How to Freeze zucchini flowers

About Zucchini

In the culinary world, zucchini is treated as a vegetable, however botanically, zucchini is a fruit, being the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower. Zucchini, as with all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas. However, the varieties of squash typically called "zucchini" were developed in Italy probably near Milan; early varieties usually included the names of nearby cities in their names.

About Zucchinin Blossoms (Flowers)

Fresh zucchini blossoms can be cooked and eaten. Many cooks remove the pistils from female flowers, and stamens from male flowers, although both of these are edible and have flavor. The male stamen contains the pollen. There are a lot more male squash blossoms than female and they begin blooming earlier.

Dehydrating Zucchini Blossoms

Dehydrating zucchini blossoms is perhaps the best method to store the flavor, aroma and visual appearance of zucchini flowers. We have also used freezing but vacuum packing dehydrated zucchini flowers retain a greater amount of taste and aroma and provide for great garnish,

dehydrated zucchini blossom with seared scallops

Above is a seared scallop dish with zucchini blossom sauce. A dehydrated zucchini blossom that was vaccumed packed and frozen for 10 months used as a garnish.

Buying Zucchini Blossoms

Make sure to buy very fresh blossoms early in the morning since they will start to wilt early. Also make sure they are dry. It is best to first take them out of the box, shake them off since insects may be inside or on the flowers. Lie them on a paper towel and remove any wilted or wet blossoms.

Dehydrating the Blossoms

layer blossoms on a paper towel layered over plastic hold

Empty and dry out the plastic box the zucchini flowers come in. Put a layer of paper towel on top of the plastic grid and add one layer of zucchini blossom on top of the paper towel.

add a layer of paper towel on tope the the blossoms

Cover the blossoms with another paper towel....

on top of paper towel put a plastic tray cover

Put a plastic holder over the paper towel to help weigh down the zuchinni flowers and let them dry flat

Because you are using two of the plastic grids for each process you will not use all the racks.

After 30-40 minutes the blossoms should be dry and ready for use or storage

layers of zucchini blossoms in dehyrator

They wll hold well in the refrigerator for weeks to months.

I like to also wrap in tissue paper and vacuum pack them which allows them to last a year.

union square zucchini flower dehydrated and frozen

Months later the zucchini blossoms retain their color although their texture is difficult to be stuffed. They are fine however as a garnish or in sauces.

It is also possible to open up the zucchini flowers and dehyrate them in a similar method of dehydrating fresh zucchini blossoms.

Dehydrated Zucchini blossoms

Shown below is a dish-- polenta with mushrooms and pearl onions using a dehyrated zucchini blossom that had been vacuum packed for 10 months.