Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I want to share with
you what I call my Pizza Stuffed Zucchini.
It's a great low carb alternative to your weeknight pizza craving but you still want
to stick to your diet or whatnot, but most importantly, these are delicious and they're
easy and there's nothing groundbreaking about the ingredients, you can play around with
them however you like and use things in them that you like on your pizza.
So, what I'm going to be using today is just sort of a classic sort of like almost 'everything
style' pizza because I'm going to have meats in there, peppers onions mushrooms, sauce,
pepperoni, it's going to be delicious, so let me run you through that really quickly.
I'm using ground turkey, you could use beef, you could use ground chicken even, but ground
turkey, I really like for this recipe.
I've got onions, peppers, I've got some mushrooms all diced, I know this is a green bell pepper,
I'm coming around.
I've got some shredded mozzarella, got some diced pepperoni, if you can find the really
mini pepperoni use those, they're really cute, got some garlic, I've got some dried oregano,
olive oil, salt and pepper and you'll need some marinara sauce and you'll also need your
zucchini, now I'm using three today, but I might have leftover stuffing that I can use
on another night.
And what I've done is I sliced them lengthwise and I've scooped out the center but make sure
you don't scoop out so much that they fall apart, you want them to have a good border
so that they hold up.
And I have the bottom layered with a little bit of marinara sauce, I went ahead and made
marinara sauce at the beginning of the week like I always do, because Mia loves it so
I can easily make her a quick pasta with marinara sauce for lunches so I always have it on hand,
but you can use whatever marinara sauce you have, whatever sauce that you like to buy,
by all means, you do you boo.
To my zucchini, why did I grab the pepper and not the salt, to my zucchini I've got
the oven preheated to 425F.
I'm drizzling the inside with a little bit of olive oil and I'm going to sprinkle with
a little bit of salt and pepper and I'm going to pop these into my preheated oven at 425F
for like 8 to 10 minutes just to cook them a little bit because once we put them back
into the oven, we just put them in there long enough for the cheese to melt and I don't
want the zucchini to be really hard and under cooked so I'm going to pop that in, we come
back and then we make our filling.
Alright, it looks like there's a lot of oil, but it's just the way the pan is the oil kind
of spreads to the sides, I only put about two tablespoons in there and if I were using
beef, I would use a very small drizzle because ground beef tends to be a lot fattier than
ground turkey especially lean ground turkey.
All I'm doing is I'm going to just cook the turkey until it develops some color, just
like 3 to 4 minutes on medium-high heat, then we add in our veggies and we finish cooking
everything together.
My turkey is about half way cooked through you can see the turkey has developed good
color.
Once I'd say about half of it has developed that good color, I'm going to add in the peppers,
the mushrooms and the onions, and I'm cooking everything on a pretty high heat because I
want to speed things along.
I'm trying to get the filling cooked while the zucchini shells, I guess, roast.
I'm going to add some salt to get the moisture drawn out here.
And I'm just going to cook everything together for about 5 to 6 minutes or until the veggies
cook down, they develop a little color, and then we move forward.
This looks perfect, and I keep taste testing it, it's so yummy.
Okay, adding in the garlic, the garlic just needs to cook for like 30 seconds, so that
it gets rid of that raw garlic flavor, but the reason why I'm adding it in here and not
at the beginning is because I really want to capture some of that really pungent garlic
flavor because I love garlic on my pizza, I tend to put like raw garlic in with my sauce
or with a little bit of olive oil and drizzle that on top, so good.
That looks great!
Ah, smells amazing.
The zucchini were in the oven for about ten minutes, I don't want to cook them a lot more
than that because they have to go back in anyway.
So now I'm going to take some of my pre-made marinara sauce, about this much.
I'd say maybe a little bit more than a half a cup.
Stir that in.
And I'm also going to add some cheese to the filling.
Some shredded cheese, you could do a little bit of ricotta too if you want to, I tend
to think that if I put ricotta in here it makes everything just a little bit wet.
But it's fine, I mean delicious, if that's what you're going for then, by all means,
but this looks perfect and I'm just going to turn it off now, because I don't feel like
I need to do anything else.
All I gotta do now is stuff my boats.
Stuff my zucchini boats which you just want to be careful because your pan is quite hot
so probably should put the filling into a different container, into a plate or something.
But it's fine, I'm living on the edge and just stuffing them like that.
Once you have that, I put a little bit more cheese on top because you know, a little bit
of cheese is good.
A lot of cheese is just better.
In my personal opinion.
And you can do any cheese you want by the way.
You could do a mixture of cheeses but I think the good old classic really delicious melty
mozzarella just does it for me every time.
And then because if you know me then you know that pepperoni pizza, aside from a margarita
pizza is my favorite pizza ever, I put little pieces of pepperoni all over the top so when
you pop it back in, you warm it up and it's just phenomenal.
So I'm just going to sprinkle that on top and if you can find like I said the little
mini pepperoni, that would work amazing here.
And some dried oregano because again the heat just kind of wakes up the flavor of that.
I'm going to pop it back into the oven until everything is really cheesy and delicious
and melty, about five minutes or so and then I'll show you want it looks like when they
are ready.
How perfect do these look?
Just going to go in for the guy that's closest to me which getting the first one out is always
like not my favorite task.
You know what I mean?
I really need to get a spoon, but you know what it's fine!
It's fine!
Really.
I'm just, it's fine, ain't nobody judging.
Yes..
Yes!
Juicy perfection, I can really smell the pepperoni, and the oregano which makes me very happy
because those are two things that I have to have on a pizza, if it's a red pizza.
This is going to be really hot though so I'm just going to give myself ten seconds.
Mmm!
That is everything you love about pizza, but without the carbs.
Which, you know, if you know me, you know that I really try to do really well from Monday
to Friday and then come Friday, it is party time!
So if I'm having that mid-week pizza craving, but I still want to stay on track, you know?
So I don't have to do any extra burpees, these come in handy!
They're perfect!
And delicious, and they're satisfying and you don't feel like you're missing out on
eating boiled chicken breast and broccoli, you know what I'm saying?
Go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get the written recipe, make them, add whatever you want into
these and please share a photo with me, tag me @mrsvitale on Instagram so that I can see
your recreation and I hope you enjoyed spending time with me, I'll see you next time.
It is hot though!