hey guys it's Brian with retired at 40 I hope you're all happy and healthy and
today we are going out with the old and in with the new because I'm gonna freeze
dry some spaghetti squash that came out of the garden last year and I've got
some left and before the new stuff comes in so I want to see if I can freeze dry
it I've never freeze dried spaghetti squash or squash in general and today
we're gonna find out how it fares so there's a couple ways to cook squash I'm
gonna do some in the oven I'm gonna do some in the instant pot which happens
real fast and then I think I'm gonna keep one actually raw in the freeze
dryer just to see if we can reconstitute it raw regardless of how you're doing it
you have to cut the squash in half and the best way I think is to cut it the
long way and if you're putting it in the oven you're gonna want to take the top
off and then take a gigantic knife and just cut it down that way you're gonna
want a really sharp knife and that helps a bunch once we're all cut in half
you're gonna want to take all of this go out of here and if you want to replant
obviously you're gonna save these seeds and one thing I love about squash is you
plant one seed and you have ten squash here's a picture of what five plants got
us last year when you're scraping this out make sure
you don't get too much because you can actually start scraping away a lot of
the edible stuff so just get the basic seeds and strings out of there before I
get too far along here I'm gonna set my oven on 400 and let that warm up
I saved the seats from this year from this last year's spaghetti squash
because it ended up being really sweet and a lot of times spaghetti squash is
kind of bland so I saved a bunch of them just so we can keep growing that variety
I'm not sure if you can save the seeds and bake them like you do pumpkin seeds
if anyone's ever tried that let me know in the comments section and that's in
the instant pot it's really quick and one cup of water to your instant pot and
then I can you can do several squash at a time if it's a if they're small but
I'm gonna I'm gonna actually just do one in here if you have things to set them
put your lid on make sure it's sealed and then we're gonna go to seven minutes
of pressure cook and by the time it actually builds up pressure you're
really it's they're done in about 15 minutes and then for the ones that go in
the oven you're just gonna take some olive oil and you want to brush about a
teaspoon or a tablespoon of olive oil all over the inside and around the edges
and then you're gonna place them face down we're gonna pop these in the oven
at 400 from 40 minutes to an hour and I'm gonna check back on them in 40
minutes you want the edges to be nice and golden brown so I do tend to like
the the spaghetti squash that's been cooked in the oven a lot better because
it cooks in that oil and it adds a lot of flavor to it and you get a little bit
of that crispiness to let the instant pot makes it so fast that it's hard not
to do it that way but I'm hoping with the freeze drying
thing that we can just rehydrate it really quickly and it won't matter which
way you do it I think for the the uncooked spaghetti squash I think just
so it'll fit into the trays I'm gonna cut it down lengthwise like this and
that should do it I think so we'll have two spaghetti squash and then when we
when we rehydrate we'll have to do one of the two ways to cook it our instant
pot went a little over but while we're waiting for that to in
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alright so now these are done they should just pretty much fall apart I
like to take a hot like an oven glove like this and you just grab them and you
can just peel them and they should just look like spaghetti
the nice thing about squash is you can use absolutely all of the squash you can
get all the way down to the rind spaghetti squash is not just a clever
name I tried out some new audio equipment for this video and at this
point in the video it was not cooperating with me so I'm just gonna
talk over myself that didn't freeze the squash beforehand in the deep freezer so
I just selected not frozen so the machine can cool down first that's how
you want them right there a little bit of crisp and a little bit of brown on
there and you should be able to poke it with your finger and it should be nice
and soft so I think I'm gonna actually take a paper towel and try and get a
little bit of this extra oil off of this all right there's our oven squash and go
pop this in the freezer are with the other squash all right I'm gonna label
our oven baked with a little sticker here the second tray has the raw squash
that's diced and then the the squash that was in the instant pot
I think I'm just going to do some apples on the bottom
see you tomorrow all right we just finished up it looks like it was 43
hours and 30 minutes
so here's our oven-baked so here's our oven-baked and then here is our instant
pot here's our whole squash and then it is super light it feels like styrofoam
almost I think the most difficult part of reconstituting these is going to be
keeping them in the strands and keeping them from not going back into a powder I
just realized that I forgot to weigh this before I freeze-dried it which I
meant to do but I did not do I think that would be helpful in reconstituting
something like this because it will keep it from getting soggy and over
reconstituted if that's a word even I think I'm gonna try and reconstitute
these just put some water on some of the the oven and the instant pot versions
and then I'm going to put this whole ones back in the instant pot because I
think that's the best way so I've put a cup of water back in here just like we
did when we originally cooked them I think I'm gonna put some of the loose
instant pot squash back in there just because the instant pot if you've never
used it to reconstitute is really easy and it's very gentle because it uses
steam and pressure as opposed to just boiling and it's a lot more gentle on
whatever you're cooking so if it's something that's fragile like this that
you don't want it to lose its shape the instant pot is usually the way to go so
we only put three minutes back on the instant pot because I don't think it'll
take as much time as it did when we originally cooked it
so I've got our oven-baked here and I've got our instant pot here and I've got
some really hot water that's been in the microwave about three minutes so I'm
just gonna go very light on this and I'm hoping that this doesn't just get gooey
it's just gonna be really hard to keep that that noodle texture to it so I had
a feeling that a feeling just pouring water over it was not really gonna work
that well and I figured it would kind of make it a little bit gooey which it is
it the the noodles it just kind of seems they're they're a
little bit more thin and they want to stick together a lot more than if you
just pulled it out of the out of the oven or right out of the instant pot so
I think the the instant pot hopefully is gonna be our saving grace here and the
oven baked I was a little unsure of whether it would even freeze dry just
because it had that that oil in it but it definitely keeps that the oven baked
has a lot better flavor by itself squash usually is not real flavorful but with
the oil and the baked unfortunately it just got kind of gooey
while we're waiting this last minute for the instant pot what can you do to kind
of spice up the flavor of spaghetti squash we actually make spaghetti so you
can do meatballs with some marinara sauce and that actually is pretty tasty
there's also quite a few bakes that you can do with spaghetti squash but really
this the benefits of spaghetti squash are that it grows extremely well in a
garden it's easy to grow you can grow lots of it there's lots of nutrients
it's full of fiber and good vitamins and ideally if this turns out well it's good
for freeze drying - all right here we go
well at five minutes it's not looking promising
this is really strange it's got a real weird texture to it
it's very spongy the part that's actually dipped into the water
is is coming back okay but the pressure-cook itself is not really doing
it and then as for the the whole squash I don't think it's gonna work it's very
it's very stringy let's throw it in for a little bit longer and see what happens
I'm actually gonna take a rack the rack out and see if that helps okay so I
added five more minutes on let's see if anything changed so the whole squash is
definitely a bust it looks like it pretty much just burnt it and same
result as with the water except for even worse when it was in the water it's just
a complete mush now so if you've had successes or failures with squash
spaghetti squash or any kind of squash let me know in the comments section and
also don't forget to join the Facebook page and let us know on the Facebook
page because it helps the whole community I think the best chance you
have of using the spaghetti squash is you could possibly try and rehydrate it
with marinara you can also powder it and just use it
for its nutrients and vitamins you could put them in smoothies or in some kind of
other bakes or soups or stews all and although not a great success today but
we all learned something so in the meantime this is retired at 40 remember
to live life simple and we'll catch you next week