Every year, without fail, I start my summer vegetable garden on the foundation of a lie that I am going to cook and actually enjoy eating all of the zucchini I convinced myself into growing. Despite my lack of gardening skills and constant neglect, my zucchini grows rampant, giving me the false satisfaction of a job well done (which, let’s be honest, is why I keep the lie going every year). As the summer goes on, harvesting my zucchini quickly turns into a game of wack-a-mole. Despite my best efforts to pickle, grill, or even shave it into a salad night after night, I can’t keep up.

On top of all that, the big challenge with zucchini is that it can be fussy to cook, and usually needs help in the kitchen to taste great. Its mild flavor and watery texture can easily lead to limp, soggy, and flavorless results when not cooked properly. This baked zucchini fries recipe is a refreshing, incredibly snackable solution to that problem.

Okay, so I am fully aware these are not “fries,” and I’m not a five year old who needs to be tricked into eating her vegetables. But when these zucchini sticks are dredged in a Parmesan-laced panko coating and baked until crisp and golden outside, they are undeniably satisfying and perfect for dipping into its accompanying rich, dill-forward feta dip. To get to this great we result, we asked our Birmingham-based test kitchen colleague Julia Levy to methodically dredge batch after batch of zucchini sticks to come up with crunchy zucchini fries that even a zucchini skeptic like myself would love.

Tips to Guarantee Crunchy Zucchini Fries

Remove the watery seeds. As I noted above, zucchini is notoriously watery, so the biggest challenge is preventing moisture from sogging out the breadcrumb crust. Our solution: Cut the zucchini into spears and use a sharp knife or vegetable peeler to quickly remove the inner seed pulp, which is the wateriest part of the fruit.

Pulse the panko and coat with oil. Another challenge with baking zucchini fries in the oven is getting the exterior crumb coating golden and crisp in the short time it takes for the zucchini to cook. We had to find a way to speed up the browning time for the panko crumbs. The first step was pulsing the panko into finer crumbs. The smaller crumbs not only cover the zucchini more evenly, but they cook and crisp quicker in the oven.

The other step we took to ensure a crisp coating is lightly tossing the panko with extra-virgin olive oil (about 1 tablespoon oil per cup of panko) before the zucchini is dredged in the mixture. Coating the breadcrumbs with fat speeds even heat transfer from the oven during baking, giving the breadcrumbs just the edge they needed to brown quickly enough.

Add Parmesan to the crumb coating. The Parmigiano-Reggiano in the crumb mixture not only adds a rich, nutty layer of flavor to the baked sticks, it creates a frico-like exterior around the zucchini, further enhancing a crisp fried-like exterior shell once baked.

Pair it with a cool and creamy dip. Like any good fry, these zucchini fries are best served with a dip. An herb-forward tangy feta and dill dip pairs well with the neutral flavor of the zucchini. Making the dip is as simple as combining feta with yogurt in a food processor with lemon, dill, garlic, and honey and blitzing until it’s smooth. I recommend making it first, and refrigerating it to thicken while making the zucchini fries.