Two Zucchini Sauces for the freezer

I love zucchini! Sauteed, caramelized, it’s one of my favorite summer veggies. But if you’re growing it, you know how quickly it can get out of hand; before you know it, you’re giving it away to friends and neighbors. So I was on the hunt for some recipes that would use up zucchini that WEREN’T zucchini bread or muffins.

I saw the viral video for Salsa Falsa from Jonathan Zaragoza last year and had been saving it for this exact moment when I was overwhelmed with zucchini in summer. The recipe on his website has very detailed instructions (I’ve linked it above), but I wanted to test how it freezes and how I can thaw it to use later.

The recipe makes exactly 3 cups of salsa, but you could easily double it to use up more veggies. I just made the 3 cups, and it fits perfectly in the 1/2 cup trays! I took out a half cup, popped it into a mason jar, and let it thaw in the fridge overnight. This way, I had a small jar of salsa that I could use throughout the week and take out some fresh whenever I was ready for more.

Both of these recipes use the blender, and I was very grateful to finally have a Vitamix again. Years ago, I was a raw vegan for a while, and I bought a 5200 Vitamix mostly to make smoothies with. This was when I was still living in NYC with my parents, and this blender got A LOT of use. When I was going to move to Grand Rapids, my mom asked if she could keep it and told me she would buy me a new one once I finally got settled into a place of my own. She, of course, does not remember this conversation at all, and that blender is still going strong in her house over 15 years later. But after years of just using my trusty immersion blender, I finally decided it was time to purchase a Vitamix again. I bought the same one, their classic model 5200, and it’s just as wonderful as I remember.

When I first saw the Salsa Falsa recipe online, it gave me the idea that a sauce could be made creamy with zucchini, and my brain immediately went to Alfredo sauce. My best friend is dairy-free, and she's been trying to find a creamy pasta sauce with that same texture and flavor.

I found this recipe online from Kelly Jensen for a vegan, creamy zucchini alfredo sauce. The recipe was fairly simple, and it uses 2 whole pounds of zucchini! Everything roasts together on a sheet pan, then gets blended with dairy-free milk and nutritional yeast.

In her original recipe, she puts the whole batch of sauce over 1 lb of pasta, but I wanted to test it for the freezer. I froze it in 1-cup portions in Souper Cubes and had about a cup left over. So before I froze it, I cooked up some pasta to taste-test it fresh and invited my best friend over to try it as well. We both really liked it, but wanted the sauce to have a bit more flavor. So I’ve made a few modifications to the original recipe below. We also agreed this would be great with other things added to the pasta (breaded chicken or broccoli). It’s a great base for a meal.

When I was ready to try it again, I toasted some panko breadcrumbs in olive oil (or butter) until browned and crispy to add texture to the dish. Then, to reheat the sauce from frozen, I put a single 1-cup cube into my favorite small saucepan (this is currently on sale for under $30), added a splash of water, covered it, and put it over medium heat on the stovetop. While this was going, I boiled my fettuccine pasta. After about 5 minutes, I uncovered it, gave it a stir (it was mostly defrosted), and let it simmer uncovered to concentrate the flavor and texture a bit more. I didn’t want the sauce to be watery since I wanted to add a splash of pasta water later to bring everything together.

I hope you give these recipes a try, or that they spark some ideas of other things you can freeze!