Spaghetti Squash is not, contrary to popular opinion, a racquet sport played in a four-walled court with a small rubber ball and a bowl of pasta.
IT IS, however, a delicious winter vegetable, also known as Squaghetti. This oblong squash tends to be fairly large and is usually yellow. Within it is a firm flesh and seeds, similar to that of a pumpkin. Where a Spaghetti Squash suddenly becomes a little extra interesting is in what happens to the flesh, when it is cooked. It becomes ... Pasketti!
Yep, this interesting vegetable separates into easy strands of pasta-like goodness, when steamed, roasted, baked, nuked, etc. It's a fantastic low-carb, totally "real foods" and paleo style pasta substitute. It's a twinge on the sweet side, with a texture similar to a lightly grainy al dente pasta with a twinge of "crunch". It's difficult to describe, but I find it to be absolutely delicious!
One of my favorite things to do is roast it, then sauté the strands with a little bit of garlic, butter, salt and pepper. That's it!
For the most part, use it in any fashion in which you'd use a pasta noodle, which includes side dishes, main courses and even Asian applications and stir fries.
Photo Note: The third photo is taken with
Marinara Sauce and
Parmesan-Mayo Baked Chicken Butterfly
Nutrition Note: I had a heck of a time finding accurate and trustworthy nutrition for this recipe. It is unclear to me what the USDA is using in their analysis. A standard spaghetti squash weighs between 4 and 6 lbs. and would make about 6 cups worth of spaghetti squash, after the rind, seeds and some water are removed during the cooking process. The USDA doesn't bother listing the fiber content of a raw spaghetti squash, but states it's got 7 grams of carbs per 100 grams
(about 4 ounces). The USDA DOES have 10 carbs per cup of cooked spaghetti squash, with 2 grams of fiber, resulting in 8 grams of "net" carbs per 1-cup serving. This isn't super low, but it's reasonable (and tasty!). The challenge is that my recipes are based off of gram weights to do their calculations. As a result, I need to set the value of the spaghetti squash to 930 grams
(about 2 lbs.). This isn't an accurate number, but is the only way to get the recipe's math to add up to the USDA's numbers. WHEE!!