U.S. — A new report out of Harvard University indicated that zucchini actually isn't that bad after covering it with flour or cornmeal and a lot of seasoning and frying all the taste out of it in hot oil.
The results of the study seemed to disprove the popular assumption that zucchini was simply awful and bereft of any value whatsoever, leading researchers to conclude that it was, in fact, edible under the right circumstances.
"It turns out that you actually can eat it," lead researcher Darren McDonald said. "Our findings were quite surprising. We started with the premise that zucchini tastes bad and then ended up at the conclusion that it does not, with a few significant alterations."
Researchers subjected zucchini to a number of tests to see if it was edible, including shredding it and putting it in bread with chocolate chips and lots of oil (good) and dicing it and steaming it on the stove (very bad). In the end, they concluded that zucchini is delicious, as long as it is first dredged in flour and salt and fried until all of the zucchini taste is gone.
"These aren't as good as real French fries, mind you," McDonald said. "But frying them in oil makes them palatable. Somewhat. We found you can also completely submerge it in ranch or garlic aioli to make sure you don't taste any of the zucchini."
At publishing time, the team of Harvard researchers had also concluded that rhubarb is "OK" in a pie, and that's it.
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