Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Zucchini leather..... the evolution of a recipe.

I have tried to use all that Poppie grows for us in his garden for all the years that he has grown gardens. Sometimes we are blessed with more that is grown and some years simply less grows.  Last year Poppie got his amazing 107 pound pumpkin, I still have frozen pumpkin in the freezer from it.... This year Poppies pumpkin is only about 30ish pounds so he is disappointed.  We do however have zucchini and crookneck squash coming out our ears.  I have made zucchini relish, put it in soup base, have always made lots of zucchini pineapple and this year has been no exception but I still have zucchini every where so I took to the net to ferret out zucchini recipes to explore, well that or feed them to the goats, which they do love.  I found a recipe on a blog for zucchini gummy worms, my kids loved them but they were lots of work and it took pan after pan to dry them.  I decided one day if you can make zucchini gummy worms why can't I make zucchini leather.  I decide I would give it a try and what do you know it was a complete success and no sugar was involved, well other than the sugar that come from fruit juice. Here is what I did.

Recipe:  ZUCCHINI LEATHER

8 cups of chopped, peeled and seeded zucchini
1 can of thawed 100 percent juice concentrate
1 can of water

Peel zucchini, seed and chopped in to rough chopped chunks.  Measure out 8 cups per batch into a big pot, add 1 can of thawed 100 percent juice concentrate and one can of water.  Bring the zucchini juice water mixture to a boil and simmer about 30 minutes until the zucchini is translucent and most of the liquid has cooked down and concentrated.

zucchini peeled, seeded and chopped

The juice types I used.


zucchini, juice concentrate and water simmering


Once your mixture has simmered and cooked down, cool down to warm, put in your blender and puree to a nice applesauce consistency.  Next pour into leather trays for you dehydrator or if you don't have leather trays, which I don't, you can dehydrate in the oven.  I lined my cookie sheets with food grade plastic wrap so none of my mixture would touch the metal. 


plastic lined cookie sheets




 Next pour the mixture on the lined cookie sheet and put into a warm oven, you don't want the mixture to cook at over 170 ish  degrees, and it takes about 14ish hours, you will know when it is done because the mixture won't stick to your finger.  I let them cool once done and rolled up in the plastic they were cooked on, the reason I used the plastic was that the mixture when cooked doesn't stick to it, well not so you can't get it off easily, and you can store it in the plastic, you could use a silo pat but you would have to put it in something to roll so the plastic wrap made since. 

blended zucchini and juice mixture


zucchini and juice mixture in lined cookie sheet






Finished rolled up zucchini leather, one sliced and ready to eat or store in the freezer in a freezer bag.  Enjoy.

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