them an overwhelmingly vegetable flavor.
And zucchini bread freezes beautifully.
Make several loaves now, allow them to cool completely, wrap them well and freeze them.
A slice of homemade zucchini bread in January is a surprisingly wonderful reminder that summer really does come back eventually.
Try adding:
Walnuts
Pecans
Chocolate chips
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Lemon zest
Or make muffins instead of a loaf for easy individual portions.
4. Make Zucchini Pizza Boats
This is especially fun if you're gardening with kids.
Slice a medium zucchini lengthwise and scoop out a small portion of the center.
Add tomato sauce, cheese and whatever pizza toppings your family likes.
Bake until the zucchini is tender and the cheese is melted and bubbly.
Kids can assemble their own boats, which makes this an easy garden-to-table activity.
Even better: if you've grown tomatoes, basil or peppers, let everyone choose toppings straight from the garden.
5. Add Zucchini to Pasta Sauce
One of the easiest ways to use zucchini is also one of the least complicated.
Dice it.
Add it to dinner.
Zucchini works beautifully in tomato-based pasta sauces because it absorbs the flavors around it.
Sauté diced zucchini with onion and garlic before adding tomatoes or your favorite tomato sauce.
Throw in fresh basil toward the end.
You can leave the vegetables chunky or blend the sauce for a smoother texture—which is also a clever option for anyone who insists they "don't like zucchini."
6. Freeze Some for Later
You don't have to eat every zucchini this week.
Freezing is an easy way to save some of your harvest for later, although zucchini's high water content means its texture changes after freezing.
That's perfectly fine if you plan to use it in things like:
Soups
Stews
Sauces
Casseroles
Zucchini bread
Muffins
For shredded zucchini, portion it into the amount required by your favorite recipe before freezing. That way you can pull out exactly what you need later.
For sliced or diced zucchini, blanching before freezing can help preserve quality.
Always follow current, tested food-preservation recommendations when preparing vegetables for long-term storage.
7. Share Your Harvest
Sometimes the best zucchini recipe is:
Give it to someone else.
And we mean that sincerely.
One of our favorite things about growing food is that gardens have a wonderful tendency to produce abundance all at once.
When you have more than your household can use, share it.
Offer some to a neighbor.
Bring a basket to a friend.
Ask a local food pantry whether they're currently accepting fresh garden produce.
Let a child choose a zucchini to give to someone.
Growing food can become an opportunity to teach generosity as easily as it teaches patience.
Don't Forget the Flowers
If you're growing zucchini, the squash blossoms themselves are edible too.
Male blossoms can be harvested without sacrificing your zucchini crop as long as you leave enough flowers available for pollination.
Squash blossoms can be stuffed, lightly battered and cooked, added to quesadillas or used as a beautiful edible garnish.
Just make sure you correctly identify the flower and know that it hasn't been exposed to anything you wouldn't want on your food.
A Garden Doesn't Always Follow the Grocery List
One of the funny things about gardening is that you don't always get what you planned.
Some years, the tomatoes struggle.
Sometimes the carrots are hilariously tiny.
And then there are years when one zucchini plant apparently decides it has been personally assigned the responsibility of feeding the entire Pacific Northwest.
That's part of the experience.
A garden teaches us to work with what we have.
To experiment.
To waste a little less.
To share a little more.
And sometimes to learn seven new ways to cook zucchini.
So if your kitchen counter is currently disappearing beneath a mountain of green squash, don't panic.
Dinner is already growing.
Rainfall Roots is a program of Rainfall Ranch Rescue dedicated to gardening, food, education, land stewardship, and helping people connect with the natural world.
