Zucchini Butter

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Zucchini Butter - Zucchini cooked until tender and spreadable, flavored with onions, shallots, garlic, herbs and Romano cheese. Fantastic!

The name of today’s delicious recipe – Zucchini Butter – is admittedly slightly misleading!  This amazing spread is really much more about perfectly seasoned, cooked-until-it’s-tender zucchini than it is about butter.

This zucchini butter recipe is one of our favorite ways to enjoy the abundance of zucchini that we now have growing in our garden!  With two whole pounds of zucchini in this recipe – there is actually only two tablespoons of butter used in the recipe as well.

But the zucchini cooks down to wonderful, spreadable “butter” (so to speak) with incredible flavor and texture, and it’s great served on toasted bread, crackers or used as the topping for bruschetta.  Honestly – I’m happy just eating this zucchini butter by the spoonful too!

Zucchini Butter - Zucchini cooked until tender and spreadable, flavored with onions, shallots, garlic, herbs and Romano cheese. Fantastic!

Inspired by this recipe, we’ve really bumped up the flavors in our version with the addition of red onion, thyme, mint and some Pecorino Romano cheese – all flavors that are very complementary to zucchini.

Any summer squash variety will work with this recipe – but we think zucchini (or a Genovese squash – a close cousin to zucchini) gives this zucchini butter the best flavor!

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Zucchini Butter

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  • Prep Time: 15 mins
  • Cook Time: 20 mins
  • Total Time: 35 minutes
  • Yield: 1 1/2 cups 1x

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 2 pounds zucchini
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons minced shallots
  • 2 tablespoons minced garlic
  • 1 cup diced red onion
  • 2 whole sprigs fresh thyme
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Instructions

  1. Stem zucchini and shred using a box grated on the side with the larger holes. Place the shredded zucchini in a cheese cloth and into a strainer over a bowl. Squeeze the cheese cloth to get as much water out as possible then set over strainer to drain more while you prepared the rest of the ingredients.
  2. In a large sauté pan over medium heat, place the butter, oil, shallots, garlic, onion and whole thyme sprigs and sauté for three minutes.
  3. Take the cheese cloth with zucchini and squeeze again. (We were able to drain almost a full cup of liquid from the squash before cooking!) Discard liquid.
  4. Add drained squash, mint, salt, pepper and stir.
  5. Continue to cook over medium heat for ten to fifteen minutes or until the zucchini is just cooked. (Do not overcook; the zucchini should still have a little bite to it.) Remove and discard the thyme sprigs.
  6. Add Romano cheese and stir.
  7. Serve on toasted bread or on crackers. Best served warm but it’s also delicious served chilled.

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Last updated: January 23, 2023

Martha is part of the husband-wife team that creates A Family Feast. She loves to cook and entertain for family and friends, and she believes that serving a great meal is one of the best ways to show someone that you care. Martha is a self-taught home cook, who loves to read cookbooks and try new recipes. After a decades-long career in business and online marketing, she now runs A Family Feast full-time. Her specialties are baking, desserts, vegetables and pasta dishes.

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24 Comments

  2. Love this idea of slathering your zucchini butter on big fat pieces of Italian bread! YUMMY!

    Reply

  3. I have a few zucchinis left from last weeks CSA and i was wondering what I should do with them. Thanks for the recipes!

    Reply

  4. What a creative way to cook up zucchini! I think the kids would really enjoy the variation on texture too. Pecorino is my absolute favorite cheese – I grew up on it. This sounds delicious!

    Reply

    1. I thought the same thing when my husband Jack talked to me about making this recipe for our blog…it’s fantastic! Hope you enjoy it Kim!

      Reply