Spaghetti Squash and Sausage

I originally stumbled across this recipe at the Jimmy Dean website, and after playing with it, figured I would share my results since I took photos of the process and all. This recipe may be served “in a boat” (in the squash hull) or simply cooked up in a casserole dish. It’s all about presentation and preference.

The dish features flavors and colors redolent of the fall harvest, and is a great way to kick off the season of cooling temperatures and the glorious autumnal colors of nature.

 

SPAGHETTI SQUASH AND SAUSAGE
Prep time: 45minutes
Bake time: 15-20 minutes
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients:
1 pound pork sausage

Shredded Smoked Gouda

1 spaghetti squash
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup smoked Gouda, shredded
1 med or small onion, sliced thin
1 tbsp butter
1 lemon, halved
2 cups baby leaf spinach
Cooking spray – I prefer olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Halved Lemon

 

 

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Removing cooked squash from hull.

Render your squash by slicing in half longways, removing the seeds, and applying olive oil to all the exposed meat surfaces. Roast or microwave until soft. Allow the squash to cool before attempting to handle it. Using a fork or large spoon, scrape the meat out into a bowl and allow it to rest. Be careful to keep the hulls intact. Those may be set aside for later use if desired.

 

Meat and onion cooked in microwave rather than skillet.

Use cooking spray on a large skillet. Add onions and garlic and saute until soft and slightly caramelized. Break up the sausage into the skillet with the onions. Cook, stirring occasionally until the meat is mostly done. Add butter and squeeze in the juice of half a lemon. This may also be rendered in a microwave rather than on a stove top, but be sure to use a large microwave safe bowl.

 

If microwaving, as shown, layer cheese, spinach and squash over meat so that the cheese and spinach are heated between the meat and squash. This will cause nice wilting.

Add the spaghetti squash, spinach, and desired salt and pepper. Cook while stirring occasionally until the squash is nicely broken up and the spinach has begun to wilt. Add the juice from the other half of the lemon, half of the grated cheese, and stir it all up.

Mix it up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are using the squash hulls, load them with the sausage mixture. If you are using a casserole dish, spray it with you preference of cooking sprays, then fill it up.

Top evenly with remaining cheese and bake at 375ºF until cheese is melted and just beginning to brown and dish is heated through, about 15-20 minutes.

Allow to rest.

 

Allow to rest for five minutes before serving. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Single serving.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not the original recipe, but one that I fiddled with as I am wont to do. The original called for a panko-based topping, and no gooey cheese. It’s probably healthier that way, but in my house cheese is pretty much a necessity in just about everything.

There are lots of variations that spring to mind for this recipe. Using turkey sausage instead of pork, using kale or another leafy green with or in place of the spinach, and adding other spices to the mix all sparked right off. Toppings might be as simple as a sprinkle of parmesan, or bacon crumbles, or freshly diced parsley or chopped chives. Basing the dish on curry and using a ground meat rather than a pre-spiced sausage sounds tasty, as does a Cajun version.

The big serving!

As with all the recipes I post, have fun with it! Try it out, twist it up and make it your own.

Enjoy!

–Ann Cathey

 

Slow Cooker Chicken & Sausage Jambalaya

I prefer to use slow cooker liners. Whenever I buy a box of them, there is invariably a little handout inside that includes a few recipes. They are great for folks starting out with slow cookers!

Reynolds produces liner bags for slow cookers. They, like Crock-Pot, offer recipes from their test kitchens. I rounded up a few more and will share them here, in a couple of fall posts. Why fall? Slow cookers are wonderful for making warm, filling meals that are especially welcome on cooler or cold nights.

Please keep in mind that some of my Cajun friends might take exception to this recipe, and that it’s from Reynolds’ kitchens, not mine.

