These stuffed zucchini boats are filled with a hearty turkey marinara mixture, then topped with a bit of cheese and baked to perfection. An easy low carb meal option that the whole family will enjoy!
INGREDIENTS
3 Large or 4 medium zucchinis
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon of onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 pound ground turkey or chicken
1 jar of store-bought marinara sauce
1/4 c grated parmesan cheese
Fresh chopped parsley for garnish
Optional: additional mozzarella cheese
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Cut the zucchinis in half lengthwise, then trim off the stem ends. Use a spoon to carefully scoop the flesh out of the zucchinis. Chop the flesh of zucchinis to add to the sauce.
Drizzle the zucchinis with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Arrange the zucchini in the baking dish and bake in oven for 10 minutes until softened.
Heat the olive oil in a large pan over medium high heat. Add the garlic, cooking until fragrant then add ground turkey or chicken. Cook for 4-5 minutes, breaking up the meat with a spatula. Add the jar of marinara sauce and add seasonings. Cook for an additional 10 minutes, then add flesh of zucchinis and cook for an additional 5 minutes.
Remove zucchini shells from the oven and spoon the meat mixture evenly into the zucchini shells, then top with the shredded cheese.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until cheese is melted.
hey folks Kim Langer from Emerge Fitness and today I’m going to take you through a really simple uh meal plan that is nutritious and it’s going to give you some healthy veggie carbs without all of the flour carbs that are associated with pasta and these are going to be bowls we’re going to cut this in half pour out the middle a little bit and then I’m going to make some great nutritious pasta sauce that we’re going to layer in here and then sprinkle with some Parmesan cheese so to get started I’m going to get a pan going and start cooking the meat oh was introduced to these things and they’re called um garlic Scapes and I’m actually just going to use them right now instead of the traditional garlic that you get minced you know in a jar or a whole clove of garlic in your mint I’m actually going to use garlic scape and just chop it off and put it in my sauce to heat through when I make the pasta and you guys it’s going to be so simple right I don’t have all day to be in here cooking although I would love to be but I have other things that I’m doing so I’m going to show you how simple this is and this is something that you can make ahead of time absolutely 100 um you know get it ready to go maybe the day before right and then just heat it up the day of or you can have all your ingredients like the pasta sauce marinara meat sauce whatever ready to go and then you just put the boats together and put it in the oven so oh this is garlicky it smells very garlicky so that is it I’m seriously I’m just playing around with this because this is something that a new little find and I thought hey this will be really cool to give it a try so I’m gonna take it over here and show you how I’m going to make the pasta sauce that’s going to go in our squash boats okay so now we just have the garlic Scapes candle right and it’s just making the oil fragrant and now I have a pound of ground turkey and I’m just gonna add that into this [Music] man I tell you the guy that escaped smells so yummy so and now I’m just cooking it all down mashing it up so I get small pieces and once it starts to cook through I’m going to add my other ingredients and that will make it a pack of sauce [Music] all right guys so now that this is cooked through the meat I’m going to start adding more ingredients and this is a great tea okay I’m just going to get a jar of pasta sauce and add to this so here’s the deal nothing wrong with this what you want to look at is that the ingredient label and make sure there’s nothing wonky in it no ingredients that you can’t read so this has Italian whole peeled Tomatoes olive oil onions basil salt garlic black pepper and oregano perfect so we’re going to go ahead and add this [Music] can’t get much easier than this guys it really can’t now to make it a little bit more homey tasting I like to add my own spices and then cook this down stir all this together so I like to add more so I’m going to add some oregano and again you can spice it up however you want it’s about a teaspoon of oregano I’m going to put a little bit of onion powder in it it’s about a half a teaspoon of onion powder I’m going to add Italian seasoning about a teaspoon oh and I’m gonna pop it right in there and then I’m going to add a bay leaf and then I’m just going to let this cook and simmer while I get the other things ready for the dinner so while this is simmering I can bring I have a pot of corn back here three ears of corn that is a great starchy carp nothing wrong with that it is a veggie but it is a starch so by eliminating the starch from the pasta noodles I can have it in the way of a vegetable and I’m going to add a bay leaf to that okay and I’m just going to turn that down to simmer and let it cook