A Feast For The Eyes and Your Tummy
Fall is the perfect time for making a tasty and gorgeous dish like oven-roasted butternut squash. This delicious vegetable is wonderful on its own. Still, when you stuff it with a savory filling of mild or hot Italian sausage, sweet onion, spinach, cranberries, and pecans, it becomes a thing of epic beauty and deliciousness.
Everything You Need To Know About Butternut Squash
Butternut squash has a bowling pin shape and grows on a vine. The wide portion is the blossom end, where the seeds are stored. The outer skin is yellowish tan, but inside, the flesh is orange in color. It has a sweet, nutty taste. As it ripens, the flesh darkens to a deeper shade of orange and becomes even sweeter.
The skin of butternut squash is notoriously tough, so you will need a sturdy cutting board and a sharp knife to cut it in half lengthwise. I cut a little slice off the rounded side to help it lay flat on the baking sheet.
It’s a good source of fiber, vitamins C and A, magnesium, and potassium. Butternut squash is a close cousin to pumpkins. One of the first things you notice is this squash’s tidy efficiency in storing the seeds, all in the little round belly. It’s quick and easy to scoop out the seeds, leaving you with loads of tasty, easily accessible meat!
Butternut squash contains a bit more vitamins A and C than pumpkin and twice as much iron, and it’s also a good source of magnesium, vitamin E, and potassium. Compared to pumpkin, it’s somewhat higher in calories and complex carbs, but it contains more than twice the amount of dietary fiber.
Most calories come from the carbs they contain, but they’re not just any old carbs. Winter squash carbs have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and cholesterol and insulin-regulating properties.
It’s all too gourd to be true, right? 😉
How To Make Oven-Roasted Butternut Squash
Once you have cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise, lay it belly up on a rimmed baking sheet. You can save clean-up time by putting a layer of foil or parchment paper under the squash. Brush the surface and the cavity liberally with olive oil and salt and pepper it lavishly, like this. Then, turn it over and roast it at 400 degrees, skin side up, for thirty to forty minutes while you prepare the filling.
Make The Savory Filling For Your Oven-Roasted Butternut Squash
Add the diced onion to a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet. Cook it on medium-high until the onion is soft, and get a bit of char on it to bring out the sweetness.
Next, add one pound of bulk Italian sausage, one tablespoon of Italian seasoning, and four minced garlic cloves. Cook it with the onion until the sausage is crumbled and has completely lost its pinkness. Next, add a six-ounce package of fresh spinach you have chopped coarsely.
Six ounces of spinach will look like a ton, but it wilts and cooks down amazingly fast; cook for about five minutes.
Finally, add the cranberries and pecans and mix it all up. The filling is fragrant, savory, and beautiful! Keep it warm while you get the squash ready.
Remove the squash from the oven and turn it face up. Use a spoon to scoop out more of the flesh, leaving a hollow center with about an inch all the way around. Save that yummy squash and enjoy it!
Now spoon the yummy filling into the hollow center of the oven-roasted butternut squash, heaping it slightly in the center! That’s it! You are ready to serve this beautiful dish as a side or a meal! This oven-roasted butternut squash stuffed with Italian sausage and all the other goodies will make a stunning presentation on your holiday buffet!
Butternut squash can be used in so many delicious ways! Here are some of our favorite butternut squash recipes! Instant Pot Butternut Squash Soup, Butternut Squash Pie, and Easy Butternut Squash Cake.
Oven-Roasted Butternut Squash With Italian Sausage
Butternut squash is oven-roasted and filled with a savory mixture of Italian sausage, sweet onion, spinach, cranberries, and pecans. This can be a main dish or a side dish.
Ingredients
- One large buttenut squash
- 3-4 Tbsp olive oil, divided between roasting squash and making the filling
- Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
- One pound hot or mild Italian bulk sausage
- One medium sweet onion, diced
- 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
- One 6-ounce package of fresh spinach, chopped coarsely
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- If desired, cover a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or foil to reduce cleanup.
- Wash and cut the squash in half and scrape out the contents of the seed pocket.
- Place squash flesh side up on the baking sheet and brush liberally with olive oil, then salt and pepper it generously.
- Turn the squash over so the skin side is up, and roast for about 30 to 40 minutes while you prepare the filling.
- In a large skillet, pour in some olive oil and cook the diced onion on medium-high until the onion is soft and a little charred.
- Add the Italian sausage, minced garlic, and Italian seasoning and cook over medium-high heat until the sausage is crumbled and has lost all its pinkness.
- Next, add the spinach. It will seem like a ton of spinach, but it willts down quickly. Cook for about five minutes.
- Now add the cranberries and pecans and mix everything well. Keep it warm.
- Remove the squash from the oven and let it cool a little bit, then use a spoon to hollow out the squash until there's about an inch of rim of squash around the edge.
- I would mash the squash a little and serve it alongside the stuffed squash!
- To serve, spoon the sausage filling into the cavity and heap it slightly. Garnish with a few more cranberries and chopped pecans if you like, and some fresh thyme or rosemary would be pretty, too.
- I had smaller squash, so I roasted two and kept one half for another recipe.
- I wrapped each half in foil and reheated it the next day in a 300-degree oven until it was warm throughout and it tasted great!
More tasty recipes from us:
Easy 1 Pan Classic American Goulash
