When the pilgrims arrived in this country they were grateful to find native winter
squash. This vegetable was perfect for them
because it provided delicious food for them, but it also stored very well through
the long, cold winters. Squash can be unwieldy, have different
sizes, sometimes it's hard to work with. They have a tough outer skin, they have a
very heavy bright yellow to orange flesh that is really sweet once it's cooked, and
they also have edible seeds, making them a great food.
Now winter squash has been around for a long time.
We can show through history that it was eaten as early as 5500 BC in Mexico.
Squash grows on vines and it's picked winter squash is picked when it's mature
at about 3 months after its been growing. It's different than its cousin the summer
squash which has a lot of moisture in it. Now these vegetables are very best picked
in the fall after the cold weather has set in.
I want to show you some of the varieties, there's a plethora of varieties of squash
available. This particular one is the butternut
squash and you'll notice that it's a very orange flesh with a really light tan
colored skin. This skin is actually easier to work with
than some. But you'll notice the seeds are just at
the very end of this particular squash. Very sweet, flavorful squash.
The acorn squash is shaped like an acorn. And it ranges in color from the dark green
to the orange to a really splashy mix of the two with a lighter orange colored
flesh in this particular squash. Then we have the giant banana squash and
you'll notice its got more of a yellow flesh with a pink-ish exterior and this
particular squash is often what you find in the grocery store cut into slabs and
covered with plastic because it's easy to sell in slabs.
It's a giant squash and most people don't purchase it that way because it's a little
hard to work with, but they cut it up and sell it in sections.
We also have a couple of other squashes including the buttercup squash and this is
a nice little sized squash with a brilliant orange interior with a little
bit different texture. This particular squash is very sweet
and there are a couple of varieties. Anther variety of this squash is the
kabocha squash and it is a much larger squash with again the very bright orange
center that's particularly sweet. Another squash that's pretty easy to work
with is the small delicata and these range from orange to yellow to white, oftentimes
they'll have green stripes as well. A very small squash, easier to work with
for individual, to eat individually. We also have the beautiful turks turban
squash, as you can see it's just a beautiful squash, looks like it has it's
a hat. A very fancy-looking squash that has a
lighter green, I mean a lighter orange interior.
This particular one is a little more mild, isn't quite as sweet and tasty as some,
but they're all delicious. We also have a small sweet dumpling squash
here and there are a couple of different ones.
You'll see that it's just a nice small portion individually for people to eat as
well. And then lastly a very different squash
than the others is the spaghetti squash. And it looks about the same with a light
yellow interior, but once you cook this the fibers become almost stringy like
spaghetti and I'm going to show you what to do with some of that.
Now what do you need to know when you go to purchase squash?
Well, you want to make sure that it has a very hard exterior, that it's very, very
firm. It doesn't matter if its got some rough
areas this is where its been laying on the soil and that's not a problem at all,
unless it's soft and there's some mold growing on that.
So this is a really great way to determine how to purchase the squash.
Now when you think about squash and this very hard exterior, it gives you an
indication that it can store for a long time and I mentioned that's why the
pilgrims really liked it. So when you buy squash, which you should
be buying now, it's in season, this is the time of year to get the winter squash.
When you buy it you can store it for a long period of time.
If you store it in a cool place, like in a cellar, at about 60 degrees, it will
last for many, many months. Once you cut the squash open, it's only
going to, well you need to refrigerate it. And it will keep in your refrigerator for
3 or 4 days. After that, you're going to want to make
sure you cook it up. How do you do that when you're managing
a giant squash? Well you want to cut that up and freeze it
or preserve it in some other way. So, squash, the plethora, the variety is
beautiful and they're all delicious as Tammy's going to show you.
It might seem pretty overwhelming to try to turn one of these hubbard squashes
into dinner, but it's really not that hard and as Janet mentioned there are lots of
different sizes and shapes of squash, but they're also a big variety of how easy
they are to cut into. For example, these delicata squashes it's
real easy to just cut them in half just as long as you have a real sharp knife.
Okay, and then the butternut squash works pretty well to just peel with a vegetable
peeler and they have a pretty hard outside, but it does peel off.
Now I wouldn't recommend this method with the squash that's more ridged on the
outside like some of these others. That's just too hard to do that.
And so the other thing that you can do is if you're trying to break this one apart,
you really need a sharp knife and it can actually be kind of dangerous to try to
cut them up and so sometimes that takes a little bit of creativity.
