These ground turkey stuffed shells are my most popular recipe of all time! Large pasta shells stuffed to the brim with ground turkey and cheese and covered with tomato sauce and yes, even more cheese. Serve with a basket of rosemary sea salt dinner rolls or addictive cheddar bay biscuits!
I wanted to make stuffed shells, and it needed to be with whatever was lying around the apartment – so I ended up with ground turkey stuffed shells, and I thought they were really good!
Substitutions for ground turkey stuffed shells
- Feel free to substitute the ground turkey for beef or chicken. Or you can remove the meat altogether and add spinach instead. Not gonna lie, sometimes I like the vegetarian way even better.
- If you don’t have garlic cloves, you can substitute any of the below:
- ½ teaspoon minced garlic
- ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon garlic salt
- You don’t have to use reduced fat ricotta or 2% mozzarella, it just helps cut down on the calorie count a little. You can use the full milk version of each and it’ll be faaaaabulous.
How to video with step by step instructions
Apologies for the quality of the photos in this video, but I haven’t had a chance to get new ones since I originally made this recipe. Lots of people requested a step by step tutorial, and I thought this would be an easy way to show you how they’re made:
Side of bread, coming right up
- Rosemary Sea Salt Dinner Rolls
- Copycat Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits
- Copycat Olive Garden Breadsticks by Lil Luna
- Individual Garlic Cheese Breads by Cafe Delites
- Roasted Garlic Rosemary Focaccia Bread by Little Spice Jar
- Cheesy Garlic Bombs by Damn Delicious
- Pull Apart Garlic Bread by Gather for Bread
After you’ve made this recipe, please consider coming back to share your experience with others by leaving a comment below with a star rating!
Ground Turkey Stuffed Shells
Large pasta shells stuffed to the brim with ground turkey and cheese and covered with tomato sauce and yes, even more cheese! Serve with a basket of addictive cheddar bay biscuits!
Ingredients
- 16 jumbo pasta shells
- 1 pound lean ground turkey
- 1 jar spaghetti sauce, choose your favorite!
- 1 clove garlic, chopped
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup parsley, chopped
- 8 ounces reduced fat ricotta cheese
- 8 ounces shredded 2% mozzarella cheese, divided
- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat over to 350°F. Spray an 8x8 glass dish with non-stick spray and set aside.
- While that’s warming up, cook pasta al dente according to the directions on the box. Once cooked, set aside to cool.
- Brown ground turkey, adding in chopped garlic.Note: If you don’t have garlic cloves, you can substitute: ½ teaspoon minced garlic,⅛ teaspoon garlic powder, or ½ teaspoon garlic salt.
- Cover the bottom of the baking dish with half the spaghetti sauce. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, lightly beat one egg. Add the ground turkey mix, ricotta cheese, half the mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and parsley. Add a little salt and pepper if you’d like, and mix well.
- Using a spoon, stuff each shell with the mixture you’ve created. It can be kind of tricky, depending on how “curly” your noodles are, but I promise it’s worth it. I usually spoon mixture up under one of the curves and then fill the rest – it seems to be the easiest.
- As you’re stuffing the shells, place each shell in the glass baking dish. Place them closely together so they don’t tip over and cram as many as you can into the pan.
- Pour the remaining spaghetti sauce over the shells, then cover in the remaining mozzarella cheese.
- Bake at 350°F for 20-25 minutes (or until the cheese is bubbling on the top).
- Serve with a side of garlic bread or cheesy biscuits and enjoy!
Notes
- Feel free to substitute the ground turkey for beef or chicken. Or you can remove the meat altogether and add spinach instead.
- If you don’t have garlic cloves, you can substitute: ½ teaspoon minced garlic, ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder, or ½ teaspoon garlic salt.
- You don't have to use reduced fat ricotta or 2% mozzarella, it just helps cut down on the calorie count a little. You can use the full milk version of each.
Nutrition
Calories: 135kcal | Carbohydrates: 7g | Protein: 14g | Fat: 5g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 42mg | Sodium: 173mg | Potassium: 145mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 251IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 190mg | Iron: 1mg
Tried this recipe?Leave a comment and rating!
Collette
I didn’t have fresh parsley and used 2 1/2 tablespoon of dried instead and work fine with the recipe.
Leslie Kiszka
So glad to hear!
Tenneh
Love your recipe! I have been using for years ;) Thank you!!
Leslie Kiszka
That makes me so happy – thanks for coming back to leave a comment and a rating!
Susan
I dont understand the calorie count. Is this for one shell??
Leslie Kiszka
Correct, but keep in mind it’s roughly calculated by an online calculator.
Anonymous
** Dished into the shells. Sorry.
Anonymous
Used 3 cloves garlic and 1/4 of an onion in with the turkey while browning.
Also fished into the shells using tongs. Was very easy to get under both sides of the shell, even on the curlier ones!
K
Made this tonight but didn’t have ricotta and was low on mozzarella. Melted cream cheese, 1/4 cup mozzarella, 1/4 cup Romano, some milk, and added red pepper flakes and garlic to make a cheese sauce. Mixed that with the turkey before stuffing and it was amazing! Thanks for this recipe!
Leslie Haasch
Sounds like you did a great job with the substitutions!
Leslie Haasch
So glad that you liked it!
Alesia
I added fresh spinach to a pan with diced onions and minced garlic. Added that mixture to thw cheese and ground turkey. Got a store brought sauce that was tomatoe basil. Everything was delish! I would have never thought to add an egg …actually made stuff shells a couple of times before and never added an egg oops. I will be making this here recipe from now on. Thanks!
jarrod ellis
Made it for the family tonightcand they loved it. Used ground turkey instead of ground beef use shredded mozzarella cheese and ricotta cheese and shredded parmesan cheese and fresh spinach. Mmmm good????????????????????????
rachel ward
Just made this for dinner. I used 2% small curd cottage cheese instead of the ricotta and sliced parmesan instead of grated. I also added chopped fresh spinach to the mixture. Very delicious! Will be adding this to the recipe book for sure!
Leslie Haasch
Mmm sounds delicious – glad you enjoyed it! :)
Leslie Haasch
Oo that sounds great – I’ll have to try that!
Anonymous
Wow! I just made these with only mozzarella, but I added three carrots to the sauce and four cloves of garlic mixed in with the turkey. It was life changing! I’ll make this weekly. Thanks :)
Leslie Haasch
That sounds great – glad you enjoyed it!
Claire Bear
Yum did this tonight except with ground beef really good!! Used nice Italian shredded cheese and broiled till it was golden brown and bubbly! Hubby loved it :> thank you
Claire Bear
Yum did this tonight except with ground beef really good!! Used nice Italian shredded cheese and broiled till it was golden brown and bubbly! Hubby loved it :> thank you
Leslie Haasch
That sounds delicious – glad you enjoyed it!
Anonymous
Thank you for the recipe! Will definitely make this again! Made this tonight, and it was delicious! The hubby loved it too which is always a plus. I did make a couple of small changes though – I added chopped fresh spinach, and I substituted cottage cheese for the ricotta. It turned out really well.
Anonymous
Thanks, look forward to trying this tonight.
Leslie Haasch
They actually were, but I ran out of sauce so I only had about 1/4 of what I needed and you can barely see it in the pictures :) It’s just to keep the shells from sticking to the pan, while adding a bit more flavor than if you were to just spray the pan with non-stick spray. You could also use butter instead!
Anonymous
3) Cover the bottom of an 8×8 baking dish with half the spaghetti sauce. Set aside (read: put it in a timeout).
What was this sauce used for? It doesn’t appear that the shells were baked in this dish…thanks!