On Zucchini Butter

A recipe, at long last!

Welcome to the Friday Recipe post for paid subscribers. On Tuesday, all subscribers will receive an UnRecipe post about my latest TV obsession. As always, you can learn more about what I do and check out my work over at my website. Thanks for being here!

Before we get into this delightful summer recipe, a quick reminder: if you’re interested in joining

Emily

and I for SUNBAKED: A Celebration of Seasonality in the Kitchen and the Studio, the retreat that we’re hosting in late August, there are just four tickets remaining! This weekend promises to be filled with all sorts of goodness: photo foraging, cake baking, heirloom grains, fireside hangs, and delicious food and bev (of course!). Though we hope to do more of these in the future, this one will be special. Snag one of our last tickets here, and let me know if you have any questions! We’d love to have you.

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Now onto the important things. This recipe, which I first learned at an Airbnb in Wisconsin about a million years ago, is not so much a recipe as much as it is an SOS play to reduce the amount of squash tumbling over each other every time I open the crisper drawer. I cannot, on principle as a photographer, show you the final product in all of its mildly offensive shades of Shrek, but I can promise you that it uses up a ton of zucchini, all at once, and if your garden has been as frantically productive as mine, you’ll thank me for it.

The final product here is reminiscent of apple butter in that it’s good for mostly just one thing and that thing is spreading on toast. I think if you really tried hard enough, you could probably make this into a really ugly pasta sauce or stir it into a quiche batter or omelette for some extra veg oomph, but I typically resort to eating this with a spoon.

You’ll notice that one of the primary ingredients is, well, butter, and that might not thrill you. However, let me assure you that olive oil does not produce the same results here—I have tried in vain!—and that you should just lean into the buttery-ness of it all. This recipe easily doubles or triples, which works well if you’re really in a pickle. Speaking of pickles, have you tried zucchini pickles yet? They’re also delicious. Happy squashing that extra squash, friends!

Zucchini Butter

So. Many. Zucchini.