Yesterday I took on another vegetable that I'd never handled before. Inspired by my dealings with the spaghetti squash, I decided to take on it's cousin the butternut squash. By the way, who knew that there were so many varieties of squash out there!
Here's Mr. Butternut sliced in half.
I got a little scoop-crazy and flung butternut squash guts all over my kitchen floor. Oops.
After the squash was all gutted out I decided to cut off the neck (that sounds gross) and turned in into Hungry Girl's Bake-tastic Butternut Squash Fries. The body (is that the correct wording?) would become Butternut Squash puree for Liam.
Here's the body in the oven (I promise we're talking about a vegetable here and not a person!). I baked it at 425 for about 50 minutes in a pan of water.
These are the fries chilling on a paper towel shedding excess moisture before going into the oven.
I love how the squash skin turned a pretty brownish nutty color during it's stay in the oven. Is that why they call it a butternut?
These fries do look quite Bake-tastic, right?
We served the fries with burgers for lunch. I really enjoyed them. They were slightly sweet and had just enough of a "french fry feel" to be a great companion for a burger. I would consider them the perfect zero-point substitute for sweet potato fries. They were not as crispy as I would have liked, but I may be able to remedy that with a little research. Any ideas?
Liam got his butternut squash sans burger, but, trust me, he's didn't complain. He loves to munch on whatever comes his way these days!
So, anyone have a must-try butternut squash recipe?? I'm ready to do more experimenting before the season ends!
