If you grow zucchini sooner or later you will get to the stage where the family is sick of stuffed zucchini, zucchini fritters, zucchini ice cream…….even the neighbours have taken to taking those cylinders of veggie goodness and tossing them back over the fence after you leave them beside their front door. So here is another idea to help you use them up – zucchini chips!
There are made by slicing the zucchini thinly and then drying them out in a dehydrator of some kind, obviously I would recommend a solar drier but there are electric models on the market and in a pinch you oven set on “low” will do the trick given time. I suppose the question you’re asking is “why bother?”
Well I had excess zucchinis and I happened to be reading a book that dealt with what to do with the excess in some detail and the subject of chips came up. We don’t make that much in the way of snacks but this seemed to tick all the boxes – home producible, no food miles, no packaging, organic, easy to store and eat.
OK, you’re right, I left out taste! My assumption was that zucchini chips would taste of …………..well, zucchinis. In other words, nothing much at all, but it was still worth a go.
To get the chips to dry all at the same time, thus saving time in the drier and electricity (if you are using it) it is best to cut the chips all to the same thickness and obviously the thicker they are the longer they will take to dry. I didn’t even bother to peel the zucchinis first, which keeps the nutrition just under the skin, but it’s up to you how you want to do it.
Using the solar drier means it didn’t bother me how long they took to dry so I just used a knife to cut the zucchinis up (I am no chef!) and they were thick and thin. A mandolin or some other slicing machine would be able to give you even slicing of the desired thickness.
It took a full day in the solar drier in mid-summer and then just a couple of hours the next day to finish them off. My intention was to use spices like chilli, cumin and coriander to create a bit of taste the first lot through I wanted au natural to see what they were like as-is. Once they were finished I grabbed a couple of chips, no salt, no spices, no nothin’.
Boy was I surprised! There was a sweetness to them and a definite vegetable-y taste but they were quite nice just on their own. I am still experimenting with spices but they are just a bit of dressing for the main event – the zucchini chips themselves. So if you haven’t tried them, give ém a go.
As with other dried foods they need to be stored in a sealed container and their reduction in volume and weight due to the drying means you can store a lot of zucchini in a small area, and you can enjoy your bountiful summer crop in the middle of winter. If they last that long!
