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What to do with TONS of ZUCCHINI!
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May 21, 2024
It seems like even if you have just 1 zucchini plant, you end up with more zucchini than you can possibly use. That is unless you know how to process and store it for future use! In this video, I'll show you how we process our Zucchini for year-round use. Recipes from this video Zucchini Bread: https://pantrypreparedness.com/easy-and-tasty-zucchini-bread/ Zucchini Cookies (with Cream Cheese Frosting): https://pantrypreparedness.com/zucchini-cookies-with-cream-cheese-frosting/ Chocolate Zucchini Cake (with Chocolate Icing): https://pantrypreparedness.com/chocolate-zucchini-cake-with-chocolate-icing/ Also, here's the food processor (which is also my go-to blender) that we used in this video and that we always use for our food processing needs. https://amzn.to/3EnBBy1 Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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0:00
Hey, thanks for being here. We're Rick and Julie here for Penton Preparedness
0:04
So you planted a zucchini plant. Or maybe two. But you ended up with a lot of zucchini
0:14
And we're here to help you know what you can do. I mean, there's always the option of leaving it for a neighbor or maybe playing a game like
0:26
zucchini jenga. That's our favorite. Or maybe you could just carry it like, no, let's not
0:36
Today let's talk about exactly how we're going to store this zucchini so that we can use it all throughout the year
0:46
So step one is to just peel the zucchini with a regular vegetable peeler
0:52
I do it on a parchment paper to help not have a big mess
0:56
and then I can save it and give the scraps to my chickens as a treat, which they love
1:04
You can see it goes pretty quick. Like, it doesn't take much longer to peel one of these than like an individual carrot or potato
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And I am not that great at peeling, so don't judge my peeling skills
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And then flip it over. You just want to be careful. You don't catch your fingers. And they do get slippery where they're peeled
1:24
They kind of bleed. little zucchini tears just real quick you just want to make sure you get all the peels off
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you don't have to get quite all the way to the bottom you're going to cut that off anyway on the top slippery
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then you move over to the cutting board then we just cut off the top
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in the bottom and this is a pretty big zucchini so you want to cut it into kind of
1:54
chunks sections so you can manage it. Because we are going to put it through our food processor
2:01
to help save us a lot of time and it has to be able to fit. So I quarter these chunks
2:08
and then we'll get the seeds out in just a second. I've got a really cool hack for that
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so you don't lose a bunch of the zucchini. You just take a regular spoon
2:22
and you can see the, fruit. See that right there. There's kind of a line. So that's what we're going to just scoop out and you just use your spoon and you can go down and it scoops right out. And the chickens love that with the seeds. That's like their favorite. With our pile here. Now once she's doing that, you might be wondering like, what am I going to use this much zucchini for? We've already used some zucchini this year. We love to make zucchini bread. We make zucchini cookies just a couple days ago
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chocolate cake was delicious. So lots of really great recipes. In fact, I'll share some recipes at pantrypreparedness.com slash recipes
3:03
I'll link to those in the description. You can use shredded zucchini as like a substitute for pasta like in a lasagna
3:10
We don really do that very much personally but a lot of people do and it works pretty effectively Zucchini is fantastic because it is really good at taking the flavors of the things you put with it So it doesn have a lot of its own gross flavor
3:26
But in baking especially, it provides and holds the moisture in your baking
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So it makes your baked goods really moist and tasty, but they mostly just take on the flavors of whatever you're cooking with them
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This is like one of the most prolific vegetables you can plant
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It just, you plant it, and as long as the plant itself does not die
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and you get any pollinators around, you're going to get a lot of zucchini typically
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We planted a lot of sunflowers this year in our garden, and that has made our produce really go great because the bees love the flowers, too, in our garden
4:07
See, you can do that whole giant zucchini in, like, a minute. Next, we're going to just grate it
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And the best and easiest way to do that is with the food processor
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This handy tool will make this so fast. So we just have the cheese grater accessory
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And if you don't have a food processor, you can literally just use your cheese grater
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Just go get like whatever those costs $3. And then you just like grade it
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And it would be fine. And that's all we're doing here. But this is so fast
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And if you get really good at it, you can like stack them up
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I'm just going to get loud
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If you're going to grow zucchini, you should get one of these
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and you have a bunch of grated zucchini. Once we get to this point, we like to measure it out into two cup portions
5:25
And I've washed my hands, so you just kind of fill it in your measuring cup
5:37
And I'm usually generous. because it will squish down and then you can get a baggie and it's good to always
5:50
date any food that you make so you just write on your baggie 823 and you can
5:57
put it in the bag that's what I've done in the past when you use it you will want
6:03
to let it defrost first and there will be liquid in the bag that's okay just
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make sure it goes in your recipe. Put it all in because the recipe is anticipating that
6:15
moisture from the zucchini. And then you can do a bunch of these or you want to make it last
6:23
longer. Because, you know, even regular Ziploc bags, the sandwich bags, or even if you're
6:31
going to use like freezer bags over time they going to freezer burn So what we going to do is we actually going to vacuum seal these It got to get set up here real quick I use this
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vacuum sealer all the time now since we got it. Got that ready to go. And here's how these work
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They have, this is the larger size bag right here. I'm actually going to use the smaller size bag
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I got this box of these at Costco. They had them on sale. They're not even like the food saver brand
