Made with zucchini noodles, ground beef, a creamy dairy-free cashew sauce, and homemade red pepper romesco, this comforting zoodle recipe is nutrient-dense, flavorful, and gluten-free! It's also Whole30 compliant dinner casserole, and Paleo-friendly, too!
¼tspsmoked paprikaor up to 1 tsp if you like it spicy
½cupextra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and pepper to taste
Meat:
3Tbspolive oil
1lb.ground meatcan do ½ and ½ of beef and pork or anything you have on hand
1TbspItalian seasoning
1Tbspdried oregano
1medium yellow onion
Ziti:
2-3large zucchinispiralized
Instructions
Boil water and add over cashews to completely cover, let sit for 30 minutes. In the meantime, make the romesco meat sauce.
Using tongs, carefully, lightly roast each sweet pepper over an open flame on your stove top. Rotate the pepper, just for a couple of minutes for each pepper until you have light blisters. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
Once cool enough to handle, roughly chop peppers (discard the inside and seeds), toss the peppers in your food processor with the rest of the ingredients and pulse until well blended into a sauce. Set aside.
To a skillet, add olive oil with chopped onions over medium heat and lightly cook until translucent for a few minutes, then add in the ground meat breaking it up with a spoon. Cook, while mixing well and adding in seasonings until the meat, is cooked (no red/raw meat is showing anymore).
Add romesco sauce over top of meat and reduce heat to low until well coated and slightly bubbling.
Roughly chop spiralized zoodles (I made mine into the large ribbon-like pieces, but any shape will do!), into bite-size pieces so it’s less stringy. Add to pan and with tongs, coat completely in the romesco meat sauce. Turn heat off.
Finish up the cheese by draining cashews, and adding them to a blender or food processor with lemon, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, salt and egg. Mix until well blended - it’s okay if it’s very loose, it will stiffen up in the oven.
Time to assemble!
Add a layer of the romesco meat sauce with coated zoodles to the bottom of your baking dish (8-inch should work well!)
Then pour in a layer of the cashew cheese. Repeat this with the cashew cheese left last on top of the entire ziti.
Bake for 20-30 minutes, optionally add more nutritional yeast to the top mid-way and broil for a little more color for just a minute or two - watch carefully. Serve!