Courgette or Marrow Flour.

I saw this method on an American homesteading site, she went on about how great it was and that it could be used as a replacement for coconut flour. As we can’t grow coconuts here, but usually have plenty of courgettes and marrows, I thought this could be good…  

The directions were easy enough, grate the courgette, spread on trays and dehydrate till very dry, then grind into flour. I started with 2773g of marrow, peeled, deseeded and grated it was down to 1716g. I decided to put it in a cloth and squeeze out any extra moisture before dehydrating, courgettes are mostly water so this should speed up the dehydrating time. Then spread it on trays to dehydrate… 

Hours later and I still had a wettish mass. Because we are off grid on solar power and with it getting later in the day, I decided to put some in the woodstove oven, which was still a bit too hot and dried it too crispy. The other trays were still not dry so popped it all in the oven. Was getting a bit frustrated with it by this time, especially when I got busy elsewhere and dried it to brown and crispy… I removed all the fiddly tiny dried bits and put the moist stuff back into to dry some more.  

Finally it was dry and I could grind it up in the blender to a reasonably flour like texture and it was weighed in at 64g, maybe ½ a cup of flour. All that time and effort for ½ a cup of flour. If you were paying for the power to dehydrate the courgette on top of the time taken, it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.  

I tried again a few days later, with thin slices of marrow, this was actually easier and the drying time seemed similar. I think if we had the solar dehydrator up and running or drying racks above the woodstove then this would be the way to go with dehydrating courgettes or marrows, as due to their high-water content the drying does take a lot of time. But at least by leaving it in slices I avoided all the fiddliness that came with the grated courgette. 

I had pretty much decided that we would just use the courgettes and marrows without dehydrating, as they are actually a useful baking ingredient when used fresh. From chocolate cakes to fritters and pizza bases, grated courgette has many uses. Mature marrows can be stored for several months and used in the same way as courgettes. But then I tried baking a marrow flour chocolate cake… Wow! it really is just as good as coconut flour and with no coconut flavour or the odd texture that coconut can have, so better than coconut flour!  Plus you only need 1/2 a cup of flour to bake a cake.

So next season (fed all the marrows to the pigs in annoyance and forgot about my pizza bases!! oops) we will sort a better drying system and try again. But just thinking about it we do still have Austrian oilseed pumpkins to deseed, hmmm…