I don't recall having a lemonade stand when I was in elementary school, but I do remember sitting behind a card table in our cul-de-sac during summer break, waving shyly to our neighbors over a pyramid of club-size zucchini. "Sell, sell, sell!" my mom would shout from the kitchen window. The same three neighbors would wander over to buy one or two (and a tomato, if I had any), and on especially slow days, one of my aunts or uncles, who "just happened to be driving by"—and who just happened to have an empty Tupperware container in the passenger seat—would stop for an armful.
Mom and Dad said it was an important lesson in how to count money and talk to adults. Even then, though, I knew it had much more to do with the fact that they grew more zucchini than they knew what to do with. Every. Single. Year. And there's only so much grilled zucchini, fried zucchini, and zucchini bread a family can take. Trust me on that. Maybe if we knew zucchini pizza sauce was a thing, our embarrassment of zucchini riches wouldn't have felt so daunting.
The zucchini sauce ah-ha moment belongs to Chris Morocco at Bon Appétit, who discovered that when you cook down summer squash with just a few other ingredients, it makes a delicate, summery pasta sauce—which John and I are now 100-percent obsessed with (click here for the recipe). A few tweaks later, I morphed the recipe into a zucchini pizza sauce that can take the place of white sauce in almost every topping combo you can think of.
How to Use Zucchini Pizza Sauce
For pizza:
- Top your dough with zucchini pizza sauce and ¼ to ½ cup grated Parm, bake, then finish with 2 tablespoons chopped, toasted walnuts, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil and parsley, and a squeeze of lemon. Season with a little salt and pepper; slice and serve.
- OR spread the sauce on stretched- or rolled-out pizza dough (¾ cup sauce for a 10-inch pizza, 1 to 1-½ cups sauce for a 12- to 14-inch pizza) and top with sliced kalamata olives and 1 cup diced fresh mozzarella. Bake the pizza, then drizzle with olive oil, season with a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper, and sprinkle with sliced fresh basil before serving.
Other uses:
- Slather on crostini or toast.
- Thin it out with a little pasta water and stir into cooked pasta.
- Scoop it up with crackers as a snack.
PS: If you need another recipe to use up that summer squash bounty, give this pizza a try!
Zucchini Pizza Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 pound zucchini, shredded
- kosher salt
- chile flakes (crushed red pepper flakes, crushed Aleppo or Urfa pepper)
- ¼ cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon or lime juice
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until it just begins to brown.
- Add the shredded zucchini and ¾ teaspoon salt and turn the heat to medium. Cook, stirring frequently, until the zucchini breaks down and the mixture begins to look like a chunky sauce, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in a pinch or two of chile flakes, the Parmesan cheese, and the lemon or lime juice. Taste and season with more salt and chile flakes as desired.
- If you're using the sauce for pizza, you're done! Just let it cool a bit, and slather on a round of dough.
- If you're using the sauce for pasta, thin it out with some starchy cooking water and toss with pasta.
Joyce says
Nice recipe. We added leftover roasted chicken and after the sauce was on the pizza crust, added mozzarella cheese and sliced cherry tomatoes.
Peggy Paul Casella says
That sounds amazing. Glad you liked the recipe!
Laura T Ontario Canada says
Sauce turned out super creamy. Doubled it so am going to try freezing for a summer pizza later this winter. The rest we are going to have tonight on a chicken bacon ranch pizza with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. Can’t wait for dinner.
Peggy Paul Casella says
Yay! This is one of my favorites!