Who doesn’t love a crunchy fried bite of, well, nearly anything? I would argue that a good vegetable fritter is one of the easiest and most welcome treats you could make for yourself or friends. You only need a few staple ingredients, the mixture can be made in advance, and cooking takes minutes. You can make the fritters for one or many, and they are a great way to clean out the produce drawer of your refrigerator.
Several years ago, we talked about croquettes, which are a mixture of proteins, vegetables, or both that is thick enough to be formed into a log or patty, then dipped in egg and breadcrumbs. Fritters require much less work. They’re more like a drop batter to which the main event ingredients are added. Some fritters have a lot of batter and are just studded with vegetables, while others are almost all veg and the batter is barely there. The choice is yours and experimentation is everything.
Think of latkes or potato pancakes, the ultimate fritter. One of my all-time favorite fritters was one made by cookbook author Joyce Goldstein. I can’t find the recipe, but it was simply several different kinds of onions (yellow and green onions, leeks) sauteed to soften, then mixed together with crumbled feta and pine nuts with flour to bind. Talk about making something amazing from nothing. But this time of year, it’s all about zucchini and corn for me.
To start, here is Deb Perelman’s deep dive into the simplest zucchini fritters.
Most fritter batters are made of an egg and a small amount of flour to bind. Try not to use too much egg, or you’ll end up with a soggy inside. Shredded cheese is often used to hold disparate ingredients together. But crumbled feta can also be a terrific flavor punch to bland veggies like zucchini. Shredded zucchini, once squeezed dry of its moisture, can be a terrific binder for other veggies — as is shredded potato of course.
Here is a template for making fritters out of nearly any vegetable. You beat one egg in a bowl, add up to ½ cup crumbled or grated cheese and ¼ cup flour. Whisk together, and if you desire, add spices. Then add your vegetable in a quantity you prefer. You can load up the veg so it is barely covered with batter, which will result in a very crisp, messy fritter similar to a pakora. Or you can aim for a more pancake-like fritter by adding just enough veg to the batter to give you pops of flavor and still retaining the batter consistency. Some cooks like to add a pinch of baking powder to this style of fritter to lighten it up. Pakoras are a great example of an endless way of making fritters with little batter and some added spice. A lot of pakora recipes just use flour and rely on the moisture of the vegetables to bind the mass.
These fritters of delicata squash, zucchini and corn are a great summer bite. Here, the shredded zucchini almost acts as an additional binder. These corn fritters with cheddar and scallions are an example of a fritter packed with veggies. The corn is the star with the sharp cheddar adding contrast and a melting texture.
First prep your vegetables. Everything needs to cook in the short amount of time it takes to fry the fritter, so I advocate pre-cooking more sturdy veg (like broccoli) and shredding ingredients or cutting them small. If you have a food processor use your shredding blade.
No one wants a soggy fritter, so make sure whatever vegetable you’re using goes into the batter as dry as you can make it. With zucchini, this means you will grate it first, then squeeze the liquid out. Don’t stint on the frying. Make sure the oil is hot, and cook on both sides until the inside is done and the outside is crisp. That’s the whole point. Then lift the fritters out of the oil, and let drain on paper towels. You can make fritters ahead, but really I don’t see the point unless you’re feeding hordes. I advocate for making fritters outdoors when it’s hot if you have a grill set up with a burner or a portable camping stove. All you need to make a meal of them is to add a leafy salad. Pass lemon wedges to amp up the flavor.