Meatball Marinara-Ish Stuffed Zucchini Boats Recipe

When life (or your gardening neighbor) hands you zucchinis, you can't just make zucchini-ade, so you might be looking for other ways to repurpose the stuff. If you're bored with zucchini bread and don't want to swap out pasta for zoodles, you could always try making zucchini boats instead. As developer Milena Manolova describes her recipe, "The savory meatballs and rich marinara sauce complement the mild, tender zucchini, and the melted cheese on top creates a rich, satisfying, and well-balanced dish." She notes that zucchini is also gluten-free and lower in carbohydrates than pasta, plus it has fiber and vitamins.

Here, Manolova is using a combination of pork and beef to make the meatballs. She says that while you could use beef alone, the meatballs might be a bit dry. "The addition of pork," she explains, "adds more fat and makes the meatballs more juicy." The meatballs also get what she calls "a hint of sweet and tart flavor" from the addition of sun-dried tomatoes, something she says compliments the tomato-based marinara sauce.

The "boats" in this recipe are made from zucchini coated with olive oil, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. The meatballs are made from ground beef and pork plus onions, parsley, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and an egg. The final ingredients needed to top off the dish are marinara sauce and mozzarella.

Preheat the oven to 375 F before you start cooking (350 F if you have a convection oven). Once the oven is heating, cut off the ends from each zucchini, then cut them in half lengthwise. Hollow them out and remove the cores to make the boat shapes.

Put the zucchini in a baking pan greased with some oil, then brush the rest of the oil over the insides of the vegetables. Sprinkle them with the Italian seasoning plus some salt and pepper.

Mix the ground beef and pork with the onion, parsley, garlic, tomatoes, egg, and the rest of the salt and pepper. Use this mixture to form 32 meatballs each about 1 ½ inches in diameter, then divide the meatballs between the zucchini (this works out to 4 balls per boat).

Put the zucchini boats on the middle rack and cook them for 20 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked and brown. Manolova notes that the cooking time may vary depending on the size of the zucchini and the oven but cautions, "Overcooking can result in mushy zucchini boats while under-cooking can leave them too firm."

Take the pan out of the oven momentarily, long enough to cover each boat and its meatball cargo with marinara sauce and a sprinkling of cheese. Back into the oven it goes for another 15 minutes to melt the cheese. 

Be sure to eat the zucchini boats while they are still hot. If you have leftovers, you can refrigerate them for up to 3 days, but Manolova says they can't be frozen since thawing will adversely affect the texture.