away while I go on to the next thing the boats that are going to house squash are the spaghetti sauce that we just made so I picked up these nice big beautiful zucchini squash at the farmers market yesterday and I’m just going to hollow out the inside and I’m going to take these extra pieces so that I’m not wasting them and I will chop them up and put them into the sauce but right now I’m just going to scoop out the middle just like them so the squash has already been cleaned absolutely fine to eat this to eat the skin I am going to season it with olive oil salt and pepper and then bake it for a little bit so that it softens up so that we can load it into um if you haven’t voted with pasta sauce and then put it into the oven so I’m going to keep going on that and then I will show you what it looks like when we start to load it up all right so here are the different squash you see I have one is green the other one yellow doesn’t matter there’s summer squash these are a non-starchy carbohydrate that perfect for vegetables for keeping um your carbohydrates at Bay right and this is particularly important for people who have high sensitivity to carbs for anybody um who is pre-diabetic or diabetic there’s nothing wrong with carbs these are carbs but it’s a matter about of getting the good kinds in right so I just drizzled it with a little bit of olive oil I’m just putting some salt on each one and I’m going to generously pepper these and I’m going to pop them in the oven for about 10 minutes until they’re softened because remember we’re going to eat this part of the boat this is a part of the boat that we’re going to eat [Applause] you can even add parmesan cheese to that and to make it a little flavorful right here but I’m going to add some Parmesan on top so I’m going to put this in the oven and then bake it for about 10 15 minutes until it’s hot all right guys so I have you back over here and this is my sauce it’s reduced down I added the parts of the squash that I took out from the boat so I could make the squash both and I’m gonna Stir It Around and while the squash is in the oven right cooking the boats for another 10 minutes I’m going to turn up the heat just a little bit more and let squash cook inside the sauce begins so we’re going to start to assemble the both this is the pasta sauce um I’m going to give it a taste because we have to taste right to make sure it tastes good and make sure we don’t need any other seasonings make sure I get sure I get a piece of squash and here are the zucchini belts right so they’re all followed out and they’re soft they’re seasoned and I’m just going to start scooping this stuff right inside the boats I think the hardest part isn’t making the stuff it’s having a plan right it’s really what you need you just need things and most people fail on their healthy lifestyle because they don’t make a plan and they end up just grabbing food on the go right or they skip meals then they overeat remember just grabbing whatever they can get their hands on foreign so I made sure when I was at the market that I picked some really good squash with as much meat and sauce and remember it’s all about the protein in here okay all about the protein now I’m just making a mess so I’m seriously thinking about it so we had about a pound of ground turkey right I added a jar of it right sure that it was a good one didn’t have any wonky crap in it right no additives no hazardous toxins I added my own spices the zucchini and then I bought at the fair market I hollowed them out and took the insides from the squash and chopped it up and put it into the sauce to give it more veggies okay soften it up now we’re making the boats we’re going to add the top let me clean up my Messier all right so here’s a couple of fun things that you can do one we should have parmesan cheese I do not get the already grated Parmesan cheese I to get a block and Grate it myself a lot of times the cheese that’s sold in blocks you keep it from sticking it has some materials in there kind of like a powdery substance and it’s just not good for you you don’t need it in your body so I just grate my own so that’s one thing now the second fun thing is I do have many mozzarella balls so I would like to get these forever I can grab some out um like maybe when I’m doing a tomato salad um a crazy salad and I like to put these in so I’m just going to add a couple of these on each one you could also get a pizza mozzarella cheese and put it on each one but I don’t want all that fat because remember cheese is it back is that a protein it is dairy inflammatory some people on their bodies that one has extra all right so that’s what it looks like so here they go we’re gonna add them put them into the oven for about I don’t know five minutes just until the cheese melts a little bit and we will serve it up so I’m just going to Plate it up and I’m gonna pair this with a nice salad and some corn right so corn is a starchy carb so we’re gonna have our starches in the form of a vegetable right we have some nice healthy greens right here and the pasta folks don’t they look yummy they are so so good so so good so so simple so give this a try foreign [Music]