Some of these you can microwave just a little bit or bake for a little while
until the outside starts to get a little bit softened, cool them off a little bit
and then cut them up. Or you can use a saw if you know someone
who has a sharp saw that will work too, but you can also use a little bit more
creativity than that and you can drop them and that works pretty well too.
Once you've got the squash cut into manageable pieces, a size that will fit
into your oven or even into your microwave, there are a couple of different
ways you can cook them and the first would be you could microwave it.
That's probably my least favorite way to do it, but it is a quick way to cook
squash. I like to bake it in the oven because it
just gives a little bit more of a roasted flavor and two ways to do that:
First of all, preheat your oven to about 400 degrees and then the first way is you
can just sprinkle a little bit of olive oil on and I'm going to show you a
different way, but you could just sprinkle that on and open bake that, open roast
it without a cover on and that will give you some of the caramelized parts on the
squash that taste really good. But I like to just add about maybe a half
cup of water to the pan and then cover it with foil so that keeps the moisture in.
And then bake it for, probably this size would take about maybe an hour and
15 minutes. if you were baking a squash about this
size it maybe would take 30 minutes to 45 minutes at 400 degrees.
Once you have all this squash cooked there are lots of different ways that you can
serve it. An easy way is just to cut it into wedges
and just put it on platters so that people can just take one serving at a time.
This has got a little bit of parsley on, you can drizzle it with a little olive oil
or butter, this has a little bit of sage on it.
This one, I've cubed up and added sprinkled it with cinnamon and a little
bit of sugar, put a little butter on that. Another really easy way to do it, to cook
squash, is just scoop it out of the shell, this is butternut squash, and then just
mash it up a little bit and so it's real important to have it well cooked so it's
soft and mashes easily. And then I just like to add some butter
and some salt and pepper. If you want to thin it down a little bit
when you mash it like this, you can add a little bit of milk or cream or if you're
wanting to put some of the sweeter spices like cinnamon or nutmeg or even apple
pie seasoning, something like that, you could thin it down with a little bit
of orange juice or apple juice to just give it a little bit of a fruity flavor.
This is one of my favorites to just add some parmesan cheese into it.
That makes a really nice side dish.
I'm going to show you a really simple way
to use spaghetti squash, and it's delicious!
You just start by putting some mushrooms in a bowl, sliced mushrooms, about 2 cups,
about 2 tablespoons of butter or olive oil whichever you choose, and about a quarter
cup of chopped onions and I'm just going to put that in the microwave for about
for 5 minutes and I'm going to stir that about half way through.
Once the mushrooms are tender, they're ready to be added to this recipe.
And again you can either cook these in the microwave or saute them if you want, but
today I'm just into doing something easy. Okay, what you're going to do is you're
going to take your spaghetti squash that has already been cooked like any other
squash until it's tender, 400 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour and you'll
notice spaghetti squash has a different texture.
It actually looks like spaghetti, hence the name.
All you do is simply scoop the squash out of the shells, it comes out really easy if
its been cooked long enough. And I like to use an entire squash for
this. The squashes get a little bit fragile and
will crack a little bit, but they're still pretty easy to come out of there, you can
see it comes out almost clean. So here you have your spaghetti squash,
you add your mushroom mixture, and if you don't like mushrooms, just try onion,
try garlic, something that - any other vegetables that you may like.
I like to add a little bit of parsley, about 2 tablespoons.
And then you can either add chives or if you don't have chives, green onions work
really well here. And then about a quarter cup of
parmesan cheese. Then I like to add some salt and pepper.
Simply stir this up, mix it up, and you have a very delicious dish.
Another use of spaghetti squash is to turn it into your dinner.
I just simply take the spaghetti fibers from the squash, add a heaping pile to my
plate, kind of break that up a little bit. And then I like to add a little bit of
marinara sauce to that. Any kind works well, whatever flavor you
like, add some nice hot marinara sauce. Maybe put a little bit of parmesan cheese
on that, serve it with a salad and some crusty bread, and you have dinner.
If you have any leftover squash, you can take your leftover squash, here I have
some spaghetti squash, and you can simply, again, remove all the squash, and then you
can store it in bags - put it in Ziploc bags - and put it in the freezer.
This works really well for if you cook a whole big hubbard squash for example,
you're going to have a lot of leftover squash.
So put it in the freezer, smash the bags down, and then put this in the fridge in
the morning before you go to school or to work and when you come home it's thawed
and it's ready to make a beautiful meal from.