Every Sunday morning I sit down with my coffee and get on Pinterest and look for some food inspiration for the week. I get super bored with meals and am constantly looking to change it up and try something new. As I was busy scrolling, I stopped finally on some delicious looking meatballs and suddenly I was craving spaghetti and meatballs with red sauce and parm. YUM. I haven’t made a lot of homemade meatballs in my life but for some reason, it just sounded delicious.

Comfort food is a staple in my weekly meal prep. More often than not, though, comfort food gets a bad rep for not being the healthiest meals around town. But there are certainly more ways than ever to lighten up a delicious comfort food meal. Enter the Zoodle. I love the person who came up with the spiralizer, one of the best kitchen tools, ever, besides my beloved Vitamix of course!

Zoodles have been around a while and they are seriously an amazing swap for pasta that to me, feels like the real deal. Basically, I don’t miss pasta as long as there are fresh organic zucchinis and an amazing sauce, I’m down to be a zoodler for life! Anyone else feel this way?! I hope I’m not alone in this! Anyways now onto the real reason you’re all here this amazing and super easy recipe! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 lb of Grass-fed Organic Ground Beef
1 whole egg + 1 egg white (3 tbsp), beaten
1 cup of bread crumbs (or panko)
1/2 cup of finely grated parmesan cheese
1 small onion, finely minced (I toss into my food processor to quickly mince!)
3 cloves of garlic, finely minced (I also toss into my food processor!)
1/4 cup basil, chopped
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp red chili flakes (optional if you don’t want it spicy skip this!)
fresh ground black pepper
1-2 tbsp avocado oil
2-4 medium zucchinis (by more or less depending on how many people you are serving)
Spaghetti sauce (I buy the roasted garlic spaghetti sauce from Trader Joes, but you can make your own or use your favorite store-bought sauce!)
Parmesan cheese, for topping (optional, but highly recommended)

Directions:

Set the oven to 350 degrees. Add the first 11 ingredients into a mixing bowl and combine with your hands until everything is incorporated and mixed well.

Form into golf ball size meatballs. The recipe should make about 12-14 meatballs. Heat a pan with avocado oil and place the meatballs into the pan to brown on all sides. Once browned, transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet and put the meatballs into the oven for 20 minutes.

While the meatballs are cooking, add your sauce to the same pan you browned your meatballs in and set it to medium-low to begin to warm up the sauce. While the sauce warms, spiralize your zucchinis and set aside. You can either eat them raw (the sauce will cook them slightly once it’s on top) or you can saute in a pan with a little oil before serving. I like them both ways and I’ve tried them both ways with this dish, do whatever way you prefer.

Once the meatballs are done, remove from the oven and add however many you’re going to eat that night into the sauce and toss to combine. If you’re going to cook to the zoodles, do that now! If not, add zoodles to a plate and top with sauce and meatballs and top with fresh parmesan cheese and enjoy!

This is an easy weeknight meal and a super-easy meal to meal prep just keep the zoodles apart from the sauce and meatballs if you’re meal prepping!