Freezerphile: The overabundant Zucchini

It is that time of year again, when your friends and loved ones bring you generous, copious, seriously ridiculous amounts of zucchini from their gardens. I often wonder, why do they grow so much zucchini? Nonetheless, there it is. And you have to do something with it. I don't have an arsenal of zucchini recipes I love, but I do love zucchini bread. I also only own one bread pan for making it, along with only so much time!

This year I decided to freeze my excess zucchini to avoid wasting it. Knowing that I'd most likely just make bread out of it, I ended up shredding it prior to freezing. But really, you could freeze it in any size or shape. As some of you know, I often use ice cube trays to freeze my goods, but clearly the zucchini was too big for that. I wanted to freeze it in the exact quantity that I would need to make one loaf of bread when the mood hit. So, this is how I did it.

Measure your desired amount of zucchini. Pack tightly.

On a sheet of foil, flip the measured amount over and remove the container. The zucchini should hold its shape. Like making a sand castle!

If your foil was a rectangle shape, fold edges to change its shape into a square. The next step doesn't work well with a rectangle.

Next, bring one corner up. As you bring the next corner, create a fold between the two by folding the first corner's edge inward, while folding the new corner's edge outward. Hopefully the picture does it justice, because I know that explanation did not. I'm not so good with the words.

This is the end result of all that folding. You want it to be easily peeled away from the zucchini once frozen, without any of the shreds getting stuck inside the foil. With this technique you can just pull at the corners and it comes right off.

This is your end product. As you can see, the foil is reusable in the end and no zucchini remains stuck to it.

Don't leave your zucchini in the foil too long, as the freezer can dehydrate it. Once frozen, simply remove the foil and place it in a labeled container or bag.

Now that I've discovered this method of preserving zucchini, friends, feel free to bring me more.