ZUCCHINI & SUMMER SQUASH

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM THAT CONFRONTS the cook when preparing zucchini and yellow summer squash is their wateriness. Both are about 95 percent water and will become soupy if just thrown into a hot pan. If they cook in their own juices, they won't brown. Since both are fairly bland, they really benefit from some browning. Clearly, some of the water must be removed before sautéing.

We tested salting to draw off some water and found that sliced and salted zucchini will shed about 20 percent of its weight after sitting for 30 minutes. (Summer squash performed the same in all of our tests.) One pound of sliced zucchini threw off almost three tablespoons of liquid, further confirmation that salting works. We tested longer periods and found that little moisture is extracted after 30 minutes.

Given that you don't always have 30 minutes, we wanted to develop quicker methods for cooking zucchini. We tried shredding the zucchini on the large holes of a box grater and then squeezing out excess water by hand. We were able to reduce the weight of shredded zucchini by 25 percent by wrapping it in paper towels and squeezing until dry. Shredded and squeezed zucchini cooked up nicely, although it did not brown as well as sliced and salted zucchini.

After our success with shredding and squeezing, we wondered if a similar technique might work with sliced zucchini. Since sliced zucchini has so much less surface area than shredded zucchini, we found our manual method of extracting water to be ineffective; we recommend salting in this case.

Another quick-prep option is the grill. The intense heat quickly expels excess moisture in zucchini, and that moisture harmlessly drops down on the coals rather than sitting in the pan. We found that so much evaporation occurs during grilling that salting or shredding is not necessary.