Roasted Butternut Squash

2025-02-04 cook recipe vegetarian

Ingredients

• 1 Butternut squash
• Olive oil to lightly coat
• large pinch salt
• pepper to taste

Optional Ingredients

• large pinch Gochujaru
• pinch cinnamon
• zest & juice of 1 lemon
• pinch paprika (your choice of sweet, hot, or smoked)

Steps

• Preheat the oven to 450°F.
• Peel the squash, cut off top/handle and bottom/root.
• Slice the remaining top section into about 1/2" rounds
• Once you hit the bottom section where the pulp/seeds are, remove them, and then dice this section into about 1/2" cubes
• line a sheet pan with parchment (mostly for helping cleanup)
• place squash on sheet pan, arranging the cubes in the middle and surrounding them with the rounds
• drizzle oil over the squash
• add the large pinch of salt
• grind pepper over the squash
• for any of the optional ingredients, choose one or two and add them on top. (Lemon juice/zest go on at the end, not here)
• thouroughly mix/coat the squash with the oil, salt, pepper, and additional ingredients on both sides
• bake for about 15 minutes
• flip rounds and flip/mix cubes as best you can
• bake for another 15 minutes
• remove from oven, and if you're adding lemon juice/zest, now's the time to add it to the squash.

The rounds are nicely versatile, either making a patty that fits well into an english muffin, a nice side, or can be cut into cubes for a salad. The cubes themselves I normally refrigerate and add to salads over the next couple of days. Adding them to rice or quinoa is also nice.