Air fryer zucchini tots are a kid-friendly, veggie-heavy side dish that comes together in no time thanks to your friendly neighborhood air fryer!
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I resisted getting an Air Fryer for the longest time. My blog name is not a misnomer. My kitchen is truly small, and every square inch of counter space is valuable real estate. I couldn’t image letting some big bulky uni-tasker take that space away from potential food prep areas. But these air fryer zucchini tots are totally worth it!
For the most part, I make roasted vegetables in it. It’s so nice to be able to free up that oven space for other things, or to not have to turn my oven on at all if it’s hot. I wish I had bought one years ago.
But for now, I’m going to concentrate on using it in new and interesting ways.
After an abundance of fresh zucchini from my CSA share last week, and since I’m on this mission to use the air fryer more, and I’m always on mission to lower my carb intake (I’ll save that for pasta, thanks!) I decided to try my hand at these zucchini tots with parmesan cheese.
I actually debated calling this recipe Zucchini Crowns because they’re more like Crispy Crowns than Tater Tots. If you’ve never had crispy crowns, they’re like tots, but instead of a rod shape, they’re more puck shaped. It gives you a greater crispy outside to creamy inside ratio that I appreciate, because isn’t the crispy outside what we’re all really there for?
Other Delicious Side Dishes You'll Love
Other Cooking Methods:
If you don’t have an air fryer, you can make these zucchini tots in an oven. Just preheat the oven to 400, and then bake tots for 16-18 minutes on a parchment lined baking sheet, turning halfway through cooking.
Ingredients Needed
- Zucchini
- Egg
- Parmesan Cheese
- Panko breadcrumbs
- Garlic
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Cayenne Pepper (optional)
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Getting the water out of the zucchini:
Zucchini has a TON of water in it. These tots come together best when you’ve gotten as much water out of the zucchini as possible.
- To do this, you can grate the zucchini into a thin tea towel, and then wrap the towel around the zucchini, twist it and squeeze as hard as you can to get as much water out as possible. The towel will soak through pretty quickly, so I would recommend doing this twice, using a second towel to make sure you’ve gotten as much water out as you can.
- Another method that I’ve heard of, but not tried is the following: place the shredded zucchini into a French press, and press down as you would on coffee, until as much liquid comes out as possible, and then just pour off the water. You can then take the zucchini and do the towel method. If you’ve tried this method and it works, please let me know!! The only downside I can see is that I don’t know that I would want to make coffee in a zucchini press. 😊
These are fairly healthy, and are a good way to sneak in some extra veggies to your kids in a new and fun way!
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Air Fryer Zucchini Tots
Ingredients
- 12 ounces of zucchini shredded (about 2 medium)
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup parmesan cheese grated
- ½ cup plain panko breadcrumbs
- 1 clove garlic minced
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 shake of cayenne pepper or to taste
Instructions
- Shred the zucchini over a thin tea towel, and wring all the water out of the zucchini that you can.
- In a medium bowl add shredded zucchini, egg, cheese breadcrumbs and garlic. Add a shake of cayenne and ⅛ teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
- Mix together.
- Scoop out 1 tablespoon of zucchini mixture, and form a small 1 inch patty with your hands, and place on a plate. Repeat with remaining zucchini mixture.
- Preheat the air fryer to 375. Spray fryer basket with non stick spray.
- Add the zucchini tots to the basket once preheated.
- Cook for 3 minutes, flip, then cook an additional 3 minutes.
- Sprinkle with a little extra salt.
Omg these sound so good! Definitely adding to my must-make list.
- Kit | simplyfreshfoodie.com
I hope you like them as much as I did!!
Do you happen to have nutrition info (just the basics) on these? No worries if not, but worth checking! I have an over abundance of zucchini I need to use!
Hi Molly! I don't have the nutrition info for these, I'm sorry!
These were delicious! So easy to make. My daughter said she likes them better than the potato kind. I needed to cook mine a little longer, but appliances differ. Still wasn't long.
I'm so glad she liked them!! One of my favorite recipes, for sure!