This has totally been our go to meal when we are craving Italian or just in a rush and don't have time to make anything. Spaghetti squash is literally an amazing little veggie friend. He does all the work for you!
Getting started:
Preheat your oven to 350.
Go get yourself a small-medium sized spaghetti squash (ours is a medium-large size in the picture) if you are making a meal for 2. Bigger if you are making for more. Give it a good wash (you don't use the skin anyways) and get your best knife out to cut it LENGTHWISE in half. The cutting I found was the most challenging, especially if it is under ripe. I found the easiest way to cut it is if you hold the stem area and then cut the bottom half all the way through to the other side (so you kind of made a mouth on it). This way you can stick the back of a spoon in the slice you made for leverage to cut through the rest. Don't be afraid to just rip apart when you have the whole thing almost cut (you get all the meat out of it later, so style and presentation points don't count here). Once you have that bad boy in half, discard the middle slimy, seedy part and lay it out on a cookie sheet. **Depending on your oven, you may want to add water to the bottom of the cookie sheet, an inch or less, so it doesn't dry out. Put the squash into the oven for about 30-45 minutes. You can tell when it's finished when you can stick a fork in the meat of it easily or it's getting a little wilty.
It will come out looking like this.
Next is the fun part! After the oven, grab a potholder with one hand and stand one half of it upright. Take a fork in the other hand and just drag it from top to bottom of the meaty part of the squash. It's VERY easy, and it literally just falls apart with your fork. Takes about 2 minutes.
Presto! Spaghetti!
Next grab one of your favorite organic tomato sauces, or make your own like we like to do, and add it to the top! We LOVE the texture of the squash waaaaaaay better than noodles. You get a little bit of a hearty crunch in there, which is great. Add a little basil on top if you like and enjoy! Hooray for fast and easy recipes! P.S. This saves pretty well in the fridge do if you make a big squash, you can have leftovers for another day or two.
Enjoy!
I never knew which squash was spaghetti at the market, thanks for the photo!
ReplyDeleteWe are big fans of spaghetti squash and I love doing up a nice big one and sneaking into the kids, they just don't know what hits them.
ReplyDeleteAnd they're pretty cheap too! I have nephews and they actually like it MORE than pasta! Just add a lot of sauce! Hahaha. I had more trouble getting ADULTS to try it, but they finally caved, now they have it once a week.
ReplyDeleteHi Vincent. We added our blog! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI don't do it often (in fact, not since last year's MoFo), but I love working with spaghetti squash. I almost don't even care what it tastes like, I just have fun ripping out the strands of "spaghetti." :) This looks delish and, desprite the name, I never thought to add any type of spaghetti sauce to it. Yum!
ReplyDeleteBobbie! That is the most fun part! Of course if you don't burn yourself!
ReplyDelete