Best Raw Zucchini Recipes (This Seasoning Technique Works on All Veggies)

I’m a big fan of the viral tiktok carrot and cucumber shaved salads. They’re so packed with flavour that they got the internet to eat their veggies. Shoutout to @cassyeungmoney & @logagm for doing the lords work 🙏

These salads got me thinking though, they’re just using really good principals of seasoning and balance. It would eb really easy to demonstrate this using a bunch of ingredients I happened to have in the fridge at the time.

I made this recipe with different types of zucchini (courgette, marrow) but it works great with any summer squash or any other vegetable you’d like to eat raw!

Ingredients used
Extra virgin olvie oil
Lemon zest & juice
sea salt
capers
anchovy
garlic
honey
chili flake
mint
spring onion
love

season to taste

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you’ve probably already seen those viral tik toks where people take whole carrots and whole cucumbers and make them so delicious that the internet just wants to eat whole bones of them and i am convinced that if you use the same principles that they used in those dishes for your favorite crunchy vegetables then you can make them incredibly incredibly delicious time and time again so today we’re focusing on the humble zucchini corette marrow whatever you want to call it and i am going to show you how to take this arguably fairly bland when raw vegetable and turn it into something insanely insanely delicious let’s jump straight into it there’s going to be an easy version and a slightly more jazzed up version let’s go one of the easiest ways to get beautiful vegetable ribbons is with a good peeler just take long steady strokes along the veg rotating as you go so once you hit the cd center just turn and keep going it’s pretty simple you can use a mandolin for this too if you have one you technically have more control over the thickness of the ribbons but honestly it’s fussier it’s more dangerous and quite frankly way more annoying to clean over here i’m using a mix of light and dark green zucchini but this technique works really well with any kind of summer squash or quite frankly any raw vegetable that you’d want to eat shaved there’s no need to throw away the middles those seedy bits they’re still full of flavor i really like to saute these with some olive oil some salt and whatever else you’ve got around for this first recipe i am going to share with you the top secret mediterranean holy trinities to make everything delicious start with a really good pinch of salt maybe a few twists of black pepper if you’re feeling generous then bring in the lemon a little bit of zest for its nice aroma and plenty of juice for its bright citrusy acidity and last but just as important as those other two a good extravirgin olive oil pour this over the zucchini with confidence give everything a really good toss and there you go it’s bright it’s fresh it is perfectly seasoned and quite effortless but now let us turn things up a notch this next version has a little bit more going on to be honest i just raided the fridge for this one but it still perfectly demonstrates how to season like a chef i’ve got some thinly sliced spring onion for a little bit of sharpness some super finely minced anchovi for that deep umami and a few chopped capers for that salty briney kick there’s also some mint which i rescued from the back of the fridge which i roughly chopped up for some nice freshness now we build collect your ingredients and politely shove your zucchini ribbons into a container first your salty elements the anchovi the capers and a good pinch of sea salt then the bright ones some lemon zest and juice a little bit of grated garlic and our spring onions for that nice green bite next we’ll go in with our chopped mint for its freshness and a good pinch of chili flakes for a nice contrasting heat you can optionally add a small drizzle of honey to balance things out with a little bit of sweetness and finally a nice gug of extra virgin olive oil it brings everything together with its richness and just the slightest touch of bitterness pop the lid on and give everything a really really good shake you can also add a couple more zucchini ribbons to the top and shake again everything kind of softens up as it’s marinating and sort of getting beaten down and that’s kind of all there is to it the only thing left to do is to adjust the seasoning to your taste plate this up beautifully and and enjoy okay let’s give these a try so first we have the really simple version that was just like lemon olive oil salt and i think there’s some pepper in this nice even just those few ingredients has really transformed something that’s otherwise again kind of bland and kind of tasteless into really fresh vibrant punchy citrusy like salad powerhouse really delicious super super easy as with many things in life you do not need much more than really good extravirgin olive oil a little bit of lemon juice and a little pinch of salt to make anything super tasty but now this guy i’m excited to try the selection of ingredients was kind of because that’s what i had around you can like mix and match with these kind of core principles as long as you have something salty maybe something sweet something umami something sour uh something spicy is really nice something like fresh and herbal is really good something like punchy like garlic or mustard is also a nice touch yeah let’s get a nice nice big old bite mhm it’s preparing vegetables like this that gets me so excited to eat vegetables it’s like savory but fresh but spicy but salty but tangy but just so well balanced such really nice texture i would highly recommend mixing and matching with some of your favorite ingredients maybe go like a little asian some sesame oil some ginger some fish sauce that would absolutely be wonderful um yeah mix it up try a bunch of different things and let me know what works for you thank you so much for watching and i will catch you in the next time oh and the tweezers this is kind of like a throwback to when i used to work in kitchens i used to eat so many of my meals like running around doing things and just like so good