Gluten-Free Goat Cheese Fried Squash Blossoms

Fried squash blossoms are amazing!  I mean, seriously so delicious.  The whole concept kind of fascinates me, that a flower, stuffed with cheese, battered, and fried, can taste so incredible.  I first had squash blossoms in Rome.  If I remember correctly, we went into this cute food shop by the Pantheon and bought parmesan squash blossoms pizzettes for our lunch the next day. I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious they were, of course, everything is delicious in Rome.

If you don’t have your own zucchini plant, you must go find some zucchini squash blossoms and make these now! Try your local farmer’s market or beg some off your friends and neighbors who continuously give you a plethora of zucchini; they have to have blossoms for you too.  The male flowers are the ones you fry, not the female.  The female flowers are the ones that produce the fruit.  Male flowers are just around to pollinate the female flowers…. and then they die, so you might as well eat them!

Male zucchini blossoms are on tall, thin stalks.  The female flowers obviously have a baby zucchini growing at their base, so it’s pretty easy to tell the difference  Just don’t pick all the male blossoms, the plant does need a few of those male flowers to produce zucchini.

Making fried zucchini blossoms is incredibly easy.  I like them stuffed with goat cheese but you could use mozzarella or ricotta, maybe Parmesan.  I picked my zucchini blossoms this afternoon, then washed them, pulled out the stamen, and let them dry.

I actually found some bees still inside the blossoms after I brought them into the house!!! Two of the blossoms had two bees each inside them, trying to get every last bit of pollen. It kind of freaked me out to pick up a blossom and have the whole thing buzz like crazy! I didn’t find the bees in the second one until I was opening it up to take the stamen out and rinse it off, surprise!  Crazy bees!  Guess I saved their lives though, otherwise I don’t know if they can get out of the blossoms… I bet they can, but I like to think that I saved them.

While the blossoms dried, I pan fried garlic cloves until crispy.  The garlic cloves are to flavor the goat cheese.  When the garlic cloves cooled, I chopped them and mixed them in with the goat cheese, along with fresh parsley, basil, and chives from my garden. You could use dried herbs if you don’t have fresh.   Finally, I seasoned the goat cheese with black pepper and red pepper flakes as well.  You can actually flavor the goat cheese however you want, or just buy herbed goat cheese…. that’d be easier, haha.  Actually, I don’t even mind just using plain goat cheese and nothing else.  Sometimes simple is so perfect.  I then stuffed the blossoms with about a tablespoon or so of the goat cheese.

To fry the stuffed blossoms, I lightly battered them using Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Flour. I made the batter fairly watered down for two reasons – I didn’t want the blossoms to be too heavy, I wanted to be able to taste them, and secondly because I generally don’t eat a lot of fried foods and wanted to keep it light-ish…. I fried the blossoms in avocado oil because it has a high smoke point.  We ate these for dinner tonight with fresh cucumbers from the garden, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, salami, and Kerrygold cheddar cheese. The ideal summer dinner.

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Gluten-Free Goat Cheese Fried Squash Blossoms

Prep Time

15 mins

Cook Time

15 mins

Total Time

30 mins

 

The whole concept fascinates me, that a flower, stuffed with cheese, battered, and fried, can taste so incredible!

Servings: 2 -4

Author: Emily

Ingredients

• 8-12 zucchini blossoms
• 1/2 cup 4oz goat cheese
• 1 tsp fresh parsley chopped
• 1 tsp fresh chives chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh basil chopped
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 8-10 garlic cloves
• oil for frying the garlic and blossoms - I used avocado oil
• 1 cup of gluten-free flou
• 1 tsp salt.
• 3/4 - 1 cup of water

Instructions

1. Rinse squash blossoms and removed stamen, let dry.
2. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat, add whole garlic cloves and cook until slightly browned and crispy. Remove from heat, let garlic cloves cool and chop.
3. In a small bowl, mix goat cheese, chopped garlic, parsley, chives, basil, black pepper, and red pepper flakes.
4. Stuff squash blossoms with about a tablespoon of goat cheese mixture.
5. In another small bowl, mix together gluten-free flour, salt, and water. Batter will be watery, feel free to add more or less water, depending on your preference.
6. Heat 2-3 tbsp of avocado oil in a skillet over medium heat. When oil is hot, dredge stuffed squash blossoms in flour-water mixture and place in oil. Fry until lightly browned, turning to evenly brown all sides. Cook in batches if needed to not overcrowd the pan.
7. Enjoy.