There have been years that I loaded up on sides so much that there was no room on my plate for the Thanksgiving turkey. You can give me corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce and call it a meal.
But variety is good, too. I’ve had green bean casserole, rice, mac and cheese … none of which they would have had at the first Thanksgiving.
According to historians, what they would have had is squash, probably cooked just about exactly like this.
Ingredients
1 squash (any kind)
butter
salt
brown sugar (optional)
Directions
Pre-heat the oven to 400° F. Cut the squash in half. Go from bottom to top, as some of them have a really hard stem you won’t be able to cut through.
Scoop out all the seeds and connecting membrane with a spoon.
Place the pieces on a foil-lined baking sheet (just to make cleanup easier). Salt lightly, then add a few tablespoons of butter to each half.
Bake until the flesh is soft enough that a fork goes all the way through the thickest part to the skin with little resistance. For this one, that took about 35 minutes.
If you like it sweet (and, obviously, if you’re not on a low-carb diet) toss a tablespoon or more of brown sugar in the melted butter.
Serve with a big hunk of roasted meat.
And that’s it.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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9 Comments
That honestly only took 5 minutes to roast? Not 20?
Whoops! I should know better than to write things up late at night. I mis-read the timestamps on the photos. I’ve updated it to show the correct thirty-five minutes.
Oh, good! I thought you either had a magic oven or a magic squash, unlike any others that I’d encountered before. Thanks for clarifying!
Huh. It didn’t dry out? I always do the initial roasting face side down in a tiny bit of water and then flip them and fill them with butter and brown sugar (brown sugar totally not optional for me) for the last few minutes. But maybe all this time I could have been skipping the flipping! Fun.
The top had a tiny bit of a skin around the stem, but otherwise it was fine.
I did this a couple nights ago with a little orange squash that looked like a mini pumpkin – so I treated it like that. I cut the top off like a jack-o-lantern, took out the seeds, put the butter, brown sugar, and a little maple syrup inside, put the cap back on, and microwaved it (I didn’t want to warm up the whole oven for one little squash) for 5 minutes at a time, checking each time to see if the skin was soft. It took about 3 rounds. It was the best squash I’ve ever had! We had it for a side with pork chops. Even my hubby liked it, and he’s generally anti-squash.
I’ve always done mine face up with no problems. If your knife isn’t really sharp, you might have a heck of a time cutting the squash. If you’re not anti-microwave, one way to make it easier is to fork some holes into it and microwave it for 3 minutes or so – it softens it up a little so you can cut it in half more easily.
I know people who do the whole thing in the microwave. (If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll admit that I’ve done it myself.) Roasting it does add a little flavor, though. And doing it in the microwave tends to leave a mushier consistency by the time it’s hot enough.
To make it easier to cut through these squash, I use my largest knife and a rubber mallet to get through them.
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