Truth & Lies About Zucchini “Fries”

French fries, just thinking of them makes me salivate, so of course the idea of there being a healthy alternative is so enticing! But is there a truth to healthy “fries” such as the baked Zucchini fries that so many of my friends have shared on facebook? Don’t be upset friends, you weren’t the only ones. Hundreds of thousands of people have shared this recipe and so I knew I had to try it. Let me start by saying, I love zucchini.

Now the true reason I decided to try this recipe is because I had a serious suspicion that it would be impossible to produce anything but a zucchini pudding wrapped in battered mush! That also meant that I knew that none of you have tried this recipe or any version of the zucchini fries. To be fair, I selected a recipe shared by several people in my network, none related to the other, and put it to the test.

When I first clicked on the link, it lead me to the image only, and below it you must click again, and then one more time for the recipe. Three clicks later, you have the recipe that was adapted from Gina’s weight watcher recipes. You may or may not know this, but bloggers do that to get higher ratings on search engines, and a bunch of other marketing reasons. Needless to say, this furthered my assumption that no one actually tries these recipes, just finding them is difficult. All it really is “Food Porn” , excuse the expression, but it’s a real thing. It is simply a series of images that arouse your desire to eat, and appease your need to cook. I mean I have been guilty of it, Pinterest being my evidence of addiction to” food porn”. That is why this blog is focused on the REAL, real food, real images, real successes and real failures. I just can’t look at another image making me feel like an inadequate “cook”, all I can do is do my best, one dinner at a time.

Now on to our Baked Zucchini Fries;

Ingredients

• 3 medium zucchini sliced into 3″ x 1/2″ sticks
• 1 large egg white
• 1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs
• 2 tbsp grated Pecorino Romano cheese (can be found in the spaghetti sauce aisle next to Parmesan cheese)
• cooking spray
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• salt
• fresh pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. In a small bowl, beat egg whites and season with salt and pepper. In a ziplock bag, place breadcrumbs, garlic powder and cheese and shake well. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray and set aside.
3. Dip zucchini sticks into eggs then into bread crumb and cheese mixture, a few at a time and shake to coat. Place the breaded zucchini in a single layer and spray more cooking spray on top. Bake at 425° for about 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Verdict

When served they proved to be very soft in the middle, but not as mushy as I thought. The measures were impossible, I had to use three times the amount of bread crumbs and parmesan suggested in the recipe, and even after all that they turned out terrible!

The combination of flavors was not right at all. I suspected as much, so I only made half, and the rest I served raw with hummus which was far better. There is also a variation on this recipe which I tried, Zucchini Taters, equality terrible unless you serve them with a ton of ketchup to camouflage the taste.

Baked zucchini fries get thumbs down, they are not worth the trouble, and they just don’t taste good, so why oh why would you do that to yourself?!