I like fries with my burgers, do you? I like fries with my beef sandwiches, do you? I don’t fry things. I don’t want to deal with the mess and all that oil and . . . just, no. I have a friend who can make french fries that are not fried, but really can fool you. But she is a chef and I am not going to go through all that trouble because I can just eat a potato and be happy. But I was thinking I didn’t want to have a potato AND a bun, but I wanted “fries”. I also remembered that I had squash in the refrigerator that we needed to eat. So I thought why not make squash fries. Or breaded squash sticks to be more accurate. So I had bread (for my sandwich) and bread (on the squash). 🙂
I cannot bread things. The crumbs never stay on. I usually end up putting the food item on the pan than putting the bread crumbs on top and pressing down. Then I hope that the crumbs will stay on as it bakes in the oven. Sometimes they do, but they rarely survive a flipping. Ha. So I don’t know why I think I can make breaded squash sticks.
First of all, I made WAY TOO much by way of bread crumbs (I adjusted the recipe so you wouldn’t). Then I got the idea to let the squash dry a bit before I breaded it, but then at the last minute decided to salt it to sweat some of the moisture out. (Eyes rolling.)
Whatever. What I ended up with tasted good. And didn’t even really look THAT bad in person (the picture – meh, not so much) . . . but it tasted good, if you like bread and squash. And I do, so – yay!
Anyway . . . here is what I did:
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Squash Sticks – Breaded And Baked
2 small squash
3 small slices of cracked sourdough bread
olive oil
salt
garlic powder
Oven at 425° F for a total of (roughly) 30 minutes.
I cut the squash into big match stick, between a batonnet (I looked it up on Wiki) and a julienne. Cut them a head of time so that they can dry out a bit. Salt them at this time so they will sweat. Make the bread crumbs with your blender or food processor. When you are ready to make the “fries” pat the cut squash dry with a paper towel. Then toss them with the bread crumbs that were seasoned with salt and garlic powder and a little bit of olive oil (perhaps about 1/2 teaspoon). Put them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, that has been sprinkled with olive oil.
Put the pan of squash fries in the oven. After 15 minutes check on them. If you want flip them over or stir them up. For me, I needed to move the bread around so it would not burn. Bake for about 15 more minutes. As usual, I recommend baking to your liking. Ovens are different, tastes are different, so cook them to how you like them.
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I had spread them out as much as possible. While I was placing them on the cookie sheet a lot of crumbs came with them . . . that was ok. The squash didn’t hold the breading so well, but the breading on the cookie sheet baked and held the squash. So it turned out, instead of having individual fries, they were like little bread crumb patties with squash. (As you can see.) It was pretty good.
Do you bread and bake any veggies? What is your favorite? Do you egg-dip the veggies to help the bread crumbs stay? How do you get your bread crumbs to stay?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 