A Life Unprocessed: How To Make Spaghetti Squash

I love spaghetti squash. When you make this meal, it's lovely knowing basically every part of your dinner is a vegetable (OK, maybe squash and tomatoes are botanically fruits, but still!) This is an incredibly easy, grain free meal, totally healthy, and naturally gluten free.

How To Make It:

To start, bake your squash. Do this well before dinner time, so it has time to bake and cool. You could even bake it the day before your meal if that works better for your schedule.

Spaghetti squash come in different sizes, so sometimes I use two and sometimes I only need one for a big meal. I always bake my winter squash whole; click here to read about how to bake whole pumpkins for puree. Stick the uncut spaghetti squash in the center of your oven, and bake at 350 until fully cooked. I like to put a pan on the rack below the squash, in case they sizzle any liquids out while baking. Cooking time will vary depending on the size of your squash, but I always bake mine until the top browns, and then I roll them over and continue baking until the other side is brown. From experience, it's definitely better to have a soft, overcooked spaghetti squash, than a firm, undercooked one.

Once it's fully cooked, you can speed cooling by slicing it down the middle. So much easier to slice a cooked squash than a nasty hard one.

Then, fish out the seeds from the center with a spoon. It will be a little bit goopy. Be careful to get just the section with seeds, and not too much of the actual "noodles".

The removed pulp is very nutritious for dogs or chickens, and can be mixed in with their foods. Your cat might even like it. Otherwise, it makes for excellent compost!

On to the Meal!

While the squash cools, prepare you sauce. You can use a jar of your favorite marinara sauce, your mom's secret recipe, or whatever sauce you typically enjoy on spaghetti.

I use organic hamburger and loads of veggies in my homemade sauce. I'll post the basic recipe in a future article.

Let the sauce simmer, covered, while you get the noodles ready. Using a large spoon, scoop the soft squash away from the edges of the hard shell. With a well-cooked spaghetti squash, this is particularly easy. Some recipes might say "use a fork to fluff the noodles". Do this if you want your noodles nicely separated. I don't bother, just mixing them up a bit with the spoon is enough.

It's up to you if you want to serve your noodles separate from the sauce, or mixed together. With spaghetti squash, I like to just add them right to the sauce. Simply use your spoon to empty the noodles from the shell, to mix with your sauce or on their own in a serving dish.

Stir to achieve perfection, and it's ready to serve! If you'd like, you can use the empty squash shells as serving bowls.

OK, yes. It could be prettier. But trust me it's delicious!

Serve with parmesean, or try it with sesame salt; click here for the recipe.

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