Zucchini Veggie Sausage Patties Recipe
Updated: Sep 29, 2022
Does anyone make zucchini fritters anymore or did we leave those back in 2001? I think I haven’t eaten a zucchini or one of these fritters in years! I bought a few zucchini when I made my Great Aunt Regina’s famous risotto the other day, and I had 1½ left over that I needed to get to before they turned to slime. So I had a think – what do people do with zucchini? What as my favorite way to eat them back when I used to cook them? I decided I’d try to improve the zucchini fritters I used to make many years ago, and bump up the aromatics to push it more into veggie sausage patty territory.
Zucchini are not very flavorful – they’re mostly water. So they need a bit of help to make them delicious. I thought I would put my FAVORITE Thai cooking secret to the test (Thai 3 friends of cilantro root, pepper and garlic) to see if they could make even a humdrum zucchini taste good, and I’m ecstatic to announce that they do! A mince of cilantro, garlic and chili flakes have really become my go-to flavor base for nearly everything I cook, and so far, they have produced fantastic results every time.
In this recipe, I bumped up the cilantro by just mincing up the entire plant from root the leaf. I’ve learned that there’s no reason to ever discard cilantro stems or roots, they should always be invited to the party. This warms my heart, as any elimination of food waste tends to do.
Why am I calling these a veggie sausage when they’re made of zucchini? I’m daring to call these a veggie sausage because of the strong coriander and chili flavors, which I think points to the essence of sausage, which tends to be very aromatic. The parmiggiano might seem strange with cilantro, which I thought at first, but it works very well and it adds a nice bit of umani and another layer and depth to the aroma profile. These don’t taste of meat, I’m not pretending they do, but they are quite flavorful and aromatic.
Meal ideas for this recipe: veggie burgers, veggie breakfast sandwich (with cheese would be the dream), breakfast eggy plate (photo), lettuce wraps w/green sauce and crunchy veg, replacement for a falafel w/ some tahini sauce, flatbreads, lettuce and herbs.
Zucchini Veggie Sausage Patties Recipe
Servings 8