What are you going to do with your harvest from the garden? You've toiled all summer to have a bountiful harvest, and now it's time to preserve it to use until next year's harvest. It's not just zucchini cake and pumpkin pie but fun and easy ways, and yes, a bit healthier, too, to use your surplus.
Zucchini is one of those vegetables that you check one day, and it's not quite ready to pick. The next day you go out and it's tripled in size overnight! What do you do with all of that zucchini!?! I know your first thought is zucchini bread, zucchini bars with cream cheese frosting (one of my favorites, BTW) or chocolate zucchini cake. It's typical to lean toward sweet treats because that's just what you know! But, I have found healthier ways to use it up.
First, we love it fresh, sliced thinly and sautéed in a little olive oil and butter until it's browned a little on both sides and sprinkled with shredded parmesan cheese. Delish!! We've also really started to enjoy zucchini fries with parmesan, panko and spices in the air fryer. Then, I'll either slice them or chunk them up, add tomatoes, onions and Italian sausage (our sausage is homemade venison sausage) for an easy and tasty suppertime meal. Lastly, one of my more recent faves is zucchini lasagna! You slice them thinly the long way so they look like a lasagna noodle. There's a fair amount of water in zuccini, so I like to lay them out on a parchment covered cookie sheet to bake at a low temp to get some of that moisture out. Make your lasagna as normal replacing the pasta with your thinly-sliced zucchini. I often make a second one and freeze it for later. Okay.... one more! spiralized zucchini is great to use in place of spaghetti, and it's super easy if you have a spiralizer, which are available at most department stores for pretty cheap. I just cook mine in a little olive oil and garlic, then top with whatever I would spaghetti noodles - tomato-based sauce, alfredo, carbonara, whatever!
In addition to using it fresh, I will shred and freeze it in quart bags to add to soups and stews. It adds amazing flavor, and even your pickiest of eaters will never know it's there! (I always love doing that!!) I do the same with cabbage - and I don't steam it or parboil it at all. Just shred, bag up, and freeze. And, lastly, I will cut it into chunks, spread them on a cookie sheet with parchment, and put it in the freezer. After they're frozen, throw them in a gallon bag to use in soups, stews or other dishes. I can add as little or as much as I want since they're not a solid mass. This works great with winter squash, too.
My favorite squash is Butternut. I will add chunks to soups and stews, too, but my favorite is to roast those chunks on a cookie sheet (the pan I prefer to use is a baking stone sheet) with some olive oil and array of spices. Roast at 450 degrees until they're dark around the edges. The first time I saw the black edges I thought they were ruined! Argh!! When I taste tested one, though, they were little crispy edges of delicious sweetness. Amazing! I will also cook squash up and then freeze it. The easiest way to cook squash is put the whole thing in the crockpot - if it will fit! No need to slice it in half or even poke holes in it. After a few hours, I poke it with a fork. If it goes through easily, it's done! Let it cool, easily slice it open, remove the seeds and skin and mash it up. You can use it right away or freeze it in quart bags, usually in 2 cup portions, for later use. I will make both sweet squash dishes, using maple syrup as the sweetener, and savory squash dishes. One of my other favorites is squash pancakes with a little cinnamon, sometimes adding in nutmeg, cloves and allspice, too.
What about other garden veggies? Onions... hang in a cool place and use as needed. We use them up quick enough that there's no need to freeze these, but they could also be cut up, spread out on a surface to freeze, and bagged up. I will do that with bell peppers, celery and green onions, too, whether from our garden or the grocery store. If I have spinach that I can't use fast enough, I'll throw that in a bag to freeze - once again to add to whatever dishes use cooked spinach.
Carrots, green beans, broccoli, hot peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers take a bit more work to preserve. Actually, carrots, green beans and broccoli are pretty easy. My husband and I steam, cool in an ice bath, spread out to freeze and then bag up for use all winter, although he has made hot pepper green beans before, too. Those were pretty yummy to crunch on! Hot peppers my husband pickles and cans - banana and jalapeño - and, he'll use them for salsa. Cayenne chili peppers, though, just need to hang and dry. When you want to spice up a dish, blend them up in a food processor or Magic Bullet - just let the dust settle first. That's killer to breathe in! Tomatoes we use for salsa, but I love canning my own Rotel and fire-roasted tomatoes, too. With whatever large or roma tomatoes are left over, we cut out the core, throw as many as we can in a freezer bag to, again, use in soups, stews or other dishes. Super easy! Cucumbers are pickled and canned like the hot peppers, but you'll need bulbs of garlic and dill sprigs to add to them. I was thinking of trying pickled relish this year. That would be fun to try!
This year we also tried two new vegetables - Poblano peppers and Brussels sprouts. I'm curious to see how we not only harvest the Brussels sprouts, but how to preserve them. They are fun to see grow on the stalk, but we have not a clue on what to do next. The adventures in our home just never end. Pretty wild and crazy, for sure! LOL.
I hope you got some helpful tips with how to preserve either your garden harvested or purchased veggies. We've kind of fine-tuned our processes after years of practice, but it can still get a little hairy when everything is coming in at once! The best part is having all of that food that you grew yourself or bought at the farmer's market available all winter long.
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