Today I'm going to share my version of the air fryer zucchini with cheese recipe. Yes, now it seems I have my own recipe, which obviously is again a "fake it till you make it" recipe.
The day started with checking out what recipes are available on YouTube. I wanted to see a few versions, because I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, have tried it several times and could not become a fan, so I needed a recipe that convinces me to try it out, as well as it is not deep fried. What I hate the most is when they are going on and on about the health benefits of zucchini, or any other vegetables, then deep fry it and ruin everything that is good in them.
So I checked eight recipes in total, till I got tired of the usual crap that comes with these recipes, like people focusing more on showing off and advertising different products and so on. At the end I had an idea how most of these recipes are put together and decided to jump in both feet and try out a new version.
Ingredients:
You can use pepper and herbs as well, but I'm not a fan of pepper and my olive oil contains basil, which is quite strong, so I didn't want to mix more flavors together.
Most of the recipes are using eggs and flour, to roll your zucchini in flour first, then in the beaten eggs, but that's exactly what I wanted to avoid. For me, the breadcrumbs and the cheese is enough, don't want to add more calories, so I chose to skip this step.
The next step was to cut the zucchini in four and eliminate the seeds along with the soft part. I needed to do this as it's just adding extra moisture and it's not delicious either.
Next I sliced the zucchini, lined the air fryer grid with baking paper, placed the zucchini on it, and sprinkled it with salt.
Then sprinkled the breadcrumbs over it, after which I sprinkled it with olive oil. This step is necessary, to get a nice flavor. The last step is to cover it with cheese.
Some recipes recommend to preheat the air fryer, but I didn't. This is what I got after 12 minutes of roasting at 200°C. The plan was to see if the zucchini is tender, as the cheese was golden brown already.
Well, it wasn't, so I turned the whole "pie" upside down, salted it, added breadcrumbs on top, sprinkled with oil, then covered with cheese and put it back into the air fryer for 12 minutes at 200°C.
This second roasting did the job.
And voilà! I chose to serve it with my own homemade tomato sauce, instead of other dips, that are high on calories and unhealthy as well. It matches perfectly.
Honestly, so far this is the best zucchini recipe I tied and I think I'm going to keep it bookmarked here on Hive. It is crunchy, even though you don't get individual zucchini sticks, the breadcrumb-cheese coat on both sides makes it crunchy.
Try it out, you won't regret it, I can assure you. Even though this again is a "fake it till you make it" recipe, it turned out pretty well.
Bon appetite!
If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:
