| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 27 min |
| Prep: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 12 min |
| Yield: | 4 servings |
Ingredients
- 2 large zucchini, halved lengthwise
- 1 pound Turkey Sweet-N-Sour Meatballs, diced, recipe follows, or crumbled cooked ground turkey
- 1/3 cup sour cream, low-fat or regular
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped artichoke hearts (oil or water-packed)
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan, divided
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons seasoned dry bread crumbs
- Orzo Pesto, recipe follows
- 2 pounds ground turkey breast
- 2 teaspoons salt-free garlic and herb seasoning or poultry seasoning
- 1 egg white
- Salt and ground black pepper
- Two 15-ounce cans tomato sauce
- 2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
- 1 cup chili sauce
- 1/2 cup cider vinegar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons dried thyme
- 12 ounces orzo pasta
- 2 tablespoons prepared basil pesto
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Using a spoon or melon baller, scoop seeds from center of each zucchini half, making 4 long, canoe-like boats. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, combine diced meatballs or other cooked ground turkey, sour cream, artichoke hearts, 1/4 cup of the Parmesan Cheese, oregano, salt, and black pepper. Mix gently to combine. Spoon mixture into zucchini boats. Sprinkle bread crumbs and remaining Parmesan over filling in boats.
- Bake zucchini boats 10 to 12 minutes, until top is golden brown and filling is heated through. Serve with Orzo Pesto.
- In a large bowl, combine turkey, garlic and herb seasoning, egg white and 1/2 teaspoon each salt and black pepper. Mix well and shape mixture into about 32 meatballs. Place meatballs in bottom of slow cooker.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together tomato sauce, broth, chili sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, and thyme. Pour mixture over meatballs.
- Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours. Season, to taste, with salt and black pepper.
- Cook and drain orzo according to package directions. Toss with pesto and serve.
Reviews
I don’t understand why you didn’t use the part of the zucchini that you scooped out. that just seems really wasteful!
I don’t understand steps 5 through 8. I stopped at step 4 and they came out great!!!!!
How can she say “Total Time” 27 minutes, when you have to make meat balls and cook them for either 6 to 8 hours on low or 3 to 4 hours on high in a slow cooker?
The turkey stuffing served with pesto orzo is delicious – the zucchini boats are eh. I cooked up regular ground turkey because I hadn’t made the turkey meatballs from the base recipe. All in all, super easy and tasty, but next time I will just make the turkey stuffing and stuff it (maybe with the pesto orzo mixed in) into some other veggie like a bell pepper or tomato that has a bit more flavor.
After leaving for a week, I returned to huge zucchinis in my garden and needed a new way to fix them. This recipe was defn. a winner though I did make some changes. I used diced tomatoes instead of sauce. I also used crumbled blue and gorgonzola cheese instead of parm. I didn’t make it to the pesto, but next time I’ll try it. This was a tasty suprise!
Super Easy recipe and it was excellent. I didn’t do the meatballs, just used ground turkey and it was fast and simple. I will definitely repeat this one…yummy!
I love this recipe! I don’t actually turn the ground turkey into meatballs, I just mix it in and load up the boats. It’s great and then I don’t have to mess with the meatball part!
I doubled the number of zuccini and still had to make a second batch because my children gobbled it up! I also added mozzarella to the topping. The meatballs take a lot of time, and the cooking time does have to be increased. but a definite repeat recipe in the summer when my garden gives us 4-5 zucchini per day.
Since I’m always an on-the-fly kinda of cook, I sauted the garlic and onion, browned the ground turkey and add the rest of the meatball ingredients to the skillet. After the chicken stock and other juices had cooked down, I prepared the recipe as written. I, too, had to use a knife to make the zucchini boats, and the cooking time wasn’t long enough. Microwaving them ahead of time, as suggested in one of the other comments, is what I’ll do next time. Over all it was a big success. My husband commented that it was like an Italian curry with all the blended flavors. This recipe will be a repeater.
I used ground turkey for the recipe. It was kind of bland and tasteless. I added onions and garlic, as one reviewer suggested, when I browned the ground turkey but it was still bland. It was kind of difficult to get the middle out of the zucchini so I used a knife instead of a melon baller. I chopped up the middle and added it to the ground turkey – it seemed like a waste to throw it away. Also, I steamed the zucchini boats in the microwave because they weren’t cooked in the time called for in the recipe. I think next time I will use ground chuck and a little rice for the stuffing.