7 Garden Zucchini Recipes to Use Up Your Harvest

What do you do with zucchini from the garden? Eat the young ones within a few days, and put the rest in a jar or the freezer before the refrigerator ruins them. University of Minnesota Extension caps refrigeration at about four days. After that, summer squash gets pitted skin and water-soaked flesh. Illinois Extension says to use it within two to three days for best quality.

That window is short, and the supply is large. One household-advice column puts a single plant's output at 10 to 20 pounds a season. The seven recipes below are ordered by how long the result keeps. The list starts with a raw salad you eat the day you pick and ends with frozen shreds that last into winter. You can stop at any item once your pile is under control.

The best raw zucchini is the youngest. University of Minnesota Extension notes that tiny "baby" fruits are more tender than larger ones. Its post-harvest guidance is to pick at four to six inches long. At that size the skin is thin and the seeds have barely formed, so there is nothing to cook soft.

To make the salad, run a vegetable peeler down the length of each zucchini to shave wide ribbons, or use a spiralizer. Leave the skin on. Illinois Extension calls the peel nutrient-dense and says it should never be removed. Its figures put one cup of raw sliced zucchini at 16 calories and 1.36 grams of fiber.

Dress the salad at the table, with lemon and olive oil or a thinned tahini. Zucchini is about 95 percent water, so salt and dressing start pulling liquid out of it within minutes. This one is a same-day dish.

A spiralizer turns a whole zucchini into noodle shapes in under a minute. The common mistake is to cook those noodles the way you cook pasta. Sauté them in olive oil and garlic for only two to three minutes. Any longer and they go mushy.

This is the dish for the zucchini that is a size past ribbon stage but still firm. Illinois Extension lists onions and tomatoes as natural partners for squash. Sauté the onion and garlic first, add chopped tomato, and toss the noodles through at the end so they only heat through. Serve the noodles alone or mixed into regular pasta, primavera style. Leftovers soften overnight, so cook only what you will eat.

Grilling suits the standard garden zucchini. Illinois Extension puts the ideal size for elongated varieties at 2 inches or less in diameter and 6 to 8 inches long. It also says most gardeners harvest too late. Fruit is often ready 4 to 8 days after the flower opens, and faster in hot weather. That is why Illinois Extension recommends checking plants every one to two days at peak season.

Cut each zucchini lengthwise into planks so they cannot fall through the grates. Brush both sides with olive oil and salt them. Grill until each side is marked and the center just yields to a fork. Finish with chopped herbs while the planks are hot. Leftover planks can be layered in place of pasta sheets in a zucchini lasagna.

Every garden grows one zucchini that hid under the leaves. Illinois Extension's answer for oversized fruit is to hollow it out for stuffing. Recipe writer Kalyn Denny gives the one step that makes it work: "trim away the large seeds and some of the inside white part," because in a big zucchini that core turns watery and tough.

Halve the zucchini lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and chop the firm flesh you removed into the filling. Brown Italian sausage with onion, then add tomato, the chopped zucchini and cheese. Cook the meat fully before stuffing, because the bake is short. Bake the filled boats at 375°F for 25 to 30 minutes.

There is a limit. Illinois Extension says zucchini longer than 12 inches should go to the compost pile, not the oven.

Grating is how you use a lot of zucchini at once without anyone tasting it. Illinois Extension recommends grating zucchini in the 10 to 12 inch range for zucchini bread or chutney. The figures below come from a household-advice column, so treat them as starting points rather than tested ratios. About half a cup of grated zucchini per pound of ground beef keeps burgers juicy without changing their flavor. Two cups can go into chocolate cake or muffin batter for moisture.

Two rules matter more than the amounts. First, squeeze the grated zucchini hard in a clean kitchen towel before it goes into anything. It is mostly water, and that water makes batters gummy and meat loose. Second, keep raw zucchini out of yeast bread dough, because its moisture disrupts the rise.

Refrigerator pickles are packed in hot vinegar brine and stored cold instead of being processed in a canner. They keep for 2 to 4 weeks, and a quick version takes about 10 minutes of hands-on work.

For the brine, use a tested ratio rather than guessing. The National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) bread-and-butter zucchini recipe uses 16 cups of sliced zucchini and 4 cups of thinly sliced onions. Its brine is 4 cups of white vinegar at 5% acidity, 2 cups of sugar, 4 tablespoons of mustard seed, 2 tablespoons of celery seed and 2 teaspoons of ground turmeric. A quarter batch fits one refrigerator shelf:

There is also a no-vinegar route. A fermented zucchini relish made with zucchini, salt, water and pickling spices is ready in about a week and keeps for months.

Freezing keeps zucchini longest, about a year by one household estimate, but only if you prepare it first. Never freeze zucchini whole and raw, because it thaws mushy and watery. The NCHFP method for grated zucchini uses blanching, a brief heat treatment that stops the enzymes responsible for loss of flavor, color, texture and vitamins.

Pack the blanched shreds into containers with 1/2-inch headspace. Set the containers in cold water to cool them, then seal and freeze. Illinois Extension suggests one-cup portions so each bag matches a recipe. If the zucchini is watery when thawed, NCHFP says to discard the liquid before using it.

For soups and sautés, freeze slices instead. Cut them 1/2 inch thick, water blanch for 3 minutes, and pack with the same 1/2-inch headspace.

If you are looking at a counter full of zucchini, start at the bottom of the list. Pickles and freezer bags buy you weeks and months, and the raw and grilled dishes can wait for tomorrow's picking. To keep the pile from coming back, check the plants every day or two and pick at 6 to 8 inches. Illinois Extension notes that large, seedy fruit drains energy the plant would otherwise spend on new zucchini. If you own a canner and want something different, NCHFP also has a tested zucchini-pineapple recipe. It turns 4 quarts of peeled zucchini into 8 to 9 pints.