I love pesto. I love pesto so much that I have a large jar of it that I get from Costco that I use on everything. Sometimes, I use it as a salad dressing or on a sandwich instead of mayo. But I wanted to cook something with it and keep the carbs low. So I came up with this Pesto bowl made with ground turkey. You can use beef if you like, but I wanted lighter/leaner turkey. I’m sharing this turkey pesto bowl with you because it turned out so fantastic!
Here’s another idea: If you don’t like the idea of just meat and veggies in a bowl, you can always add this to pasta as if it were a meat sauce!
Ingredients
- ground turkey
- basil pesto sauce
- grated or shaved parmesan cheese
- spiral or chopped zucchini
- chopped onion
- grape tomatos cut in two
- salt to taste
If you’re not on keto, bread is a must with this dish! Head over to Chef Eric’s Cheesy Bread recipe and make a few slices of that to go with your pesto bowl!
On a diet? Another side idea would be Chef Eva Bee’s Baked Feta and Strawberry Chicken Salad I would make that without the chicken to go with this bowl. Yum!
Saute and Brown
Start with the chopped onions and saute them in oil until they are nearly clear. Add the ground meat and cook until it’s starting to brown. You will need high heat for this. Turkey is stubborn and does not want to turn brown for you. Melt the cheese in the meat. Turn the heat off and add the zucchini and tomatoes. Let the leftover heat warm them up. If you chopped the zucchini, it will take a tad longer, but not much. You may wish to leave out the tomatoes until you feel like the zucchini has softened a little. Add the pesto and that’s it!
Serve It Up!
You can serve it as is, with more parmesan on top or you can make the noodles of your choice and add this on top of them. Get creative! If you serve this a different way, please let me know in the comments below what you chose to do differently.
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More Ideas!
Check out our 10 Cinco de Mayo Recipes or our 10 Whole30 Instant Pot Recipes.
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Turkey Pesto Bowl
Equipment
- skillet
- Stove
Ingredients
- 1.5 lb ground turkey
- 3/4 cup pesto
- 1 bag zucchini strings or slice up 1 zucchini
- 2 tbsp parmesan cheese (shaved)
- 1 pint grape tomatoes
- 1 med onion (chopped)
- 1 cup parmesan cheese (grated for topping)
Instructions
- Start by heating oil in your skillet. Add chopped onions to skillet and saute till mostly clear. Add ground meat, for our recipe I used turkey.
- Saute turkey until browned. Add zucchini. If you use strings, you only want to heat them, until soft but not browned. If you use chopped zucchini you will need to cook them a little longer to get them to soften. Once the zucchini is soft, turn off the heat. Add cheese and stir in until melted.
- Add tomatoes sliced in half and let them warm up. You are not cooking the tomatoes, you do not want them to be mushy, so do not overcook them.