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they're Kirtland, but they're like exactly the same. And so I have a ton of these now just from that one package, which is pretty cool
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You probably hear me talk about Costco a lot on this channel. It's kind of like a preparedness person's dream store
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So I just stick this in here. Now, this is a roll
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I don't buy the individual little bags. I think they're kind of a waste of money. You pay a lot more for a lot less
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essentially I just need to start with one end closed to make it into its own little bag
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I close that up, press this all the way down to the closed setting
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And then I press the seal button. And this little red light turns on and it tells me it's sealing
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And when it turns off, I know it's done. I've used a couple other different models and they work basically the same
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There we go. Now I've found, like that seal looks totally fine
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but a lot of times when I go to enclose them, the seal won't be perfectly sealed
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and I'll lose the vacuum pretty quickly. So I actually pull it out just a little bit further
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like an eighth of an inch further, and seal it a second time on each end. It takes an extra few seconds
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but I get that double seal, which is really nice. All right, so then I can open it up
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And this is the part where I'm going to have to kind of estimate, but we know that two cups fit really well inside of this bag
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So if I do something similar and then give myself a little extra room
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The cool thing is it's actually got this built-in slicer. So there we go
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Open it up here and fill the bag. Okay, there's a lot of moisture in the zucchini
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So you're going to see here in just a second when I go to seal this up. First of all, I don't want any pieces right there where I'm going to seal it
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because they'll prevent it from sealing very well. But the other thing is, let's see here
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when I stick it in here, the end, by the way, has to go into this little kind of cup thing there
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That's where it's going to suck into, and it's made to be able to capture some of that moisture
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if it gets sucked out. But I don't want to suck out all the moisture. So I'm going to press this vacuum seal button
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and once I see it getting to where it's starting to suck moisture up, I'm going to go ahead and just press the seal button
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It'll stop vacuuming and just start. ceiling. I have found I do that a lot with like cooked chicken. I do that with this kind of thing
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because I don't want all the moisture to get lost because of the vacuuming process. So I probably
9:37
don't get quite as much vacuum, but it's going to suck out most of the air first. See
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it's still just air, air, moisture. If I'd let that go until it stopped on its own, I would have
9:49
lost a lot of this moisture which is part of the zucchini It part of what we going to use it in the recipes okay so then I opened it up same thing I slide it back a little
10:00
bit I go ahead close it seal it one more time even while it's sealing I'll go
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ahead and run the slicer because that'll basically cut it off just a little bit
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past that second seal you can hear that there's some moisture in
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beneath it and sizzling sizzle sizzle okay So that's done. You see it cut it off right there nice and straight. Then I'm actually going to go ahead and kind of spread it flat
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And label. Yes, and label. But by spreading it out like this, I'm going to make it freeze faster and more evenly
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Plus, it's going to make it store better because I'm going to end up with a whole bunch of flat like pancake shaped sized things that stack pretty well
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So we date that so we know how old it is. And we're good to go
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There's another bag of frozen zucchini. So that one large zucchini just gave us six cups of zucchini
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So, almost perfectly. Almost like slightly over, because we are generous there
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Just something to keep in mind, a lot of these kind of more medium sized ones, probably more like four cups
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The littlest ones, what do you think? More like two cups. Yeah
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So, I mean, this right here alone is enough to make a batch of zucchini bread
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So you can also freeze your cheese. zucchini bread? Yeah, you can make the bread and then freeze it. Which is a great way to preserve it
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If you're making like a giant, I like to make a double batch of a time, I get at least five
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loaves. Well, we could eat through that all in one. With our family. With our big family. We, oh, I need my spoon. We, uh, we tend to put some in
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the freezer for later. And of course you can always just use fresh zucchini in any of these recipes
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We're just showing you you can also not use it all today
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to process because these little ones are better for cooking. So if you want to put them in the
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oven or fry them on the stove, a little garlic, salt, and olive oil, these are the ones you want
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to save. The big ones are not as great for cooking. So we love to process those, shred them up
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and use them in baking. And other than that, just make sure that you don't miss the links below
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where you can check out our recipes at pantry preparedness.com for all the great things that we
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like to make with our zucchini. And you feel free to tell us what you love to make too
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Absolutely. Tell us in the comments below. We'd love to hear from you
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