Nat’s What I Reckon’s Zucchini Fritters Recipe Will Make You Excited for Breakfast

Champions, it is time once again for a kick-ass recipe from our lockdown cooking saviour, Nat’s What I Reckon. This time it’s fritters, a meal that’s good for any time of day and pretty healthy, too!

This recipe is from Nat’s What I Reckon’s epic new book, Death to Jar Sauce (also a mantra we should all live by). As Nat puts it in his book, there are a few rubbish recipes for fritters out there, but this is not one of them:

Bloody love a good fritter, but fuck me there are a few trash recipes out there for them. I, too, am responsible for making some rough ones in my time that just fell apart or tasted like poorly thought out ideas. I went on that fucken bananas keto diet once and ate zucchini fritters every day for a month ’cause it was seemingly the only green vegetable I could eat without going over my carb allowance. Spent the whole month hating life and shitting myself. Worst.

Anyway, these are bloody awesome and the flour in them means not only are they going to stick together properly, but they’re also incidentally going to launch you lovingly out of ketosis in a rocket ship full of flavours.

Not feeling like you want to die after eating a fritter sounds pretty good to me. The team were nice enough to pass on Nat’s prized fritter recipe, which you can also find along with some incredible illustrations in Death to Jar Sauce.

Nat’s What I Reckon’s fritters recipe

The following recipe is from Death By Jar Sauce by Nat’s What I Reckon.

Serves: 3–4

Cooking Time: around 30 mins

What you’ll need:

For the fritters:

• 500 g zucchini
• salt
• 225 g pack halloumi
• ½ cup self-raising flour
• ½ cup chopped basil
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• pepper
• ½ teaspoon chilli flakes, or 1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (optional)
• extra-virgin olive oil to shallow fry (5mm deep of oil should get you across the line)
• coriander leaves, to serve (optional)

For the salad:

• 1 deseeded Lebanese cucumber
• 1 tomato
• a red onion

For the Garlic Yoghurt:

• 1 cup Greek-style yoghurt
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1 garlic clove, peeled

Directions:

The stress levels could not be lower for this dish, which is sometimes what is important when accelerating at full hunger speed towards the kitchen. Smiles for miles, I tells ya.

1. First of all, let’s turn the Greek-style yoghurt into a sick little side for the fritts. Into a bowl with that, followed by the zest of one whole lemon. With the same zesting device, mince a clove of garlic into the bowl and stir it together. Now, if you’re a mad garlic ratbag you can bung a few more cloves in here and I sometimes do… but heads up: raw garlic is a powerful beast, so maybe proceed with a little caution, or you might accidentally kick your own breakfast arse, mouth first.
2. If you’re up for the extra salady nonsense, then prepare ya little side salad by slicing your cucumber lengthways twice, running a knife away from you and cutting the wet seedy shit off it. Then finely chop the cucumber, tomato and red onion, and toss together in a bowl.
3. Cut the ends off the zucchini and coarsely grate into its own bowl, then stir though a pinch of salt. Set it aside to marinate in the salty goodness for 15 minutes. The salt draws the liquid piss out of the zucchini, which is what we are fucken chasing here, champions.
4. After the big 15, dump the mix in the middle of a Chux, a cheesecloth or a few layers of paper towel. We wanna try to squeeze all the wetness from the zucchs. The paper towel is more of a squasher to get it to work, whereas the Chux or cheesecloth allows for a little wringing action. Remember that even though Chux look tough, they can fucken bust open if you give it too much throttle. Return the zucchini to the bowl.
5. Next, coarsely grate your halloumi into the bowl of drained zucchini, then add flour, basil, egg, half a teaspoon of salt, same of pepper and of course don’t forget your chilli if you’re going for it. Give it all a big stir to combine.
6. Love a good halfway point, which is where the heat should be on your stove, when you heat enough oil in a frying pan to give you 5 mm depth. Using a ¼ cup measure, spoon a blob of this magical fritterness, one blob at a time, into the pan. It is hot oil so don’t fucken burn yourself.
7. Give each patty a little flatten with a spatula, though of course you can try to manipulate the shape if you like, but let’s be honest, who gives a massive fuck about the shape of this kind of shit? There are so many more important things to give massive fucks about than the perfect uniform perimeters of your dinner. It will taste righteous whatever shape it is, so don’t stress ya mess too much.
8. Cook for 2–3 minutes each side, or until they look fucken cooked. Transfer to a paper towel, or your bathroom towel if you’d love that covered in oil. Keep somewhere warm while you make your way through the rest of the bowl of fritts mix.
9. Serve with that sick yogurt and the salad, or even just with some coriander leaves over the top.

Any way you have these fritters, you’ll dig them. Now go give yourself the fritts.

If you’re thinking these fritters would go well with a side of roast potatoes, or you just want an excuse to make roast potatoes, check out Nat’s What I Reckon’s potato recipe – it is next level.

You can also find 20+ recipes in Death to Jar Sauce and even more over on Nat’s What I Reckon’s YouTube page. Now go forth and use this recipe to make some damn good fritters.