If only a portion of the vegetable is damaged or has gotten soft or wrinkly, you can cut away the bad portion so long as the main portion of the zucchini has good color, texture and taste.
If the zucchini is only slightly over ripened but still good enough to use, consider cooking it instead of serving it raw. Zucchini requires a cool, dry place for storing, such as the crisper drawer in the refrigerator. With proper storage, fresh zucchini harvested from the garden lasts about one to two weeks. Frozen zucchini remains good for up to 10 months, while canned or pickled squash lasts up to two years.
By Casandra Maier Updated December 17, Related Articles. You can store your zucchini for up to five days in the refrigerator. Although zucchini is typically treated as a vegetable, when it comes to culinary situations, it is technically a fruit.
The zucchini itself is actually the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower. Zucchini was first introduced in the Americas, but the zucchini that we know and love today was developed in Italy many generations after they were originally introduced.
Unlike many other fruits, zucchini does not have a large amount of natural sugar, but it does have a high water content and is low in calories. It is also a good source of folic acid, potassium, and vitamins A and C. Just like every other fruit, there are many varieties of zucchini ranging in color, size, length of time to produce and texture. White squash, or summer squash, is sometimes seen as a mutation of the zucchini and is even found on the same plant as its' green relatives.
Originally, zucchini was only grown in its traditional long cylindrical version, but newer varieties have surfaced more recently to meet the ever growing demand of cooks near and far.
Golden zucchini and globe zucchini are the newest varieties of zucchini that have been grown for commercial purposes.
Golden zucchini is the same shape as traditional green zucchini, but has a lighter color and a lighter flavor. Globe zucchini, on the other hand, is green in color but is spherical, more similar to a pumpkin. These globe zucchinis are about 3 inches in diameter on average and are perfect for stuffing.
Zucchini flowers are among the group of delicious, edible flowers. The flowers, also called courgette flowers, can be eaten raw or cooked. Each male flower has a pollen-producing stamen in the center. Bees carry pollen from male flowers to female flowers, but gardeners can pollinate flowers by hand. Simply cut off a male zucchini flower, remove its petals and touch the stamen to the middle of a female flower. Once pollinated, the tiny fruit at the base of the female flower grows up to 1 inch per day.
It should be harvested when it is still young and tender, usually between 6 and 8 inches long. Fruit is usually ready to pick in about 60 days. Picking zucchini encourages growth. To slow fruit production, leave one or two zucchini on the plant.
Its shape looks similar to a cucumber but with a stump-like stem at the end. And while most people consider zucchini to be a healthy summer vegetable, it's technically a fruit! My Recipes explains that's because zucchini contains seeds and also is the product of a flowering plant the flowers of which are also edible. But when it comes to cooking, most people tend to view zucchini as a savory vegetable, which has more to do with taste than technicalities, since fruits are generally thought to be much sweeter than vegetables.
Zucchini have firm, dark green outer skins which provide a slight bit of crunch. The inner flesh is much softer in texture and lighter in color, usually a pale yellow shade. The skin of the zucchini tastes rather grassy and earthy, and it's really the flesh of the fruit that contains most of the flavor. The inner part of the zucchini is slightly sweet with a relatively mild flavor and has a more prominent taste when cooked via MasterClass. When zucchini is overripe, it can become very bitter.
Other very similar squash varieties such as yellow squash are closely related to zucchini in size, shape, texture, and taste via The Kitchn , though some people think yellow squash is slightly sweeter, whereas zucchini has more of an earthy, "green" taste.
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