Baked Zucchini Fries

I saw this on Our Best Bites the other day and thought it sounded scrumptious, so I figured I'd give it a try tonight.  I modified the recipe from that site with my Baked Onion Rings recipe to come up with the one below, and it is indeed scrumptious.

You can make thick or thin zuke fries.  I oped for thin, and they are nice and crispy outside, and soft and flavorful inside.

Basically you take a zuke and cut the ends off.  Then cut it in half so you have two shorter pieces.  Take each half and cut in half length-wise so you have 2 flat pieces, then again so you have 4 flat pieces.  Take each flat piece and cut into quarters to make sticks.  They turn out to be the same size as traditional french fries.

Baked Zucchini Fries
Adapted from this recipe and this recipe.

Ingredients:

• PAM
• 3 medium zucchini, washed, dried, sliced into sticks
• whole wheat flour
• EggBeaters
• 1 part whole wheat Panko bread crumbs to 1 part grated parmesan
• Tastefully Simple Seasoned Salt

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Spray a baking sheet with PAM.
• Set up three shallow bowls in an assembly line: first with the flour (about a cup), then with the EggBeaters (about 2 cups), then with the 1:1 Panko to parmesan mixture (about 2 cups total).
• Season the flour and Panko:parmesan with TSSS.
• One by one, dredge the zucchini sticks in flour, then dip into the EggBeaters, then roll in the Panko:parmesan mixture.  Lay them on the prepared baking sheet in a single layer.
• Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes until crunchy.  (Our Best Bites says to flip them after 10 minutes, but I didn't and they turned out perfectly fine.)
• Serve immediately.  (They lose their crunch once they cool down and sit on the counter for a while.)

I served mine with some warmed jarred marinara sauce.  YUM!