This was sooooo good! I got the idea to use zucchini instead of pasta off a few different sites, but winged it on my own with the sauce, and I must say given that this was a bolognese made in less than a half hour, I was impressed with myself : ) Now Michael’s grandmother (she is from Italy) might not have been impressed, but you never know!
Ingredients
Zucchini (5 smaller stalks only made 2 large portions of the zucchini, but the sauce serves about 4, I just froze our extra sauce, or you could make extra zucchini)
1lb. grass fed organic beef
1 jar of Organic Marinara Sauce (Look for one without added sugar if you can)
1/4 of an onion
1 Tbsp. crushed garlic
Garlic Powder
Oregano
Basil (I used fresh, about 2 Tbps., but dried would be fine too I’m sure)
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil
Parmesan cheese (optional)
Directions
Chop up onion and get zucchini sliced thinly (I used a mandolin for this, I think I will find a julienne peeler to make them more noodle like, but this worked fine)
Get a big pot of salted water boiling for your zucchini to go into, then get sauce going
Into a large skillet or pot, put a few Tbsps. of olive oil over medium high heat
Add onions and garlic to skillet and sautee a few minutes until onions soften
Add ground beef along with a little salt and pepper to skillet and cook until no longer pink
Then add your marinara sauce and stir in, reduce heat here to medium low
Sprinkle over the mixture salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano and basil – don’t worry about exact measurements just a sprinkle over the top
Stir all together and let simmer while you cook zucchini, I covered mine for a bit, stirring occasionally
Once pot of water is boiling, add zucchini to pot and cook for about 5 minutes until zucchini is fairly tender, but you don’t want it mushy. Timing could depend on how think you slice zucchini so keep on eye on it.
Once desired tenderness, strain zucchini and put in a bowl. Toss with a little salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Then combine together in a bowl by topping zucchini with bolognese and adding a little parmesan cheese if desired! You won’t miss the pasta!
Jul 13, 2011 @ 13:58:03
YUM. We will try this!
Aug 23, 2011 @ 20:03:18
Hey! Meant to tell you that I made this last week for my husband – I took your advice on the julienne peeler and picked one up when I was at Marshall’s (very random, but they had one, so why not :)) to use on the zucchini. Instead of boiling them separately (they were SO skinny), I just tossed them in with the sauce to heat them through. We had baby eggplant from the farmers market to use up too, so I sliced them in half length-wise and roasted them in the oven with salt & pepper while the sauce was cooking. Placed the eggplant on our plates and spooned the sauce with “noodles” on top – so good! Thanks for the recipe!
Aug 23, 2011 @ 20:08:18
Glad you liked! Great idea on just tossing in the zucchini with the sauce to cook, they cook much faster when they are skinnny – and also sounds wonderful over the eggplant!