To be clear, these farmer's market beauties were decidedly NOT bitter. However, while dining in one of my favorite cafés and procrastinating from my piles of work, I was munching on a lovely panini with foccacia, pesto, grilled onions, and sauteed portobello mushrooms and zucchini. Sounds delicious, right? It was, except for the horribly bitter zucchini. I decided to actually find out what exactly makes the zucchini bitter and answer this pressing question for all of you. While folk theories about what causes this bitterness abound, it turns out that bitter zucchini is caused by the presence of what are called cucurbitacins, or, more specifically, oxygenated tetracyclic triterpenes. These phytochemicals, according to Fenwick et. al (1990), start to have toxic effects at doses of 3 g. Wow, um, that's not very much. Cucumbers are another common veg that often has this problem. So the next time you bite into a bitter zucchini, don't force yourself to eat it. It's not the way you cooked it, it's not because it's too old. Toss this one, and your next one will probably be fine.
Fenwick GR, Curl CL, Griffiths NM, Heaney RK, Price KR. Bitter principles in food plants. In: Rouseff RL, ed. Bitterness in foods and beverages; developments in food science 25. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990:205–50.
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