CHICKEN & SAUSAGE JAMBALAYA
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 7 hours on Low or 3 hours on High
Servings: 6

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken thighs, boned, skinned, cut into bite sized pieces
8 ounces smoked turkey or chicken sausage, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
1 to 2 tablespoons Creole or Cajun seasoning
Salt, to taste
1 can (14.5 oz) petite-diced tomatoes with onion, celery and green pepper
2 medium red, green or yellow bell peppers, seeded, cored and cut into 2 inch strips
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium yellow squash, cut into bite size pieces
12 oz pre-cooked deveined and peeled shrimp
hot cooked rice
2 tbsp fresh chopped parsley

Directions:
Set up your slow cooker by placing the liner bag inside, fitting it snugly to the bottom and sides.

Place chicken and sausage in the crock. Sprinkle with seasonings. Pour in diced tomatoes. Top with vegetables.

Cover and cook 7 to 8 hours on low OR 3 to 4 hours on high, until the chicken is done.

Carefully remove the lid to allow steam to escape.

Add cooked shrimp and stir gently.

Cook 10 more minutes on low.

Spoon jambalaya directly from cooker into bowls of cooked rice.

Sprinkle with chopped celery and serve

 

Note: Do not lift or transport liner with food inside.

Note: Allow crock to cool before removing the liner and tossing it.

 

–Ann Cathey

Italian Style Spaghetti Squash and Meatballs

I seem to have a hang-up on spaghetti squash recently! It’s tasty and filling and I’m collecting recipes that my family is enjoying in spite of the squash.

This is a quick and fairly simple recipe that can be baked up in either the oven or a crock pot. As ever, you may alter it to suit your own tastes. There are no hard and fast rules here.

Italian Style Spaghetti Squash and Meatballs
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 4 hours
Servings: 4-6

Ingredients:
1 small to medium spaghetti squash
1 – 6 oz can tomato paste
1 – 40 oz package of frozen meatballs, or the equivalent home-made
1 – bottle or can spaghetti sauce, your choice of flavor/style
4-8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
12 oz mozzarella, sliced
2 oz Parmesan cheese, grated
Garlic, basil, oregano, and other additional spices to taste

In the crock pot, place the spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, mushrooms and additional spices. Stir well and put the crock on medium heat.

 

Render the squash. Fold the stringy meat into the sauce, making sure that the squash is well coated.

Add a dusting of Parmesan on top of the squash mixture.

Place meatballs in crock, distributing evenly across the other ingredients.

Cover and cook on low for 2 hours.

 

Open the crock and arrange the slices of mozzarella across the top of the dish. Re-cover and cook on high for 2 more hours.

Serve with an additional dusting of Parmesan and a side of garlic bread.

 

–Ann Cathey

TexMex Spaghetti Squash

A friend saw a post I’d made on Facebook about playing with spaghetti squash recipes. He got excited and asked another friend to share the following recipe with me. I’ve done my best to recreate the dish from the notes I was given, and write it all up in a recipe format to share with readers.

Raymond’s TexMex Spaghetti Squash Bake

Ingredients:
1 medium spaghetti squash (2-3 lbs), rendered
1 lb ground beef or turkey
12 oz frozen chopped spinach
12 oz frozen cauliflower
1 medium onion, diced
Chili seasonings (chili powder, paprika, cumin, garlic, oregano to taste)
15 oz can of black beans, drained
8 oz can of Ro-tel
8 oz Neufchatel or cream cheese
2-4 oz shredded cheddar or cheddar jack

Split the squash into halves. Remove the seeds and seed membranes. Spray the open areas of the squash with a light coating of olive oil. Place face down on a plate and microwave in five minute increments until the whole squash is softened. Scrape the insides of the squash out into a bowl and reserve.

In a large skillet, add a dollop of olive oil and diced onion. Cook until onion begins to clarify. Add the meat to brown and allow to crumble as if for tacos. Drain the meat if needed.

At any time after this point, if the mixture becomes too voluminous, move it into an oven safe pot or dutch oven and continue.

Add the spinach and cauliflower. Sprinkle the spices into the mixture. Fold into the meat and onion mixture and allow to cook until veggies soften.

