Squash Croquettes

Over the weekend we went to a you pick berry farm and farmers market.  We came home with a lot of squash. 

Nobody in this house is a huge fan of squash so I needed to find something to do with it that would hide what it really is.

I googled around for squash recipes and kept finding recipes for croquettes.  I skimmed a few, thought "ok I got this," and decided to just wing it without following any one recipe exactly.

Obligatory picture of artfully arranged ingredients:

Here we have:
Yellow squash- we used 3.  We could have used 4.  I was getting antsy and ten year olds are slow choppers.
One large onion
Two large eggs- these are from our chickens.  Yay chickens!
Kosher salt

Corn Meal
Breadcrumbs
Flour

(I couldn't decide what I wanted to use so I used all three.)

First- slice the yellow squash into circles.  These knives are pure komachi knives and are very, very, VERY sharp.  The sliced through the squash like buttah.

 

Still chopping...

 

 

MORE chopping...

 

Done.  Finally.

Kinda.

 

Either dice the squash really small or  put it in a food processor.  We used my kitchenaid food chopper.  I love this thing.  It's perfect for making pie crusts and dicing up veggies in a hurry.  I use it several times a week.  Also, it's red.  I like red.

 

 

 

Then scrape it out into a bowl:

 

 



Do the same with the onion. 

 

(I took over the chopping.  Things were taking um... awhile.)

 

Meanwhile, start melting some butter (oh right... you need some butter) and/or oil (also need oil).  I used butter and coconut oil.  When you are melting two fats you should always melt the one with the higher smoking point FIRST so that you don't burn one while the other is still melting.  This is especially important when making things like scampi where you want the butter to melt into the oil.  I forgot about this here and didn't decide to use the coconut oil until we were already started, so that's why the oil is so dark in the rest of the pictures.

 

 

 

All at once add the flour, breadcrumbs, and corn meal, salt, and two eggs.  And this is where maybe actually paying attention to a recipe might have been a good idea.  We started out with 1/2 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs, and a 1/4 cup of corn meal.  I decided it was to dry and added in another egg.  Then I just ended up with a sloppy mess so I started randomly dumping in more dry ingredients until it was less gloppy.  I eventually just gave up and decided the oil would sort things out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scoop some out and form into a patty.  Mine was so gloppy I couldn't actually do that... I ended up just spooning a big goop of it and putting into the oil and hoping for the best.  I flattened it out with the spatula and they actually were just fine.  Make sure your oil is REALLY hot and don't be afraid to let these get really brown. 

 

 

 

Notice the dark oil/butter.  It's not burning... just not pretty.

 

I had been abandoned and was finishing up on my own by this point.

 

Drain them on a paper towel.  If they seem like they are taking forever, spoon some of the oil on top to cook the middle faster.



 

 

Yummy!!

 

 

 

These turned out really good and I will make them again with some tweaks.  You could add nearly anything to these and I also bought some jalapenos at the market that I think I will add to some of them.  We tried these with ranch but decided we liked them plain best.  A remoulade sauce would be good too probably.  I even got my 16 year old to eat a bite and he liked them until he realized it was squash.  Then he refused to eat anymore.  I forgot to count and we were eating them as I was making them but I think I got around 10-12.  Excellent way to stretch ingredients and get veggies into kids!

 

 

  Here is a monster eating a croquette: