Healthy Low-Carb Zucchini Walnut Fritters
Enjoy these low-carb fritters baked, air-fried, or pan-fried!
A delicious Mediterranean appetizer or accompaniment to the main course. Enjoyable for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. If you have a vegetable garden, you likely have many of these ingredients already which makes this a perfect end-of-summer side dish! These fritters are full of healthy fat, protein, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and dietary fiber. Enjoy!
Servings: 10-14 fritters
Ingredients
2-3 large (about 1 ½ lb) Zucchini, shredded
1 red onion, shredded or chopped
¾ tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. Arrowroot powder or omit if keto
¼ cup walnuts*
¼ cup parsley, chopped
2 Tbsp. basil, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 large pasture-raised eggs
2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast or parmesan cheese
¼ tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
Salt + Pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. avocado, sesame, coconut, or high oleic sunflower oil
*Optional: Sub for ¼ cup almond flour or garbanzo bean flour
Preparation
- Place shredded zucchini and onion in a colander over a bowl and sprinkle with ¾ teaspoons of salt. This allows the zucchini and onion to ‘sweat’ out excess moisture; the more moisture removed the crispier the fritters. Let sit for 20 minutes.
- In your food processor or blender, blitz the walnuts until it is a course ground texture.
- In a bowl, add your walnuts, parsley, basil, garlic, eggs, and optional cayenne.
- Revisit the shredded zucchini and onion. Using paper towels, a clean dish towel, or other cloth of choice wring out the zucchini and onion mixture to get out as much moisture as possible. Add to the walnut mixture and mix well.
Cooking Directions
Bake: Preheat oven to 400* F line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper and brush with oil. Scoop batter onto a sheet pan and flatten, and brush with oil on top. Bake for 25-30 minutes, flipping halfway through.
Air fry: Preheat Air Fryer to 375* F. Place the fritters on the preheated Air Fryer mesh in a single layer. Brush with oil and cook for 8-10 minutes. Flip fritters and cook for another 4-5 minutes or until crispy and golden.
Pan Fry: Preheat a large pan to medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of oil, scoop batter into the pan, and cook 2-3 minutes per side until golden crispy and cooked through. You can use an ice cream scoop for this. Transfer to a paper towel-lined pan and repeat.
Serving Directions
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
This dish is delicious with yogurt, dill, and chive dipping sauce, topped with herbed goat cheese, bruschetta, or served alongside sugar-free bacon and eggs. Or perhaps, you can serve it in a Mediterranean bowl with roasted cauliflower, hummus, lamb meatballs, and pickled vegetables or olives.
You can make a large quantity and store it in your freezer, to reheat- place it in the toaster oven or on a pan until warmed through.
Nutrition Facts
Serving Size – 2 patties
Carbs 9g
Fiber 3.3g
Net carbs 5.7g
Fat 7.7g
Protein 6.2 g
About the Author
Lia Klugman, Fitness and Nutrition Adviser in White City, OR, provides holistic nutrition expertise to support OnePeak Medical patients in meeting their health and wellness goals.
A second-generation foodie and health nut, Lia grew up eating nutritious foods. Her father is Israeli, so salad for breakfast with hummus and a hardboiled egg was frequent. Lia’s mother cured her sister’s asthma with nutrition alone and prepared a wide array of nutritious foods. Lia didn’t try candy until she was 6 years old! She also never believed in Santa Claus, but believed dried apple was bubblegum. When Lia got a little older, she realized she would only be allowed to eat sugar if she baked something with it herself. This loophole developed her love for baking, cooking, and her tendency toward blood-sugar imbalance.
Fast forward to 2017, Lia was working through her own health journey working at the front desk of an acupuncture clinic. She learned many different modalities such as Nutritional Response Testing, herbal medicine, meridians, and how energies flow in the body. She quickly realized how passionate she was about nutrition and health and decided to study at Bauman College of Culinary Arts. Lia completed her Nutrition Consultant Certification in 2019. After her degree, she started her own practice and has helped clients heal everything from their eczema to chronic digestive discomfort to managing their PCOS symptoms, as well as excelling in their workouts.
Lia’s strives to support her clients to build resilience and intuition through nutrition. After working with Lia, clients report feeling more in tune with their body so that they begin to crave the healthy foods their body needs to thrive. To Lia, success looks like being able to indulge during moments of celebration without overdoing it or feeling like you need a week to recover.
Lia believes nutrition is not just physical, but emotional as well and shares this wisdom in every aspect of her work. Many people are turned off by their bodies’ natural wisdom and instead rely on the next TV show or influencer to tell them how to eat. It’s much more difficult to create an enjoyable life if we can get stuck in a pattern of trendy restrictive diets or binge eating. They both are experiences of detachment to what our body actually needs. If we get educated, dig deeper, and enhance our intuition, we can get clarity on our own health. The more we listen to our body, the louder it speaks.
Upon working with Lia, patients report having more energy, confidence, and trust in themselves, so they feel better able to handle whatever comes their way. She does this by co-creating a plan with clients that is manageable, incorporating various healing modalities that include how to heal the mind, body, and spirit in conjunction.
One of Lia’s favorite sayings is from Ayurveda (Traditional Indian Medicine): “You are not what you eat but what you digest.” She believes this spans beyond just our health and food but includes information we intake, experiences we do, modalities, and medicines we take. Digestion is the act of assimilating external information. Practicing this is crucial to healing and growing.
Book an Appointment
Lia is currently seeing patients Tuesdays and Thursdays both in person at our White City clinic or virtually via telehealth appointment. Call today to book your appointment with Lia!