When the meat and veggies are browned to taste, add the drained beans and can of Ro-tel.

Slice up the cream cheese and fold it into the mixture. Continue to mix until all ingredients are well integrated.

If you are still in the skillet at this point, move the mixture into an oven safe pot or dutch oven.

Fold in the squash gently. Sprinkle a layer of grated cheese over the top of the mixture and place in preheated oven.

Bake at 375F for 30 minutes. Serve with a dollop of sour cream, salsa, hot sauce, additional shredded cheese, corn ships and/or tortillas, as desired.

Due to a lack of a conventional oven in my kitchen at the moment, I fell back on my trusty crock-pot to try this recipe out. It turned out to be a good way to go, with excellent results.

Crock-pot Variation

Set up your crock pot with either a liner or olive oil spray.

Diced onion.

 

 

Add diced onion and Ro-tel. Allow to cook on high for 2 hours or until onion begins to clarify.

Spinach, Ro-tel, and cauliflower added. Isn’t this colorful?

 

 

 

 

Add spinach, cauliflower, and spices. Stir gently. Continue to cook for 2 hours on high.

 

 

All the spices for a good chili.

 

Add browned and drained ground beef. Drain beans and add. Stir gently.

Allow to cook for 1 hour on high. Taste test and adjust spices as needed.

Add cream cheese.

 

Slice cream cheese and lay in on top of the current mixture to soften. Stir into pot. Add about a third of the grated cheese and stir.

 

 

Add spaghetti squash and fold gently into the mixture.

 

Smoothed mixture will look something like this.

 

Smooth out the top of the mixture. Spread remaining shredded cheese evenly over top. Allow this to continue to cook on medium for at least half an hour or until all the cheese is melted.

Cheese!

 

Finished cooking.

¡Sabroso!

–Ann Cathey

Rendering Spaghetti Squash

A golden hued spaghetti squash cooks up into long strings of delightfully crisp and slightly sweet “spaghetti”. It is a wonderful ingredient for a wide assortment of dishes, though some people find it a tough cookie when it comes to cooking.

As the name implies, the stringy meat can be used in place of traditional spaghetti with sauce, substituted for pasta in casseroles, tossed into stir fry, or just eaten with a little butter and garlic.

 

I’ve been shown a quick and fairly efficient way to render one of these thin skinned, tough to cut while raw, squashes.

 

 

 

Microwave Render

Remove the stem end of the squash first. This end should have a bump in the middle after it pops off.

 

 

Cut the squash into two equal parts. This can be a bit of a chore as the meat is hard in the raw state. If the squash is larger than 2 pounds, you may need to quarter it.

 

 

 

 

Once the squash is opened up, use a hard edged spoon to scrape the seeds and surrounding stringy material out.

Reserve the seeds for regrowing if you are into that. The stringy material is a slightly darker color than the meat, usually, so you can scrape until you hit the lighter, harder flesh.

Give the meat a light spritz or rub of olive oil. You may cook the squash in a conventional oven, or in a microwave. The microwave takes a bit less time.

 

 

If you plan to roast your squash in the oven, lay the halves face down on a foil lined pan, or spray the pan with olive oil. This will prevent sticking. Set the oven to 350F and let the squash cook for a half an hour or until soft.

For microwaving, spray a baking dish with olive oil and lay in the squash face down. You may have to repeat the process with each separate piece of squash depending on the size. Cook on high in five minute increments until the rind of the squash is soft when pressed with a finger. Be careful – it will be hot.

The squash may look a little wilted around the edges when you turn the halves over for inspection after cooking. Not to worry, this is normal.

 

Practice will teach you how long is long enough for your recipe and personal tastes when cooking most squash.

 

Turn once again to your trust hard edged spoon to scrape the meat out of the skin. Set the stringy meat aside in a bowl to reserve it until you are ready to add it to your recipe. It should scrape easily away from the skin.

Once empty, the skin should look something like this.

 

 

Now that you have the process, here’s a quick recipe to let you test your squash with.

