zucchini | Annie's Kitchen Therapy

We needed a quick low carb dinner after a long day, followed by a walk to the beach to see a gorgeous sunset. We wound up making zucchini fritters and BLTs on lettuce wraps. Delicious and low carb.

I never made the zucchini fritters before. What I did was grate up two zucchinis using my food processor (you could also use a box grater). I set the grated zucchini in a bowl, salted in and let it sit for an hour (the salt draws out the water). I then squeezed handfuls of the zucchini to get any residual water out and placed back in a dry bowl. I added seasoning (salt, pepper, minced garlic and 1/2 packet of Sazon – I’d love to add some parmesan to this, but the husband…), one egg and enough almond flour to bind the mixture. I pan fried the fritters, but you could also bake in the oven. They came out great. You can serve with a little tzatziki or even ranch dip on the side.

So, for any of you on social media and/or various food blogs you’ve seen the hoopla around the “Mississippi Pot Roast”. I’m not a big pot roast person but I do love an easy crock pot meal during a busy week, so I thought I’d give this a go. I followed the recipe exactly (which I NEVER do). Since it’s only four ingredients I thought, what could go wrong? The four ingredients are: a chuck roast (mine was about 2 pounds), 5 pepperoncinis, 1 packet of dry ranch dressing, 1 packet of dry au jus gravy mix.

I chose to brown the chuck roast in a skillet for about 5 minutes per side to enhance the flavor (you can skip this step, but I think it’s worth doing). Then I placed chuck roast in my crock pot, topped with packet of dressing and packet of au jus and laid the 5 pepperoncinis on top of that. You add no liquid to the crock pot – I know this seems counterintuitive but trust me, the meat releases a lot of liquid as it cooks. Set for 8.5 hours on low and wait for the magic to happen.

I served zucchini soup as an appetizer. As sides I made roasted asparagus and cauliflower mashed. Message me if you want the cauliflower mashed recipe, it’s really good!

Pro-tip: This dish came out delicious, the meat – while it shrunk about 50% in size – was tender and flavorful. For my taste the dish was a little salty. Next time I would add only 1/2 of each dry packet and add a little fresh ground pepper. I think if you wanted to add some carrots and potatoes about half way through the cooking process this might absorb some of the salt.