Easy Low Carb Ground Beef Manicotti. Too good to be true?
This post is all about making a luscious, creamy, cheesy, meaty manicotti dish that is low carb and keto friendly.
Not only is this low carb manicotti delicious, but it is incredibly easy to make and only takes 45 minutes from start to finish! As a wife and mother that works full time, I totally understand how it feels to come home tired and everyone is relying on you to feed them.
Everyone loves a pasta dish and every low carb dieter loves a low carb and keto pasta option. That’s where this manicotti comes in.
Easy Low Carb Ground Beef Manicotti
A long long time ago when I would make homemade manicotti with my “cook for at least 12 hours gravy (red sauce)”, I would always make my own manicotti. I would stand (for what felt like hours) at the stove pouring batter into a pan for super delicate crepes. Although this dish took hours to make it always made me so happy. Happy that I was in my favorite place (the kitchen) and that I would soon stuff my face with the most delicious manicotti I’ve ever tasted.
Ever since living a low carb lifestyle, like you I have missed all things pasta. One day while shopping at Costco I came across the Crepini Egg Thins With Cauliflower. OMG! my very first thought was manicotti.
So with this blog I want to show you how fast you can get manicotti into the oven and on your table for a quick weeknight dinner or a really fast Sunday after church lunch.
Before The Ground Beef- Easy Cheesy Prep
Before I start on the meat mixture I like to get the cheese prep out of the way. Is it necessary that you do this first? Probably not, but it does help in keeping the whole process flowing so you’re not stopping to grate cheese later on.
In a medium sized mixing bowl you’ll add cottage cheese. You may be thinking what? But hear me out. Cottage cheese is really yummy in these sort of dishes. It also has the added benefit of being cheaper than ricotta.
Let’s get back to the cottage cheese. The only brand that I can recommend (without going to a specialty store) is Daisy. I have looked at so many cottage cheese ingredients and they are so long and contain so many weird things. The Daisy brand ingredients are: cultured skim milk, cream, salt. That’s it! It’s also really tasty and is pretty inexpensive. It’s even available at Walmart!
Add nutmeg, fresh chiffonade basil and roughly chopped parsley. Chiffonade is a slicing technique, to which our basil will be cut into long thin strips. We will stack our basil leaves, roll tightly, then slice leaves perpendicular to the roll.
The following cheeses will be added to the mixing bowl with the cottage cheese:
Asiago
Mozzarella
Parmesan
I stirred everything up before adding the parmesan cheese. Do you need to do this? No, I’m not even sure why I did. Haha! Set bowl to the side.
Easy Ground Beef Mixture
Must you use ground beef? No, I don’t think so. There are a lot of options like turkey, chicken and bison to name a few, but we really like ground beef. You can even add spicy or sweet Italian sausage to the ground beef mixture too.
We’ve prepped our cheese mixture so we’re ready to start on our ground beef. Start with preheating your pan on medium heat. To your dry (no oils added) pan add onion and ground beef. With your spatula or meat chopper, break meat up just a bit before adding spices.
To our pan we’ll add the following seasonings:
Dried Basil
Garlic Powder
Salt
Pepper
Onion Powder
Worcestershire Sauce
Continue to mix and break up ground beef until fully cooked. Once fully cooked, turn off the heat and add marinara. We chose Rao’s marinara sauce. The absolute best price for it is at Costco. If you’re a member I’d highly suggest picking some up. It’s sold as a 2 pack for $10!
When the low carb community kept raving about Rao’s I’ll admit I was totally skeptical. How can a jarred marinara sauce be that good, and how on earth can it cost $8 for a small jar? As soon as I saw the large 2 packs at Costco I jumped on it. I’m so glad I did! It really is a great tasting sauce that I’d recommend to anyone. Although I would not buy it at a “regular” grocery store since the jars are a lot smaller and really expensive.
Mix marinara into ground beef and add cheese mixture. Mix well and set aside.
Manicotti Assembly
This will be the final stage of preparation for our scrumptious and Easy Low Carb Ground Beef Manicotti!! Preheat your oven to 475°F and take out your most beloved 9″x13″ baking dish. Usually I’d add a bit of sauce to the bottom of my baking dish to ensure nothing sticks, however I decided against that because I’d rather have all that marinara on the top of my manicotti.
That being said, spray your baking dish with whatever cooking spray you have. We have the avocado oil spray by chosen foods so that is what we used.
Cut crepini egg wraps in half.
The entire beef and cheese mixture will be divided among 12 wraps so when you’re adding your filling use your best judgment and try to make them all equal. I added 2 large spoonfuls of filling for each.
Next you’ll roll the wrap and add it to the baking dish side by side. That’s it!
As soon as you add all 12 manicotti to the baking dish, add remaining marinara, top with remaining mozzarella and place in the oven on the middle rack.
I cooked my manicotti for about 18 minutes and it came about beautiful. I’d suggest checking at about 10 minutes and then every 3 after. All you want is your cheese to be nice and bubbly.
All that’s left is to add some extra pretty parsley leaves and stuff your face with some delicious Easy Low Carb Ground Beef Manicotti!
Let me know in the comments below what you thought about it. I’d love to know if you added a different kind of meat or if you went vegetarian.
Easy Low Carb Ground Beef Manicotti
Super delicious and easy Low Carb Manicotti using ground beef. Perfect for a quick weeknight dinner!
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef
- ⅓ cup diced onion
- ½ tsp dried basil
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp parsley
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 ¼ cup Rao's Marinara Sauce (or low carb marinara)
- ¾ cup cottage cheese
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- 11 small basil leaves- fresh
- ¼ cup parsley- fresh
- ¼ cup parmesan cheese
- 1 cup mozzarella cheese
- ⅓ cup asiago
- 6 Crepini egg wraps
Instructions
- In a medium sized mixing bowl add cottage cheese, nutmeg, fresh basil, fresh parsley, parmesan, asiago and ⅓ cup of mozzarella. Mix well and set to the side.
- Preheat skillet on medium low heat and add diced onion and ground beef. With spatula, break ground beef up and add all seasonings- basil, garlic, salt, pepper, parsley, onion powder and Worcestershire sauce. Continue to chop up ground beef until fully cooked. This should only take 5-8 minutes.
- Turn heat off and add ½ cup marinara sauce to ground beef. Mix well.
- Add cheese mixture to ground beef and mix well.
- Preheat oven to 475°F and spray 9"x13" baking dish.
- Cut 6 crepini wraps in half and add two spoonfuls of manicotti mixture to each wrap (one at a time), tightly roll the manicotti **see instructions within post.
- Place manicotti side by side in baking dish. Pour remaining ¾ cup of marinara over manicotti and sprinkle remaining ⅔ mozzarella cheese on top. Place on middle rack in oven for 15-18 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and melted.
- Allow manicotti to rest for 8-10 minutes and sprinkle with fresh parsley on top.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 6 Serving Size: 2 ManicottiAmount Per Serving: Calories: 359Total Fat: 24.5gSaturated Fat: 10.4gCholesterol: 109mgSodium: 481mgCarbohydrates: 5.6gNet Carbohydrates: 5.5gFiber: .1gSugar: 1.8gProtein: 30g