Stuffed marrow is one of my favourite meals. I first tried it when Scott’s Mum cooked some for us a few years ago. She stuffed hers with pork mince and I loved it at the time but I can’t stomach minced meat anymore (nothing to do with her cooking, just my inner vegetarian coming out). Now I make a lightly spiced bean stuffing instead. Who could resist the allure of tomatoey beans covered in bubbling cheese? Not me!
We’ve grown three marrows this year and stuffed every single one. Partly because I don’t know what else to do with them but also because stuffed marrow is really really delicious. Sadly it feels like a bit of an old fashioned or underrated dinner nowadays and I haven’t seen any marrows for sale in the supermarket this year! Surely someone other than allotment owners must be growing this vegetable.
Ingredients
- 1 marrow
- 1 tin (4oog) chopped tomatoes
- 1 tin (400g) kidney, borlotti or cannelini beans
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 red pepper
- 2 teaspoons milled flax
- 1 tbsp dried mixd herbs OR
- 2 handfuls of fresh herbs — thyme, oregano and marjoram are a nice mix but use whatever you have to hand
- Half a red chilli/pinch of chilli powder
- 100g grated cheddar (more if you like)
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Pinch of salt
- Pinch of pepper
Makes 4 large marrow rings.
Vegetarian stuffed marrow recipe
No vegetarians were harmed in the making of this recipe…
Preheat your oven to 200C/180C fan, gas mark 6.
1. Prepare marrow rings
Leave the skin on and chop your marrow in to 1.5 inch slices. Scoop out the centre and arrange flat in a baking dish — it is important they sit flat or the filling will spill out.
2. Prepare the filling
Heat the olive oil in a pan. Fry your chopped onions and peppers with garlic and chilli until just softened. Add the tomato puree, stir to coat and cook for 2 minutes. Once you have a nice paste add the chopped tomatoes and herbs, flax and then beans. Simmer until saucy and season well. Marrow doesn’t have much flavour so don’t be afraid to add a few extra herbs, salt or pepper.
3. Spoon in to rings
Fill the centre of each marrow ring with bean mixture. It will sink down as it cooks so pile the beans nice and high. Don’t add the cheese yet!
4. Bake
- Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes remove the foil and sprinkle grated cheese over each ring. Be as generous or as frugal as you like with the cheese. We love it so ours are always cheesy!
- Bake for a further 15 minutes uncovered until the cheese is bubbling and golden and the marrow is tender.
5. Enjoy
Serve and enjoy!
On this occasion we ate ours with homemade chips — perfect for soaking up any leftover sauce.
In case you were wondering, the world marrow record is 68kg. Makes our 2kg marrow look like a peanut. Oh well, there’s always next year.
I will definitely try this I saw some marrows in sainsburys last week, hopefully they will still have some this week ? X
Thumbs up for Sainsburys 🙂 If you wanted to use a less fatty cheese I think a soft goats cheese or soft sheep cheese would be very nice.
These look delicious! I love rice stuffed courgettes, so I can imagine this being quite similar. I always used to buy marrows when I was a kid (i loved cooking!), but I’ve barely seen them in the shops the past few years! It’s such a shame because they’re so nice!
I’ll definitely be saving this, as I’m always looking for vegetarian recipes to try and get me to eat less meat!
xo April | April Everyday
Thanks April. The recipe is pretty versatile so you could use rice/quinoa/other beans as a base for the sauce. We ran out of kidney beans so I used butter beans and they were equally as delicious. Shame we have no more homegrown marrows now!
This looks amazing so going to try it with my overgrown courgettes. … they have gone mad with all this rain.
find your local allotment there is always someone with far to many and be happy to pass on. ”like me who’s been giving them away all summer x
Haha! I made a chocolate marrow cake last year, which was tastier than it sounds. Good luck with using up your glut!
Just wondering what to do with 2 marrows which i found on the allotment. Super easy to grow. Buy corgette seeds and just leave to grow bigger! Fabulous! Looking forward too this!
I hope you enjoy the recipe Sarah. I’ve also used courgette halves and it tastes just as good. Just pile them high and spinkle with cheese!
This looks so yummy! My sister gave me two marrows from her garden and I said I thought one would do because I live alone, now I wish I had accepted her double offering! I am going to try it asap! Thank you, Gemma
ooooooooo ooooooooo ooooooooooo!
This looks yummy, we’re always trying to up our veggie meals so this is going on the list 🙂
I hope you like it Annie!
I have also peeled and deseeded cut into spaghetti strips and fried in butter for a few
Minutes until soft and added basil pesto for a quick lunch
Have not yet tried with Italian sauces but would think it should work and be less fattening
Courgette spaghetti strips fried in butter sounds SO good. Need to buy a marrow so I can try it!
I’m vegan so going to make this with a drizzle melted cashew cheese to serve… thanks for the recipe!
