If you have an abundance of squash or zucchini this summer — consider yourself fortunate! I’m several years deep in gardening myself, but haven’t had much luck this season possibly due to the onslaught of rain and then heat; however, my ‘Tommy toe’ and Cherokee Purple tomatoes have been plentiful this year and so have the BLTs and tomato sandwiches around my house.
If you are fortunate enough to have that over-abundance of squash and assorted varieties, then you might look into various ways to prepare them for eating. Sure, there’s always fried squash, healthier baked squash, and even the stir-fry option with some sweet teriyaki sauce and a protein of your choosing–but maybe you want something different?
One of my family’s favorite things to do with that wealth of squash or zucchini has always been to make a savory pie using both yellow squash and zucchini. I can’t take take credit for this recipe myself and I can’t remember where I found it, but I’ve been making it for at least the past fifteen years and it never disappoints! A quick Google search for squash and zucchini pie recipes will return several similar results, if not spot-on versions of this. Mine was jotted-down on an index card and shoved into one of my recipe books at home and the creator sadly forgotten to time.
This recipes doesn’t require a crust (however a pre-baked crust would certainly add to the flavor!), it’s loaded with cheese, and without the crust it easily fits the low carb or keto-friendly diets if you’re following one of those.
You can add a bit of flour or even almond flour to the mix if you wish, but it’s otherwise pretty tasty without it and that’s generally the way I’ve made it–omitting flour. And I like to use both yellow ‘crook-neck’ and zucchini. You can also use golden zucchini if you have access to it.
Just a note… Yellow squash typically cooks-up a bit faster than zucchini, so if you’re using a mix of both, you might want to add your zucchini to the saute’ (recipe below) first and then add your yellow squash a minute or two later so they come out even.
Crustless Squash Squash Summer Bake
Ingredients
- 5 Cups (approx) Squash – thinly-sliced rounds — Yellow, Crook-Neck, Zucchini, or mix the two… Enough to fill a 9″ pie plate or skillet depending on how you bake it (below).
- 2 TBSP Butter – the real stuff…salted or unsalted.
- 1/4 Cup Onion Chopped – yellow, white, or sweet Vidalia is always the best!
- 1 Clove Garlic Minced – Yes, ‘Jar-lic’ is fine, too — 1 Tsp is about 1 clove.
- 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
- 1/2 Teaspoon Pepper
- 2 TBSP Oregano – fresh is best, but the dried variety works, too, just use about 1.5 TBSP since dried is usually stronger.
- 2 Cups Mozzarella Cheese Shredded – you can also mix 1/2 and 1/2 with some cheddar, gouda, or add some fresh parmesan for a little bonus flavor!
- 2 Eggs beaten
- OPTIONAL — 2 TBSP Flour or Almond Flour – Again this is purely optional.
Instructions
- Melt your butter in a 12″ cast iron skillet over medium or medium-high heat
- Saute’ the onion in the butter about 2 mins (until onion turns slightly-translucent).
- Add squash and garlic and saute’ until squash begins to soften (approx 7-9 mins).
- In another bowl, stir together your cheese, eggs, oregano, salt and pepper. (If you chose to use a bit of flour — this is where you’d add it…)
- Add your squash/onion/garlic to the cheese mixture.
- Pour mixture into a buttered or sprayed 9″ pie plate. (If you’re using a crust, you can pour it into a pre-cooked crust here and cover the edges to keep it from burning…) NOTE: If you’re not using a crust and want to save dishes — you can also use your cast iron skillet for baking as well and reduce the dish washing! 😉
- Bake at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until center is set and edges are lightly browned.
Just a note… Yellow squash typically cooks-up a bit faster than zucchini, so if you’re using a mix of both, you might want to add your zucchini to the saute’ first and then add your yellow squash a minute or two later so they come out even.
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This dish is good as a standalone or paired with pretty much anything you can imagine!
Now, if you’re looking for something completely different or maybe on the sweet side, there’s always zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini bread, and lemon and yellow squash bundt cakes (pound cake), breads, and much more…but I’ve found another worth trying and it’s in pie form, too!
One of the blogs I follow regularly online, and hands-down one of my favorite YouTube content creators is Tipper Pressely, author of The Blind Pig & the Acorn blog and Celebrating Appalachia YouTube channels. Tipper is a native of Western North Carolina, and with her husband Matt and family bring a lot of content to the web through the blog and videos preserving our Appalachian history, music, sustainable lifestyle, colorful language, and food ways.
In 2023, she co-authored a book, “Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food,” with fellow North Carolinian author Jim Casada (“A Smoky Mountain Boyhood,” “Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir,” and others).
The cookbook contains a vast amount of recipes, some handed-down from both authors families for generations. With everything from main dishes, seasonal favorites, and more desserts and sweet treats than you can ‘shake a stick at’. Both Pressley and Casada are obviously skilled in Appalachian Cuisine and cooking, despite being very humble in their skills as seen in videos and reading blog posts.
In a recent blog post of Pressley’s, she shared one of the recipes from the cook book for a Summer Squash Pie — this one contributed to the book by Casada. Now this wasn’t the savory type, but more of the sweet dessert option and it’s worth giving it a try!
This one contains grated raw squash or zucchini, sugar, eggs, butter, flour, lemon and coconut flavoring all added to unbaked pie shells and the recipe yields about two pies but can be ‘cut-down’ to make just one pie.
Pressley says the recipe is perfect for a quick weekday dessert when you have summer bounty coming in from the garden and says it’s delicious.
You can read her blog post with the recipe on Blind Pig and the Acorn here.
You can find her and Casada’s cookbook, which includes this recipe and so many others here.
If you have time, make sure to check out Tipper’s blog “The Blind Pig and the Acorn”
You can also visit Jim Casada’s website to learn more about his books, newsletters, and doings here.
I cannot recommend Tipper’s blog and video content enough. I have learned so much about gardening, food ways, and our Appalachian lifestyle, culture, and history through her efforts and also Jim’s for preserving things important to us in the region.
While I haven’t had a good yield of yellow squash or zucchini this year myself, I have had a decent yield of my green and white striped Cushaw squash, so I’m definitely going to be trying one of the other recipes found on Pressley’s blog for Cushaw Pie very soon!
