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Jersey Shore’s Vinny Guadagnino Lightens Up a Classic Italian Dish: Watch

Buon Appetito! Jersey Shore cast member Vinny Guadagnino went back to his Italian roots and invited Us Weekly into his Staten Island kitchen to make a lighter twist on meat sauce and pasta. Check out his red meat sauce with zucchini noodles in the video above!

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“I try to keep everything low carb. But when I go low carb, I go high fat. That fat really makes it taste good, keeps you satiated, and it’s just delicious.” Guadagnino pairs the zoodles with grass-fed beef, heavy cream and his favorite kitchen staple – toasted ricotta.

Vinny Guadagnino

His kitchen has a gorgeous island which makes cooking easy and fun for him, and is also stocked with stainless steel appliances, which wasn’t always the case. “It’s funny I grew up in an apartment probably the size of this entire kitchen. My mom still always made it work so she would always be cooking dinner, and we’d always be in the kitchen,” he revealed to Us. “We’d always have food on the stove, even though it was a really tiny stove, a really tiny place. Then when I was on my TV show, Jersey Shore, I bought a house and a big kitchen so that we could enjoy it and my mom would have an awesome place to cook and we would all have an awesome place to eat.”

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He credits his mom for his skills in the kitchen, and even admitted that she still does the majority of the cooking in the house! “Italians love having big kitchens. My family comes here, we still gather here around the kitchen and my mom cooks here. I don’t care about anything else. As long as you give me a kitchen, maybe a bar. I’m all set.”

He added, joking, “Fellas, if you want to take a couple notes from me: girls love when you cook for them. With this you can be like, ‘Babe I’m cooking for you, but I also want you to be healthy. So here — have some zucchini, and then you have my zucchini later!’”

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Check out Vinny’s how-to in the video above, and see below for the full recipe!

Vinny’s Zucchini Noodles

Vinny’s Red Sauce

1 large onion, diced

¼ cup avocado oil

1 6oz. can tomato paste

2 12oz. cans plum tomatoes

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 medium carrot, cut into chunks

1 medium sweet, diced

½ cup fresh basil

Directions

Add avocado oil to sauce pan over medium heat.

Add onion and sauté until translucent.

Add tomato paste, plum tomatoes, salt, pepper, carrot, and sweet potato.

Cook until tomatoes break down, about 35-45 minutes over medium/low heat.

Let the sauce cool.

Once tomatoes break down, use a hand blender in sauce to break down vegetables.

Meat Prep

1 lb ground beef

1 small diced onion

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 table spoons of butter

Directions

While the red sauce is cooking, heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a separate sauté pan.

Add onion and sauté until translucent.

Add chopped meat and sauté until brown. Season with salt and pepper.

Add in prepared tomato sauce enough to cover chopped meat. Let simmer for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.

In the last 3-5 minutes of simmering, stir in heavy cream.

Shut off flame, stir in 2 tablespoons of butter. Sauce should be thick.

Zucchini Noodles

2 containers of precut zucchini noodles

1/2 cup grated toasted ricotta cheese

A few pieces of basil

Vinny’s Zucchini Noodle Hack: The thing about zucchini is there’s a lot of water in them. So we gotta get that water out so that when we’re eating it, it has a good pasta-like consistency, a little bit of crunch to them. Put covered zucchini noodles in microwave safe dish for minute and a half. Transfer to paper towels, and squeeze over a bowl to remove excess water!

Add zoodles and meat sauce to serving dish. Garnish with toasted ricotta cheese and basil.

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