Chicken with Spaghetti Squash Bake
Prep time: 30 minutes
Servings: 4-6

Ingredients:
1 med spaghetti squash (about 2 pounds)
1 lb chicken, diced
4-6 oz mushrooms, diced or sliced (Portobello is nice for this)
4 oz black olives, sliced
1 med bell pepper, diced, yellow or orange recommended
16 oz Alfredo sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
4-6 oz mozzarella, shredded
2 oz Provolone, sliced or shredded

Render spaghetti squash and microwave until done. Scoop meat out into a large bow and fold in Alfredo sauce. Cover and set aside.

While the squash is in the microwave, begin the chicken mixture. Add a little olive oil to a large skillet and saute chicken with spices. When the chicken is almost done, add mushrooms, bell pepper, and olives. Continue to cook until chicken is completely done.

Spray an 8×8 or 9×9 baking dish with olive oil to prevent sticking. Turn out the chicken mixture into the baking dish and spread evenly. Sprinkle about half of the mozzarella evenly over the top.

Turn the spaghetti squash and sauce mixture into the dish on top of the chicken and spread evenly. Top with the remaining mozzarella and Provolone cheeses.

Make sure the Provolone is on top as it is a dryer cheese and will melt more slowly than the mozzarella. It will also crust better if you prefer to cook until brown.

Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until heated through and all cheeses are melted.

Allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.

–Ann Cathey

Crock Pot Adventures – Butternut and Sausage

This week’s Crock-Pot Adventure is once again based on marked down finds during a grocery run. Selecting items seemingly at random to combine into a meal is always fun and often challenging to the adventurous cook.

Butternut Squash & Sausage sounds pretty simple, and likely something that would take a couple of hours and two or three separate pans to create. I prefer to use my crock-pot whenever possible to create one dish meals. It leaves less of a mess and fewer pots to scrub in the wake of the meal.

The squash, Pancetta, onion and mushrooms all came from selected markdowns discovered during the weekly grocery run. While you might find all of these things in one store, our weekly run starts at Aldi, them moves to WalMart, Kroger, and sometimes HEB. The stores are all along a one mile stretch of road here in Conroe, making it fairly simple to make all those stops. The dishes that come out of our kitchen have shown a remarkable upswing in variety and healthier ingredients since this shopping regimen began.

Prep Time: About an hour (includes veggie handling)
Cook Time: 4-6 hours on low
Servings: 6-8

INGREDIENTS:
Olive oil or canola cooking spray
1 butternut squash, seeded, peeled and diced
1/2 medium sweet onion, diced
4 oz Pancetta, diced
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 pkg mushrooms, crimini or button, sliced or quartered
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dry parsley
1 tsp garlic powder
18 oz sausage, cut to preference
Salt & pepper to taste

Set up your crock-pot and insert a liner if desired. Lightly spray sides and bottom with oil.

 

 

 

Arrange the squash, onion, Pancetta, diced garlic, and mushrooms in layers, spread to cover the bottom of the crock. Sprinkle dry spices evenly across the top of everything.

Lay in sausage in an even layer. I cut 2 links into quarters to arrange around the sides of the pot, then laid the remaining 2 links along the top middle, as shown below.

Seal up the crock and cook on low for 6-8 hours, depending on your pot’s heat levels.

 

Serving suggestions:
When serving, add a sprinkle of grated Cheddar on top of the veggies for an added burst of flavor.

 

Offer garlic toast or crescent rolls on the side. Biscuits are also good, split and covered in the veggies.

 

The juices from this dish are fairly clear and may be used to just stir the whole thing into a soup style serving.

 

 

 

Other suggestions:
Reserve the seeds when you open and core a squash like the butternut or acorn varieties. I do this and give the seeds to a friend who is very into gardening and raising vegetables. Simply pop the seeds into a zippy bag and refrigerate it until you can deliver it to your gardening buddy or plant it yourself.

Enjoy!

–Ann Cathey