Ryan shows us another great way to use all the zucchini that takes over everyone’s summer garden.

Wash and cut the end off of one large zucchini. Shred it using the large holes of a cheese grater. Squeeze the shredded zucchini inside of a clean towel until you’ve removed as much liquid as possible. Place shredded zucchini into a medium sized bowl. Add minced garlic, breadcrumbs, cheese (shredded), eggs, kosher salt and pepper to taste. Stir with a fork until well mixed. Heat olive oil (about ¼ inch deep in bottom of skillet) to a medium heat. When the oil is hot enough drop a glob of zucchini batter into the skillet and flatten it a bit. After about two minutes, turn the cakes over ( they should be nice golden-brown) and cook on the other side until done (about 2-3 minutes). Serve with the dipping sauce of your choice and enjoy!

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Happy Monday, dear friends! Today’s rip-roarin’ recipe is from Ryan Detzel, a twenty-something punk pastor from Cincinnati who has more than just a few tattoos on his arms. But he also adores his wife and sweet little daughter, Ava…and he loves to cook. Ryan’s stopping by today to show us another great way to use all the zucchini that’s taking over everyone’s garden right about now, present company included. Thanks for sharing, Ryan. We embrace all fried things here at PW Cooks. -PW

Hi, guys. Since as far back as I can remember, Zucchini Cakes have been a summer favorite with my family. They can easily be an appetizer as well as a side dish, and everyone agrees that these things rock.

As you can see, we’re starting with some pretty simple ingredients: Zucchini (in this case it’s just one big mamajama), Minced Garlic, an Italian Cheese Blend, an Egg, and some bread crumbs. The unseen ingredients are olive oil, kosher salt, and some fresh ground pepper.



To start, we’re going to chop the ends off of our Zucchini:





Next, we want to get out a cheese grater—or in this case, a Zucchini grater—and begin shredding up this big green monster.



Did you know that even though it’s always treated as a vegetable, Zucchini is actually a fruit? It is. For realz.





Okay, we should have a pretty good mound of shredded zucchini at this point.





Now comes an important step. We have to get a lot of the water out of this mess. So toss your zucchini confetti into a clean towel…and SQUEEZE!!





You should see a good bit of liquid come out of this ball-o-zucchini. This will help to create a less runny version of what we’re making.





Next, toss the semi-dry zucchini into a large enough bowl to fit the rest of our ingredients.





Mmm…garlic. I’m throwing in a good sized tablespoon of the pre-minced stuff. Don’t judge me. I’m out of the fresh stuff.





Now cover that with about 1/2 – 3/4 cup of breadcrumbs.





And now for the cheese, I’ve got this 4-Cheese Italian blend. You can use Parmesan or Romano, I’m sure. But Sam’s Club had this stuff and by golly, I’m using it. Maybe around 1/2 cup…but I suck at measuring things.





Let’s toss in that egg, too.





Now season it all up with a big pinch of kosher salt and some freshly ground pepper.





Stir it all up with a fork and see where your cards fall. And hmmm…to me, this still looks a little dry.





I think I’ll add another egg to the mix to make it a little more batter-esque.





There…that’s better. This is the consistency we’re looking for. We don’t want everything falling apart once it reaches the pan.





Speaking of that pan…let’s get some olive oil in it and heat it to medium heat. Use enough oil to cover the pan by about a quarter inch.





When the oil is nice and hot, drop in a glob of our zucchini batter and flatten it down a little with a fork or spoon or some other flattening device.





After about two minutes or so we’ll turn one of these babies over to see what we’ve got. If it’s golden-brown and delicious looking…it’s time to turn the rest.

Oh my goodness, you should smell these!

After a couple minutes on the other side these delicious little zucchini cakes will be ready to pop onto a plate:

I’m serving them up with some ranch dressing for a dipping sauce and a little crushed red pepper for style and flare. Delicious!

Oh, and remember how I said these were a family favorite? Well…I lied. This was actually the first time I’d ever made these. And they were heavenly. I had some fresh zucchini from our garden and I decided to play around with it. They turned out excellent, even though I’d never made them before.

So get creative, people. You never know—you might just end up with a winner!