How To Cook Butternut Squash: 4 Ways! Mind Over Munch

Hey guys it is that time of year SQUASH time. The time of the gourds. May the gourds be with you. Don't let your gourd down. Butternut Squash is one of the most common varieties of winter squash. It is loaded with nutrients. It's got vitamin A, C, E, potassium, fiber, and it’s a vegetable. It is a starchy vegetable though so this time of year I love getting my cards from squash rather than my normal grains. All good things. The only problem it can be an intimidating piece of produce. It’s weird looking. It’s a little bit mysterious and if you've never cooked with it before I can be a little bit scary. Today I'm going to show you four ways to cook a butternut squash. First up bake it whole. Start with your whole butternut squash and use a knife to poke holes all over it. This is going to help the steam release when it cooks so that it does not explode. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. It might start to ooze out some sugary juices a little bit when you poke it and that is absolutely normal. Place your squash onto a baking sheet lined with foil and transfer to the oven preheated at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. You may need a little bit longer if you have a huge squash or a little less time if you got a baby squash. Once your squash is ready to come out of the oven it should be fork tender that means you should be able to easily pierce it with a fork. Once cool to the touch you can transfer your butternut squash to a cutting board and cut it in half lengthwise. Now you can easily scoop out all the guts and seeds. Don't throw them away though we may be using them later. Now you can mash up or scoop out your butternut squash and prepare it however you'd like. Method number two: halve it and then bake it. For this method you're going to cut the butternut squash in half before we bake it. Keep in mind it can be a little bit challenging to cut through a butternut squash that has not been cooked. It is very tough. But cutting in half before we begin is also going to cut our baking time in half. Just be careful with that knife and be sure to use a good quality knife. I may or may not have had a bad experience with squash where tried to cut it raw and I used a bad knife and the knife ends up breaking and the hilt falls off. May or may not have happened. Once cut in half we can scoop out the guts again, saving the seeds and place each squash half onto a baking sheet flesh side up. You can brush on a little bit of olive oil and sprinkle it with salt, pepper, and my favorite cinnamon or whatever spices you prefer. Bake in an oven preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 25 minutes. When it's done it should be nice and tender again easily puncturable with a fork. Method number 3: peel, cube, and bake. This method is great if you want those nice cubes of squash. Start by using a peeler or paring knife to peel the butternut squash completely. Use a knife to cut each end off and then separate the long part of the squash from the big bulbous part. Cut the longer part of that squash into disks that are about an inch thick and then you can cut those discs into cubes. For the bottom portion we're going to cut it in half and again scoop out the guts. If you've ever cut a cantaloupe this will be very similar. Then you can simply slice each half width wise and then into cubes. Easy peasy. With your cubes in a large mixing bowl you can drizzle on little bit of olive oil and then salt and pepper or whatever seasonings you like. Mix to coat and don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. Pour your cubes onto a baking sheet lined with foil and then transfer to the oven preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes. Remove and enjoy your perfectly tender butternut squash bites. So you're starting to see that pretty much of the important part of cooking a butternut squash is getting the center of it tender enough. Pretty much however you can do that works. You can’t really go wrong with cooking butternut squash. Which leads us to our final no excuses method the microwave. Don’t have time for an oven but need a squash? This is the fastest method. For this one you are again going to start by poking holes all over the squash with a fork or knife. Again this is gonna let the steam out when it cooks. Place the entire squash into a microwave-safe bowl into the microwave for about five minutes. This will soften it up a little bit and once it's cool to the touch we can cut it in half lengthwise and scoop out those guts. Then you can place them flesh side down onto a microwave-safe dish and return them to the microwave for 5 to 10 minutes depending on the size of your squash. This one that I cooked was pretty big so it needed about 10. Remove and it'll be nice and soft and tender and ready to eat. So those are your four ways to cook a butternut squash. The optional fifth way would be to buy the prepackaged cubes from the store. I actually think that these are great time savers. So my personal favorite way to cook the entire squash is by roasting it whole because it's easiest. You just throw it in the oven, you come back later you get it; it’s easy to cut blah blah blah. But if I want the cubes, uh cutting that raw squash is kind of a pain for me so buying those cubes that are already cut makes my life easier and they’re really not much more expensive than buying the full squash. So for those of you who made it this far, thanks. How about a bonus recipe where we toast up the seeds? Always keep the seeds. They are delicious roasted. You can eat them plain as a snack, put them on salads, soups, whatever. All you're going to do is pick them out of the guts and rinse them off. Then you can pour them onto a paper towel. Fold the other side over, dry them off they might stick to the paper towel a little bit so just be patient when you pick them off. Transfer your dried seeds to a bowl add a little bit of olive oil maybe some salt and pepper other seasonings. If you want sweeter seeds you could do cinnamon. Then you could transfer your seeds onto a baking sheet lined with foil and spread them out evenly. Bake in an oven preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 to 20 minutes or until the seeds start to pop. I recommend stirring them halfway and cooling before devouring. They are gonna crisp up a little bit as they cool and you can of course use the same method for pumpkin seeds. So what is your go-to way to cook a butternut squash? There are loads of options. I have just shared four of them so if you have any additional tips and tricks be sure to leave them in the comments below. If you have never cooked a butternut squash before comment below and let me know which method you're gonna try. I do have a PDF download available right here or in the description box below for my mobile friends and that is going to outline all of these methods for you because I love you. And I have good news and an announcement. Sorta. A lot of you guys have asked me ‘do you have a snapchat?’ and the answer has been 'No'. But now I do. I got a snapchat, I announced it on my Instagram and I'm having so much fun with it and you add me I’ll add you back. And if you do any recipe remakes be sure to tag me on Instagram and Twitter as well because it makes my day. Thank you guys for being so awesome I hope that you have an awesome weekend and I will see you on Monday for a brand new episode. Remember it's all a matter of Mind Over Much.

Channel: Mind Over Munch

Views: 1,390,468

Keywords: mind over munch, mindovermunch, alyssia sheikh, healthy recipes, how to, Recipe (Website Category), butternut, butternut squash, recipes butternut squash, roasted squash, roasted butternut squash, microwave butternut squash, roast butternut squash, bake butternut squash, cooking butternut squash, roasted seeds, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seeds roasted, roast pumpkin seeds, cook pumpkin seeds, seasonal, fall recipes, winter recipes

Id: oYsEhq8lEbk

Length: 6min 59sec (419 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2015