Why are my courgettes watery, and does salting help?
A courgette is around ninety-five per cent water, and how you deal with that water is the whole of cooking one well. When salting is worth the time and when high heat does the job faster.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 10 min
- Read
- 3 min
Short answer
Salt the slices for 20–30 minutes and pat them dry when they are going into something that cannot cope with liquid — a bake, a fritter, a tart, a stuffing. When you are frying or roasting them, skip the salting and use a properly hot pan or oven with plenty of space instead, because heat drives the water off as steam rather than letting it pool.
Courgettes hold more water than almost any other vegetable, and unlike an aubergine they have no bitterness to draw out — so salting them is purely a water question, and whether it earns its half hour depends on where they are going.
Step by step
- Decide whether the water has anywhere to go.In a hot pan or a hot oven with space around the pieces, water leaves as steam and the courgette browns. In a gratin, a batter, a lasagne, a quiche or a bake, there is nowhere for it to go and it collects as a puddle. That is the whole decision.
- To salt, use enough salt and give it long enough.Slice or cut the courgette, spread it in a colander over a bowl or on a tray, and scatter about half a teaspoon of fine salt per medium courgette, tossing so it is evenly distributed. Leave 20–30 minutes. Osmosis draws water out of the cells and you will see it pooling.
- Rinse only if you have over-salted, and always pat dry.Usually no rinse is needed — the salt that stays is your seasoning. Press the pieces firmly between a clean tea towel or kitchen paper. This step is not optional: surface water is exactly what you spent half an hour removing.
- To fry, get the pan properly hot and do not crowd it.High heat, a film of oil, and a single layer with space between the pieces. Leave them alone for two or three minutes so they colour, then turn. Courgettes crammed into a pan drop the temperature, release their water and stew into grey mush.
- To roast, use a hot oven and a big tray.220°C, cut into substantial pieces rather than thin slices, tossed in oil, spread out. Thin slices dehydrate into leather; chunks of 3–4 cm brown outside and stay tender inside.
- Salt at the end, not the start, when frying.Salting courgettes just before they hit a hot pan draws water to the surface at precisely the wrong moment. Season them once they have browned.
- For fritters and cakes, squeeze hard.Grate, salt for twenty minutes, then wring the courgette out in a clean tea towel with real force. You will be surprised how much comes out, and a fritter mixture made from unwrung courgette will never hold together.
Tips
- A glut of courgettes is best dealt with by roasting or griddling large batches and freezing them cooked. Raw courgette freezes badly because of the water.
- Griddling in thick lengthways slices gives the best flavour of any method — high dry heat, big surface, no crowding.
- Very small courgettes have proportionally less water and firmer flesh, which is why they are worth buying when you see them.
- The salting question is entirely different from the aubergine one, which is about bitterness and oil absorption rather than water in a bake.
If it doesn't work
Grey, floppy and swimming in liquid after frying
Cause: Pan not hot enough, or too many pieces in it at once — Fix: Cook in batches over a high heat. Rescue the batch by turning the heat right up and driving the liquid off, though the texture will not fully recover.
Watery layer at the bottom of a bake or gratin
Cause: Raw courgette put straight into the dish — Fix: Salt and drain, or pre-fry the courgette, before it goes into anything baked.
Courgette fritters falling apart
Cause: Grated courgette not wrung out — Fix: Salt, wait, then squeeze hard in a tea towel. Add a little more flour or egg to bind what you have.
Bitter taste
Cause: Rare, but some varieties and stressed plants produce cucurbitacins — Fix: Taste a small raw piece. If it is genuinely bitter, discard the whole courgette — the compounds are unpleasant and can cause stomach upset, and cooking does not remove them.
Questions people ask
Do I need to salt courgettes for ratatouille?
No — each vegetable is fried separately in a hot pan first, which drives the water off. Salting would be doing the same job twice.
Should I peel or deseed them?
Not for ordinary courgettes. For a very large marrow-sized one, scoop out the watery seedy core, because that part is mostly water and will not improve with any technique.