The Best Way to Cook Acorn Squash (Seriously Good)

this is my absolute favorite way to cook acorn squash it's so delicious you're gonna like it too first thing to do is get the oven going at 400 degrees we've got two Acorn squashes here and they kind of come in a variety of colors this is the the usual acorn squash this is usually green with some yellow blotching and usually you can tell when they're ripe when they start to get a little bit of that yellow blotching eventually it'll all turn yellow but when you've got a mix of yellow and green on there that's when they're at their best there are also other varieties that have the exact same shape but maybe some more vibrant colors I've had Carnival squash is one like that where it's basically the same thing but just has some bright colors on the skin but this is a normal acorn squash that you find at most grocery stores and when I'm shopping for them I like to grab the ones that have both green and yellow on the skin but the easiest way to prepare this is just to cut both the ends off and then go ahead and slice it down the middle we need to get at those seed pockets and I'm just going to scrape those seeds out with a teaspoon and like most squashes there's a little membrane that lines that whole bulb in there and if you can get that spoon underneath that membrane then that whole bunch of seeds just kind of comes up pretty easily I found that if you kind of go at it kind of surgically and really just kind of take your time it ends up being a lot easier because if you just start going at it with the spoon and just making seeds fly everywhere just makes a big mess so I like to just take my time doing this and generally it works out pretty well and if you have a little space in your backyard feel free to save some of those seeds and plant them they'll grow up and you'll get the exact same fruit that you're looking at on The Cutting Board here so these acorn squash have these kind of little lobes that are already a part of the fruit and it might be tempting to just cut them right along those lines there on the outside of the squash but for this recipe I like to cut them just a little bit thicker so I'll make my cuts kind of in between the lobes and I'll have about one and a half to two lobes of the squash per slice having your pieces a little bit thicker just makes it easier to eat in the end you'll just have a nice bigger piece of squash that you can cut bites off of instead of having a little bitty uh slivers of squash this will work out better in the end this way so I'm just going to go ahead and cut this squash up into little C shapes here about an inch and a half thick or so and they don't need to be all uniform or anything like that it doesn't really matter if they're all the same next I'm going to drizzle these squash pieces with a little bit of canola oil that's my oil of choice just going to drizzle it on there and then give them a toss and get all those pieces coated with oil and the seasoning on these is going to be real simple just a sprinkling of salt a few grinds of the pepper a little sprinkling of garlic powder and a little sprinkling of onion powder and I'll just give those another toss just to get all that seasoning mixed around on all the pieces once all the squash pieces are nice and coated and some oil and seasoning it's time to get the sheet pan ready this is an aluminum pan it doesn't matter if it's aluminum or a steel Pan the most important part is to use parchment paper that's going to give you a really good nice cooking service and your squash is not going to stick to the pan at all once this squash is cooked it's going to be really tender and if you use foil and it sticks at all you're probably just going to tear it apart trying to get it up off the foil so if you don't have parchment I'd suggest getting some for this recipe but if you have some nice non-stick baking sheets you know that probably worked pretty good too now I'm going to put some Parmesan cheese on these squash slices here and my preferred tool for doing it for this recipe is to use this microplane if you're not familiar with this this is just basically the same as a cheese grater except the holes are much much smaller and you get a very very fine fine shred and it works really great for hard cheeses like parmesan and I've got a hunk of real parmesan here obviously you could use a pre-grated Parmesan and that would probably work but a lot of times the parmesan that you buy that's pre-graded probably isn't actually actually parmesan cheese has some other cheeses in it probably still good but I like to use just a real hunk of Parmesan and Grate it on there if you don't have one of these micro planes you can just use a regular cheese grater or alternatively a vegetable peeler works pretty good for parmesan too you can get some really thin shavings of Parmesan on there but in this recipe that's really the key is to get lots of thin thin pieces of Parmesan cheese on there so it'll melt really nicely and provide a crusty parmesan coating on top of these squash pieces as you can see I'm not shy with the parmesan on this recipe and this is actually not as much as it looks like here those thin thin shavings are mostly air but once all that melts that'll be a nice coating of Parmesan on everything so in the 400 degree oven those go for 40 45 minutes and 45 minutes later here's what we've got a pan of delicious parmesan crusted acorn squash you can see most of that parmesan is melted and coated the slices of squash and those those white pieces that you see that are still white there those are crunchy and that cheese that is spilled Down Under the parchment paper that's crunchy too those that's crunchy deliciousness right there and tonight we're serving this with some roasted chicken legs and while you can eat the skin on this squash it is a little bit tough I usually just like to carve the flush away from the skin with a sharp knife like that and just kind of eat it like a steak almost you know just cut little bites but that's my recipe for parmesan crusted acorn squash I hope you found that useful thanks for watching see on the next one

Channel: Home Cooking with Tom

Views: 51,508

Keywords: home cooking, beginner cooking, cooking from scratch, home cook recipes, cooking at home, healthy recipes, family meal recipes, easy recipies, simple cooking, simple recipes, wholesome food, healthy home cooking, weeknight recipes, cooking tips, how to cook, beginner recipes, real food, family dinner recipes, easy weeknight dinners, acorn squash recipes, acorn squashe baked, acorn squash roasted, best acorn squash recipe, how to cook acorn squash, oven roasted squash

Id: 8x046e8Fsjg

Length: 5min 43sec (343 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023