Cashew cheese? I must try it!! 🙂
Hi, I found this recipe & your blog whilst searching online for “Marrow recipes” it looks delicious. I’ve been given a huge Marrow, it will keep me going for a week I reckon! I’m not vegetarian but am trying to incorporate more veggies in my cooking & try new recipes seeing as we have a polytunnel now & a glut of tomatoes, peppers & chilies. Thanks!
Thanks Julie! The recipe is quite flexible, you could add some mince or shredded meat if you wanted to make a non vegetarian version. A glut of tomatoes, peppers and chillies sounds like a good problem to have 🙂
Hi. Looks like a solution to our annual marrow glut (my other half has an allotment…). Do you eat the skin?
Hi Jane! I’m a bit late in replying to you, sorry. I cooked my marrow in the skin to help keep the shape but I cut it off afterwards. I eat the skin if I picked a marrow at the start of the season but it can get a little tough later on.
Just made this today to use up a big marrow – or as we call them in the US, a “giant overgrown zucchini,” lol.
I thought it was quite good! The only changes I made were to add some garlic and onion powder in addition to the chopped fresh garlic and onion, and to mix a little grated Parmesan cheese into the filling in addition to the cheese on top. I think that helped “up” the flavor a little more, since, as noted, marrow is pretty bland on its own. Oh and of course I had to do a quick google to convert to Fahrenheit, since my American cooker (“range”) has neither Celsius nor gas marks and I always forget the equivalents and have to look them up!
We ate it as a vegetarian main course, but I imagine it would also be good served as a side to fish.
Thanks for the recipe!
Garlic and onion powder sound like great additions to the recipe 🙂
Delivered goods out of storage and customer gave us this stuffed marrow for lunch.
Yummy ! Defiantly adding this to my future snacks for lunch.
Just made this tonight after found it online search. So very good. Been looking for an easy and yum stuffed marrow recipe cos I always end up throwing marrows out – amazing what a days difference can do between a courgette and marrow!!! I love that this is made with beans it’s pretty much a complete meal. I also added some parmesan to the bean mixture straight after cooking which may seem too much for some but I could bathe in cheese so the more the merrier for me. Thank you for sharing this 🤗
I could also bathe in cheese so adding parmesan to the filling sounds like a great idea 🙂 So glad you like the recipe Pip!
My sister gave me one of her marrows from her allotment so decided to improvise the recipe with what I had to hand. I used veggi mince and mushrooms and my sisters home made tomato sauce, smoked paprika along with the onions, garlic and dried oregano which I brought back from Cyprus. I will also make again using your ingredients. It was very tasty!
Veggie mince, tomatoes and smoke paprika sounds lovely, I’ll have to try that!
After 20 mins cooking pre heated oven 200 f with foil on top the marrow was still hard! I cut the size suggested in recipe. It needed an hour in all before it was tender enough to eat. Has this happened to anyone else? It was tasty though.
Oh no, sorry to hear that! Mine usually take about 35 mins in total — 20 mins covered and then a further 15 mins uncovered. I’ve haven’t had any marrow that has taken any longer but I think cooking time could vary depending on the water content of the marrow, the type of dish you are cooking in etc. Glad it will still tasty even if it did take a little longer to cook 🙂
I usually boil the marrow rings briefly to soften them before draining and filling with stuffing. I then just put the cheese on top and bake. Up to now have used mince, but now vegetarian so will try these variations. I find they freeze well especially if the cheese is not too brown and can re-bake. Can microwave if cheese well cooked before freezing. When frozen, may need to drain some moisture away but this is not a problem.
The recipe calls for 200C , not 200F. It would be roughly 418F, so the baking times should be fine for cooking the stuffed rings.
I’m a Yank who was living in the UK for 6 years so had lots of details to get used to when converting my US recipes to Celsius and weighing all ingredients vs. measuring cups. Now that I’m back I still haul out some of my ‘favourite’ UK recipes…and my scale!
This looks so yummy! What could be used instead of the milled flax? Is it used to thicken the sauce? Maybe cornflower instead? 😬
It helps the thicken sauce and adds some extra fibre. I’ve used cornflower when I’ve run out of flax and it works very well. Enjoy 🙂
Thanks Gemma 😊
Thanks So much for the recipe – I cooked the marrow before with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and then added the filling and cheese at once. It went down really well with the veges in my family. We got the marrows from a market for one dollar! The lady said that she didn’t know what to do with them. Warm regards from New Zealand. 🙂
Glad it went down well with the family veggies! Thanks for commenting to let me know — it’s always nice to hear when people are using my recipes 🙂
Really enjoyed this. Making the transition from full carnivore. Didn’t have flax but not an issue.. My granddaughters loved it.
That’s great to hear Jon, thank you! If you want more veggie recipe ideas, I can highly recommend the River Cottage Veg Everyday book 🙂
Hi there, am going to try this. Are you able to freeze if you have some left over?
You could freeze the leftovers but I think the marrow may go a bit soft once it has defrosted 🙂