Healthy Spaghetti Squash Recipe

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Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we are making a spaghetti squash dish with some lemon caper sauce.

So I’m sure some of you have heard of spaghetti squash, some of you maybe haven’t and I always have trouble because of the grocery store I shopped at they don’t label the different squash so I never know which kind is which so this is a spaghetti squash, yellow when you cut it open there’s gonna be seeds in the middle just like normal squash.

But you’ll notice that the flesh starts to come apart in strands which kinda look like spaghetti hence the name spaghetti squash. So there’s a bunch of different ways that you can cook this but what I’m gonna do tonight is roast this in the oven and we’ll do that the same way we roast a normal squash.

So the first thing you wanna do is poke some holes in the squash flesh so that the heat will enter into the squash and help the flesh cook. Most squash are gonna cook up really nice and soft and kind of creamy.

Spaghetti squash is a little bit different because it comes apart in this spaghetti like strands. And it doesn’t get fully soft. It’s going to stay kind of solid but the strands are gonna break apart.

So I’ve turned my oven to about 350F and then I will get some oil just a little bit in each of the squash halves and I’m gonna rub this around with my hands. Now the reason we’re doing this is to protect the squash from drying out in the oven.

So you really don’t need very much oil and you don’t have to worry about this really adding fat to your meal because it’s really tiny amount in here. Ok? So get it all over the skin on the outside and on the inside and then we’ll take some salt.

Now the purpose of salt is to help the squash cook to draw the moisture out and to help it soften up but if we add the salt before the oil the flavor is gonna come out of the squash so we put the oil on first to protect the flavor and the moisture and then the salt to help it cook. So there we go, that’s gonna go in a baking dish in the oven at 350F for about half an hour and while that cooks im gonna get started on the sauce.

While my spaghetti squash is in the oven, I’m gonna get this sauce together because we’re gonna be using raw garlic which I have minced right here and raw garlic is really fantastic to eat every so often. Cook and raw both provide some benefits and the best thing is to get a balance of the two like I always say balance and variety key to health.

But raw garlic is pretty potent if you have never have it before, lot of people can’t handle it, if you are one of those I would suggest roasting the garlic in the oven with the squash before you put it in here otherwise if you get this sauce started now the garlic is gonna have some time to marinate with the other ingredients and kind of soften up a little bit.

So what I’ve started with are some capers in the bowl right here then I have some parsley which I’m gonna chop up and I really like parsley so I’ve got a lot here but use as much as you like.

I’ve got a lemon that I’m going to zest and then juice and zest is where you just take the outside of the peel off with this tool called a zester. Grater also works but zesters are quite cheap and very easy to use.

That’s just my oven done preheating. I’ve put the squash in before I was done pre heating because the squash isn’t really mine. Ok so once you zest your lemon you’re gonna chop it in half, juice it, it’s gonna be lovely.

I’ve got some sun dried tomatoes which I buy the kind that are just dry and then I soak them in water to soften them up a little bit. I’m gonna chop those up and toss them in and I’ve got some green onion that I’m going to chopped just thinly sliced and put in here as well.

If you’re looking for amounts what I normally do with this kind of sauce is I’m looking how much lemon juice in my bowl now having squeeze it out of the lemon I’m gonna add the same amount of olive oil as I have lemon juice.

You don’t need any more than that and you probably need less if you wanted to but you do need some oil and then you just gonna need to whisk this baby up. Sorry my whisk was in the drawer.

So get that whisk together and then you’re gonna throw in the garlic, the parsley, the green onions and the sun dried tomatoes and then we’ll add salt at the very end.

So I’ve got all my ingredients in the bowl here you can see I have a ton of parsley. I love parsley and sometimes it likes to escape the bowl but I always get it back. Now anyway parsley is one of those foods that is just so healthy at so many levels. Most of the green vegetables have just a ton of nutrients in them and parsley is definitely one of those.

Now the amount of liquid in here is very little, the reason is that I don’t really need a lot of sauce in this spaghetti squash what I basically want to do is just bring some flavor in and have it be a little bit wet so that it can coat that squash.

Again you can definitely use less parsley that I’m using here and you can use different herbs if you like or any kind of greens so arugula would be great, parsley bring in some kind of spiciness so that’s why I mentioned arugula, it’s also kind of spicy.

Mizuna might be nice depending on what you like, depending on what’s available in your area so just let that sit while the squash finish its baking and the flavors will begin to merge. Oh! Speaking of I forgot to add the salt, we’re just gonna add some salt there and that’s gonna be what will bring the flavors together. Remember the purpose of salt not to make things taste salty, it’s to bring the flavors together especially important with that garlic in there.

So my squash been in the oven for about half an hour since its finish preheating and I’m gonna take it out because it’s smelling pretty done and we’ll take a look here. Its smell almost buttery, it’s kinda nice.

So if I poke this, it’s not gonna be soft like a regular squash what you might be use to but when I poke it with a fork, if I take the fork back and forth like so I can see that the strands are separating and some of the bits of the squash are getting really soft.

So that’s look pretty done, I’m gonna turn the oven off and now comes the fun part, trying to get the squash out of the skin. So what I will do is transfer this, if I can pick it up over to my cutting board.

And what you need to do here is take your fork and start separating the squash from the skin and it’s never the most fun but it’s worth it coz squash is great and it’s not as hard as you might think. So if you see when I separate it with the fork it comes out in these beautiful strands.

I find the easiest way to get at this squash is to put your fork in right by the skin and then tilt it forward and its gonna come out then you can see all these beautiful strands here.

A lot of people have started replacing spaghetti with spaghetti squash I think there’s still some value in getting some whole grain pasta. It is process but grains do have a really good place in your diet but I think it’s also really nice to get a variety.

So every so often I have some spaghetti squash its great especially in the winter squash has a lot of vitamin A which helps your immune system through the winter and they also help warm you up because they need to be cooked for a fairly long time in the oven and that helps warm up your body.

Oh yeah! All of the good stuff! And so that’s been sitting while the squash was cooking. The flavor had have time to really come together and there’s just a little bit of liquid to help bring it together and then I’m just gonna toss this and we’ll be ready to eat a delicious lemon capers spaghetti squash.

There we go! Ready to serve a delicious lemon caper spaghetti squash! Your gonna get some excellent nutrition in that squash and some amazing flavor coming together with parsley, lemon, some tang and then some saltiness from the capers and sun dried tomatoes. Enjoy your dinner.