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I suspect this will prove a popular post! I will list some suggestions but invite everyone to add (polite!) recommendations.
This year I persuaded a friend to grow a courgette plant in her garden and now it’s started producing she’s come back with the question “What do I do with them all?” Ahh! Thus this post!
One of the wittiest suggestions I’ve seen is to leave them on a neighbour’s doorstep under cover of darkness (but be aware if neighbour is a vegetable grower they may well be trying the same trick!) With each plant producing 2 or 3 usable courgettes a week and a relatively short season of maximum production (which tends to coincide with everyone else’s maximum production) the sudden glut can be extreme and they’re not easily preserved for out of season use (though it is possible as listed below). As one wag commented “You may be lucky and get a dozen off each plant or be unlucky and get a lot more....."
So! Things to do with spare courgettes….. here goes!
As a harvested vegetable their shelf-life in the short-term is quite impressive – best used fresh but in ideal cool circumstances they will last several days (the flowers wilt quickly). But in mid/late Summer courgette plants are pure magic with their daily production rate, huge (weed smothering!) leaves and a design architecture more flamboyant and dramatic than many regular veg. They tend to reach a sad end in Autumn with dire leaf problems but meantime let’s hear it for Courgettes, the Versatile Veg!
Any more suggestions before I pay my neighbour a secret midnight visit?
This year I persuaded a friend to grow a courgette plant in her garden and now it’s started producing she’s come back with the question “What do I do with them all?” Ahh! Thus this post!
One of the wittiest suggestions I’ve seen is to leave them on a neighbour’s doorstep under cover of darkness (but be aware if neighbour is a vegetable grower they may well be trying the same trick!) With each plant producing 2 or 3 usable courgettes a week and a relatively short season of maximum production (which tends to coincide with everyone else’s maximum production) the sudden glut can be extreme and they’re not easily preserved for out of season use (though it is possible as listed below). As one wag commented “You may be lucky and get a dozen off each plant or be unlucky and get a lot more....."
So! Things to do with spare courgettes….. here goes!
- Most obviously they can be used in stir fries or speared onto kebab skewers with other veg and meat, a basic for BBQs.
- The Internet will provide any number of their use in stews, soups, grated and made into fritters or simply tossed in seasoned flour and fried.
- The flowers are often utilised separately to be fried, stuffed with various sweetmeats or simply as dramatic decoration.
- Special mention should probably be made for their place in ratatouille which is such a winner mid/late summer along with all the other seasonal produce.
- Similarly the Internet will provide creative bakers with recipes of courgette bread, cakes, cookies and even brownies (one witty tale I saw was of a Mum whose children, as they grew older, became increasingly suspicious of just about every meal they were being served….).
- I haven’t seen them used in desserts/puddings/ice-cream yet but that may be an area to explore.
- I notice new allotment holders are increasingly young women whose main focus is less carrots and cabbages in military rows and more putting greater emphasis on a comfortable shed (with teapots and curtains no less) and using vegetables and flowers in creative salads, drinks and cosmetic products including soaps, shampoos, skin lotions etc. Maybe courgettes have a place in these experiments?
- A more specialist use may be in exhibiting courgettes in local or regional shows (sadly mostly cancelled this year because of coronavirus) where rules can be quite tight about size, colour, flowers etc - so a lot of courgettes are needed to find 3 or 4 perfect and identical specimens.
- In most cases you can always leave a courgette or two to grow into larger marrows when they take on their own set of recipes for Stuffed Marrow or, for the alcoholics amongst us, with the addition of demerara sugars the creation of marrow rum….
- For those with energy, flair and patience they can be made into or included in chutneys, canned if you have the skill and equipment, or dried for longer-term usage. Their Achilles heel is their high water content which means they don’t suffer simple freezing that conveniently, at least they don’t quite emerge as courgettes but as a somewhat soggy addition for other recipes. Several recipes process them in some ways first (e.g. roasting or part-drying) and then freeze them in zip-lock or vacuum bags.
As a harvested vegetable their shelf-life in the short-term is quite impressive – best used fresh but in ideal cool circumstances they will last several days (the flowers wilt quickly). But in mid/late Summer courgette plants are pure magic with their daily production rate, huge (weed smothering!) leaves and a design architecture more flamboyant and dramatic than many regular veg. They tend to reach a sad end in Autumn with dire leaf problems but meantime let’s hear it for Courgettes, the Versatile Veg!
Any more suggestions before I pay my neighbour a secret midnight visit?
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