On Saturday I was at a family party with my brothers and sister. They were reminiscing about all the times my mom made them take the little red wagon around the neighborhood filled with zucchini to get rid of it. It was pretty funny. I know everyone has heard of or has their own stories about zucchini being snuck into cars etc. in an attempt to be rid of it. We like zucchini, we must because we keep planting it, but at some point, enough is enough. The problem is, when we aren’t drowning in it, we still need it for soups, casseroles, etc. It’s expensive in the middle of winter, and because you were giving loads of it away only months before, the thought of paying top dollar for it at the grocery store just seems WRONG! Dehydrating may be the answer your looking for!!!
In my attempt to learn new skills this year, I broke out the dehydrator and the pile of zucchini on the counter became my first victim, why not, I wouldn’t be too upset it I messed it up, right! In my quest for dehydrating knowledge I turned to good old Google and it didn’t disappoint. I found a terrific article on Gnowfglins.com. She has some great tips. I want to be able to use my zucchini for bread, soups, casseroles, etc. so I chose to shred my zucchini. I always peel my zucchini before I use it, I just prefer it that way, so that was step # one. Some of my zucchini was pretty large, my “picker” was at EFY last week, so on the larger zucchini I scooped out the seeds before I shredded it. I didn’t want any huge or tough seeds floating in my bread or soup. I pulled out my food processor to get the shredding job done quickly. One of the tips I found on Gnowfglings was to measure out your zucchini when placing it on your dehydrating trays so you know how much zucchini you will have when it is reconstituted, BRILLIANT!!!!
I don’t have the special netting trays for smaller items for my dehydrator (they are pricy) so I just used parchment paper on my dehydrating trays. (It worked great. I was worried about the air flow etc. but I didn’t have any problems.) On each piece of parchment I measured out one cup of zucchini, I spread the shreds as thin as I could, the pieces did overlap etc. but I didn’t have big piles or a thick layer. After getting all my zucchini loaded into the dehydrator I turned it on at 115 degrees for 12 hours. The next morning when I checked in on my project the bottom tray was done so I bagged it up but the 
other trays needed more time so I turned on the dehydrator for an additional two hours. At this point all the parchment lined trays were done but the three trays I had used “fruit leather” inserts on were still a little wet. They took an additional two hours. The hardest part for me when it comes to dehydrating is determining when something is dried to perfection. Zucchini was super easy, it is brittle when finished, and I could easily tell when it needed more time.
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When all the zucchini was dry I loaded it into quart size bags. I put 4 (wet) cups of zucchini in each bag. Four cups is the amount of zucchini I need each time I make zucchini bread. After I divided it all into quart bags I loaded all the bags into one gallon size Ziploc bag. I will do some follow up posts when I use my dehydrated zucchini this winter.
So… if your neighbor kids show up pulling a little red wagon or if random zucchini show up in your car or on your doorstep, try dehydrating some!!! It’s simple and what’s not to like about zucchini bread in the middle of winter!!!
BTW I was cooking up lasagna at the same time I was shredding the zucchini and thought, “why not,” and dumped about 4 cups of shredded zucchini into my tomato sauce and cooked it up. I was stressing a little bit because the husband and kids get a little persnickety sometimes, but it hid perfectly in the sauce, it looked like mozzarella cheese. No one figured it out so “big pat on the back for me.” The lasagna was YUMMY, it made enough for leftovers and I snuck in a BONUS veggie. WIN – WIN!
