Make Stuffed Squash Blossoms with Trace Barnett!

Are your summer squash plants blooming like crazy right about now? Make the most of the whole crop with this savory summer appetizer recipe! Alabama homesteader, cook, and entertainer Trace Barnett shares his stuffed squash blossoms recipe with us.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms (Serves 6-8)

Take advantage of all the bright squash blooms prominent in the garden this time of year by stuffing and frying them. Squash blossoms lend themselves well to all kinds of fillings, such as cheese or herbs, and they can be topped with any variety of accompaniments, such as honey or bacon. The flower itself has a delightful spicy flavor that melts in the mouth. A batter made from a flour, egg, and club soda mixture adds a nice crunch to the delicate petals and is light enough to preserve the blooms’ texture. Harvest the blossoms in the early morning, using a sharp knife to separate from the stem.

INGREDIENTS:

6–8 squash blossoms
5.2 ounces garlic and fine herb Gournay cheese
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup club soda
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 large egg
Vegetable or olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh chives, finely minced
2 slices cooked bacon, crumbled (optional)

METHOD:

1. Prepare the blossoms by first removing the stamen inside the flower. Wash thoroughly and check to ensure no dirt or debris is present. Place cheese in a plastic storage bag and push to one corner and close the bag. Use sharp kitchen scissors remove the corn of the bag. Pipe cheese into each blossom. Gently press petals together to seal. Repeat for remaining blossoms.
2. Meanwhile, combine flour, salt, pepper, egg, club soda, and cayenne in a medium bowl; stir well.
3. Gently dip the squash blossom into the batter and turn to coat.
4. Fry blossoms in a cast iron skillet containing 1/4 inch of hot vegetable or olive oil. Brown each side, turning once. Remove from the skillet and drain on a paper towel. Transfer to a platter and serve warm, topped with a sprinkle of chive and crumbled bacon, if desired.

Transcript:

– Did you know that you can eat squash blossoms? Today, we’re gonna harvest and stuff some with herbed cheese. Harvest them early in the morning so they don’t close up, sometime between daybreak and 9:00 AM. All you need to do is find a squash blossom and simply cut it off, leaving a long stem so you can simply just pick up, dip and eat.

Let’s go inside and stuff this flower. Today, I’m gonna be stuffing our squash blossoms with one of my favorite things, and that is a herb Gournay cheese. So take a regular old Ziploc bag and we are gonna transfer our cheese into the bag. Seal your bag up just like so.

And what we’re gonna do is we are going to pipe that all the way into that corner, take my kitchen shears here and just cut off the end of our Ziploc bag. And what we’ve done is we’ve just created a piping. So let’s pipe our filling into our flower here. And what you’re gonna do is pipe directly into the base of the flower there and work your way up just kind of holding it in your hand, just like that.

What we’re gonna do now is we are gonna take our flower petals and just kind of mold it into the shape we want to fry it in. So just like that. And you have your yourself a stuffed squash blossom that’s ready to batter. To make our batter, we’re gonna combine a few simple ingredients: all-purpose flour, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, just a pinch of cayenne, this is completely optional, one large egg.

Give this a stir. And now the fun part, I’m gonna add one cup of club soda. So the club soda is going to fluff up this flour here. It’s gonna really aerate it.

We want this batter to be really light, really crispy, and not weigh our blossoms down. After we’ve stirred that really well, let’s dip our blossoms into the batter. To dip our squash blossoms, we’re gonna hold by one end, the end that we have twisted, and all we’re gonna do is just dredge them ever-so-slightly into our flour mixture. You wanna put them in there and basically just roll them over.

We don’t want the batter to be the star of the show here. We want the squash blossoms and the stuffing of the cheese. So now that we’ve got our squash blossoms coated in our batter, let’s fry these flowers up. So let’s place our squash blossoms directly into our hot oil here.

We’re going to cook these squash blossoms for about two minutes on each side and then we’re gonna flip them only once. So after a couple minutes has passed, I like to use a spatula and a stainless-steel spoon, and be extra careful when you do this, when you’re flipping them, you don’t wanna burn yourself or mess up the squash blossoms. And gently with the spatula and the spoon, just flip those blossoms just right over. Now that our blossoms have cooked two minutes on the other side, let’s take them out and put them on a paper towel to drain.

Now that we’ve got our flowers fried up, let’s garnish them with just a little bit of fresh chive and a little bit of crumbled bacon. They’re the perfect Southern appetizer that’s straight from your garden, right to your party. Mm. And so good too.

That’s like summer in a bite.