Zucchini Au Gratin Recipe: Tips for Making Zucchini Au Gratin

Zucchini au gratin, or zucchini gratin, is a savory side dish made from zucchini or summer squash, heavy cream, and assorted cheeses. You can prepare zucchini gratin in a shallow baking dish and top it with a mixture of cheese and bread crumbs, resulting in a bite that’s equal parts crispy, creamy, and tender. Use panko bread crumbs for the topping or make your own by ripping stale bread into pea-sized chunks and baking them in the oven until they dry out.

Fresh zucchini is low in calories and carbohydrates and an excellent source of potassium and vitamin A.

Once you perfect the formula for zucchini au gratin, its elements are easy to adapt. Here are a few tips to consider:

1. 1. Salt or sauté the zucchini to remove excess water. To avoid making a watery zucchini casserole, arrange the sliced zucchini on a sheet tray lined with paper towels, and sprinkle the slices with salt. Let the slices sit for thirty minutes, then squeeze out the remaining moisture. Alternatively, you can sauté the zucchini to cook off some water and reduce the cooking time.
   
2. 2. Season the bread crumbs. The crunchy bits of bread crumb topping along the surface of a gratin adds a unique textural component to the dish. Add a pinch of your favorite chili powder, incorporate fresh herbs and garlic, and season them with salt and pepper to impart more flavor.
   
3. 3. Mimic a pasta gratin with zucchini noodles. If you’re looking for the low-carb, halfway point between macaroni and cheese gratin and zucchini gratin, swap in spiralized zoodles for the sliced zucchini. If you prefer to skip the bread crumbs, simply add a little more cheese on top and broil to get a crackly, burnished finish.

The terms “scalloped” and “au gratin” might seem interchangeable, but there are a few distinctions between the techniques:

• The topping: The distinguishing feature between the two techniques is the topping. Scalloped dishes will certainly develop a golden brown top as the cream cooks in the oven, but au gratin, from the French verb “gratter,” meaning “to scrape” or “grate,” features a crunchy top layer of shredded cheese and bread crumbs.
• The filling: A scalloped preparation features a simple cream sauce poured over sliced veggies, most commonly potatoes, before it’s baked. (The word “scalloped” comes from an Old English term meaning “to thinly slice.”) Au gratin dishes may incorporate grated cheese or butter between the layers and feature a rich white cheese sauce like Mornay, resulting in an extra creamy, rich result.
• The bakeware: Deep casserole dishes are the typical cooking vessel for scalloped meals because they give the cream ample room to bubble up around the ingredients and reduce as it cooks. The typical cooking vessel for an au gratin meal—which feature either a fully or partially cooked filling, like macaroni and cheese or quickly sautéed vegetables—is a shallow dish that you can place under a broiler.