Have you ever heard of this? I have seen it floating around the internet for quite a while and have really wanted to try it. Apparently if you dehydrate zucchini really well, and then put it in a blender, you can make zucchini flour. (I have also seen this called Amish Flour in some recipes). My understanding is that you can substitute it in the way you can whole wheat flour; swapping approximately half of the flour in a recipe. Let’s see if this is true!
For starters, the general recommendation is to use a zucchini that you have left in the garden to get really big. Kind of the opposite of the ones you want to use as vegetables. Which is great for me, as my zucchini’s always seem to get away from me… Now I can just look wise and claim it is on purpose. For the flour. Obviously.
I cut mine in halves or quarters, depending on how big it was. Then I cut it into even little half moon slices. The part where they are even is really important, otherwise they will not dehydrate evenly. Once they were on the tray they kind of looked like apple slices.
When they were dry, I put them into a glass jar for a few days. This is a really important step. It makes sure that you have gotten all of the moisture out. If you see any condensation inside of the jar, pop your slices back in the dehydrator.
After that it was time to turn a bunch of dried veggie slices into flour! Not the most likely looking beginning for a jar of flour I imagine…
I have a pretty powerful blender. I saved my pennies for a secondhand Ninja blender. It was worth every penny and I have found very few things that it couldn’t take care of. Even the Ninja took over 10 minutes to powder this. I have to say that I am a little bit skeptical of the idea that a normal blender could do this. Maybe I am wrong, but I remember my old blender really chugging to make oat flour, and that is much softer than dried veg.
That great big zucchini made about 2/3 of a cup of flour. Which doesn’t really surprise me, but puts into perspective how much work this would be to use regularly.
What do you think I should try to make with my new flour? Do you think we will be able to taste the difference? Stay tuned to find out!
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