Easy Zucchini Pizza Boats

With a handful of ingredients and your favorite pizza toppings you can turn zucchini into quick and delicious Zucchini Pizza Boats. Perfect for lunch or dinner!

Raise your hand if you love pizza. Now raise your hand if you don’t eat pizza nearly as much as you’d like. Me too!

But, when I first tried these zucchini pizza boats, I realized that it’s not necessarily pizza itself that I crave, but rather the sauce, cheese, and toppings. If I can put all those flavors on something besides bread, I end up still loving it just as much!

These zucchini boats are my new pizza substitute. This is especially perfect for the summer months when there seems to be an excess of zucchini everywhere you look. That sounds to me like an excuse to have keto pizza for dinner every night (or, at least once a week)!

The base recipe I share below is for vegetarian pizza zucchini boats but you can make them vegan with a cheese substitute, though I haven’t tried that myself. The fun part, of course, is piling your favorite pizza toppings on these, whether you keep it vegetarian or add in some meat.

What Makes This so Great?

• Make it your own – Use whatever topping you love on pizza to jazz up these Italian zucchini boats. Add mushroom, bell peppers, pepperoni, Italian sausage, or even bacon.
• Gluten-free pizza alternative – This recipe will satisfy your pizza cravings without any of the guilt.
• Quick recipe – In addition to being delicious, this stuffed zucchini boats recipe is also super easy to make. There’s only about 10 minutes of hands-on time. Perfect for busy weeknights or even lunch! 

Ingredients You’ll Need

• Zucchini  – Choose zucchini close in size for equal cooking times.
• Tomato sauce – Store-bought or homemade, it’s up to you. This easy marinara sauce would be perfect!
• Garlic – Omit this if you’re not a garlic fan but I love the added flavour.
• Salt – Just a pinch.
• Oregano – This recipes calls for dried oregano and adds the Italian flavour but if you are using fresh use a tsp instead. Usually, dried herbs are 1/3 of the amount of fresh in a recipe.
• Mozzarella – What’s pizza without cheese?! Shredded mozzarella or buffalo if you feel fancy.

Optional Toppings

Use this recipe as your base and get creative! You can top these zucchini pizzas with any of your favorite toppings. Here are just a few ideas:

• Mushrooms
• Onions, peppers, spinach, olives, or other veggies
• Ham and pineapple for a Hawaiian pizza 
• Leftover bacon, sausage, or ground meat
• Mini pepperoni (regular or turkey)
• Whatever your favorite pizza topping is…. if it’s weird I want to know. Leave your topping ideas in the comments!

How to Make Zucchini Pizza Boats

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Grease a baking sheet or line it with baking paper. Remove the zucchini tips and cut them in half, lengthwise.
2. Use a small spoon to remove part of the interior of the zucchini to shape them like boats.

3. To make the sauce, place the tomato sauce, garlic cloves, salt, and oregano in a blender. Blend until smooth. If you are making my easy marinara sauce you can skip this step and just move on to filling the scooped-out zucchini with the sauce.

4. Spoon the sauce in the interior of each zucchini. You don’t need to over-fill them.
5. Top the zucchini boats with shredded mozzarella.
6. Bake them for 25 minutes or until zucchinis are fork tender and mozzarella is gratin.

Tips

• Use Fresh, Firm Zucchini: Choose zucchini that are firm and free of blemishes for best results. Avoid soft or overly large zucchini, as they may become mushy when baked.
• Adjust the Baking Time: Monitor the zucchini boats closely during baking, as cooking times may vary depending on the size and thickness of the zucchini. The goal is for the zucchini to be fork-tender but not falling apart.
• Broil for Bubbly Cheese: If you want the cheese on top to be extra melty and browned, broil the zucchini boats for 2-3 minutes at the end of the baking time.
• Serve Immediately: These zucchini pizza boats are best enjoyed fresh out of the oven when the zucchini is still slightly firm and the cheese is hot and melted.

Storage

Store: You can store your keto zucchini boat in the fridge for up to 4 days. Just keep them in an airtight container or wrapped in foil. 

Reheat: Reheat in the oven, until the zucchini warmed through and the cheese it melted. I do not recommend reheating in the microwave, as the texture will be mushy.

Freeze: Unfortunately, if you try to freeze these, you’ll only end up with a mushy, soggy mess after thawing them. Cooked zucchini does not freeze well, and then when you add the pizza sauce and the moisture from thawing…well, it’s just not a great idea.

More Delicious Lunch Recipes:

• Keto Chicken Parmesan
• Egg Roll In A Bowl
• Homemade Whole Chicken Soup
• Pizza Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms