Mushroom Cannelloni

About

Who doesn’t love stuffed pasta baked in tomato sauce with lots of cheese? This Keto dinner recipe is great to share with family and children. You can also divide the finished recipe into portions for meal prepping. Strips of zucchini are cut and prepared to act as the cannelloni “noodles”. The noodles are seasoned with a few spices and filled with creamy ricotta and thin-sliced mushrooms. After you nestle the filled cannelloni in a dish of marinara sauce, the pasta is topped with two types of cheese. Once baked, each cannelloni is soft enough to cut through with a fork and oozing with melted cheese and tender mushrooms. You’ll impress everyone at the table with the bubbling, piping-hot Keto pasta meal.

Tips For Making The Zucchini Noodles

Most of the prep work for this Keto recipe is allotted to drying out the zucchini noodles. Use a vegetable peeler so your noodles are even in thickness and width. Run the vegetable peeler from one end of the zucchini all the way to the other side to get the longest strip possible. You can fit about 8 strips of zucchini across a layer of paper towel, and you can layer all the zucchini on top of each other between single sheets of paper towel. The zucchini won’t be completely dry, just dry enough to handle without releasing extra water during baking. If you skip this crucial step in the preparation, your final baked dish will be very wet.

Other Fillings To Try

Although not vegan, this is a completely vegetarian Keto recipe. If you don’t like mushrooms or are allergic to them, you can substitute other vegetables. Spinach or arugula would make a great filling, and would only need to be chopped to fit inside the cannelloni. You may also omit all extra vegetables in the filling and instead use your favorite combinations of cheese to make a yummy pasta filling. If you like garlic, you can include garlic powder while seasoning the zucchini in Step 2 or you can stir fresh minced garlic into the ricotta filling. Let other users know in the comments section what types of filling you made for your Keto cannelloni.

Ingredients

6 ½ oz zucchini
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon italian seasoning
12 teaspoon ricotta cheese, whole milk
2 ½ oz brown mushrooms
4 tablespoon marinara sauce
½ cup, shredded mozzarella cheese, whole milk
1 tbsp, grated parmesan cheese, fresh (hard)

Instructions

You’ll need to prepare the zucchini “noodles” first to give them time to dry out a little. Use a vegetable peeler to peel approximately 36 strips from a large zucchini. The weight listed in the ingredients is the yield of the peels, not the whole zucchini. You may wish to peel out extra strips in case any break throughout the recipe. Arrange the zucchini strips on layers of paper towels placed on top of each other. Once all the strips are laid out, weigh them down with a plate or heavy object to help the paper towels soak all excess moisture out of the zucchini. Leave the zucchini alone for at least 15 minutes.
When the zucchini strips are done drying, arrange three strips at a time parallel to each other, each strip slightly overlapping the last to make a cannelloni “noodle”. Each serving should have 4 cannelloni noodles or a total of 12 zucchini strips. Once all the cannelloni noodles are laid out, sprinkle the salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning over the zucchini strips. Place 1 teaspoon of ricotta cheese at one end of each cannelloni noodle and spread the ricotta across the noodle.
Slice the mushrooms into very thin slices, no more than a ⅛” thick. You may wish to use a mandoline to slice the mushrooms, but you can achieve this with a sharp paring nice. Once the mushrooms are sliced, arrange 4-5 slices across each portion of spread ricotta cheese. Starting at one end, roll up each portion of zucchini strips into a completed filled cannelloni noodle. Spread the marinara sauce across the base of a glass baking dish and nestle the rolled cannelloni noodles in the sauce with the seams down.
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella cheese over the filled cannelloni, followed by sprinkling the grated parmesan cheese in the same fashion. Wrap tin foil over the baking dish and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes or until you see the cheese bubble and the edges of the dish turn golden. Let the dish cool for just 2-4 minutes before serving.