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!
