The Best Way To Cook Acorn Squash
Do you want to know the best way to cook acorn squash? Well stick around because I'm going to let you know.
Hi, I'm Jessie Gutsue and I'm a functional medicine dietitian with Oswald Digestive Clinic. Today we're going to talk about the best way to cook acorn squash. If you want more tips for gut healthy cooking, then check out the link here for the five tips for quicker gut healthy cooking.
Now, without further ado, let's talk about the best way to cook acorn squash, and I'll let you in on a secret. We're going to talk about two.
[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]
So why acorn squash?
This is like prime season for acorn squash. End of the year, early, early new year. So like fall winter time, and I feel like acorn squash really lends itself to the season. It's warm and cozy and dense, and it's just all the things, and I just love all the squashes.
So acorn squash is no exception. It has nine grams of fiber per cup. Isn't that nuts? So it's not only nutrient dense, it also has antioxidants like vitamin C, there's B vitamins, vitamin A in form of betacarotene because you can see it's bright yellow, orange skin, and lots of other phytochemicals and nutrients that can help with brain and vision, and of course getting more microbiome diversity. And who doesn't want that? So we are going to cook acorn squash two different ways and talk about some pros and cons of each.
But first,
How do you pick the best acorn squash?
Well, I have a couple right here, and they're both very nice looking. So you should pick squash with a heavy density, so it should be pretty dense for its size, similar to how you would pick most squash.
You also want to look for a nice smooth skin unblemished, and you want the skin to be pretty matte and green with little bits of orange, not too much orange, but enough so that you know that it's ripe but not over ripe, and you don't want something without any orange either.
So a little combination of both, and you can actually eat the skin. Now, this is true of most fruits and vegetables. I find that you get more fiber and a little bit more nutrition when you eat the skin. This is a total personal preference, and I get that there's typically, you aren't suggested to eat the skin, so there's a mental block in that, but you can totally eat the skin.
It gives you a little bit more crunch. So it depends on the use that you plan to have it with. So if you're roasting it, I think leaving the skin on is great. If you're mashing it, maybe that's not what you want to do, but who knows? You can try lots of different ways.
Two Ways to Cook Acorn Squash
So today a two ways that we're going to talk about cooking. Acorn squash is by roasting and steaming. And I will say most of the time, steaming is the gentlest method of cooking. And if you're experiencing any digestive symptoms and gas blow hearted digest, having poor bowel movements, it's pretty much always recommended that you choose a diet that's a little softer and more palatable that doesn't require a lot of work in the department so that your lining can heal and your digestion can get back on track with the eventual hope that you can diversify your diet.
Steaming
But steaming is a great way if you have issues like that or if you're just looking for another way to cook your squash. So pros and cons of both steaming and roasting, and we're going to talk about those now.
So steaming is, if you're not familiar, you just put a little bit of water in a pot and then this is a really old steam basket, but it works great because it expands to the size of the pot and you put this water just beneath that colander and then fill with squash.
With this method, your squash never touches water and never is in direct contact with heat, and therefore there are some more nutrients that are retained, and those things are like vitamin C and B vitamins.
And so with that, because you aren't in direct contact with water, you get more of those vitamins in addition to some minerals like potassium, they might be retained a little bit better because you're not in direct contact with water.
Roasting
Conversely, the roasting method has its advantages to because you roast with fat and typically with a good fat like an olive oil, if you do that and you have that bright yellow colored skin, well then it lends itself to maybe a better usage and a higher amount of vitamin A.
Let's get into cutting our squash and we'll talk about the additional benefits as we go. So here I have a couple squash. I'm going to set this one aside. Now I'm going to choose to roast this one, and I am just going to cut off the top here.
Now you're welcome to leave this on because it is pretty. I'm going to cut it off just for safety measures. I have a nice sharp knife here, and I'm just going to rock it alongside here and cut off the stem part. If you ever have a squash that's really hard to cut into, a lot of them are, then I recommend if you're able to create a flat surface so that you can safely put the squash down, flat surface down, and then cut it that way.
So because I am going to chop this up into chunks, I'm first going to cut it in the center because it does have seeds, and we're going to scoop those seeds out, and we're actually going to reserve these because I will make something with these acorn seeds. So don't just pitch. So we'll scoop these seeds out and you could roast them just like this, just like you would say, like a spaghetti squash. You could leave them in and roast them in the oven that way. And that of course will take a little bit longer because they're bigger.
So it may take 30 or 40 minutes versus 15 or 20, but you could absolutely do this, and then you could end up stuffing it and making it look really pretty. So for the purpose of this, I'm going to again, flat side down and I'll cut it through.
Now, roasting, when you roast your squash, what happens is this mired reaction, and this is the best way I can describe the mired reaction is take a piece of bread and eat it and then eat a piece of toast. And that is a great example of the mired reaction. So it's that browning that happens when sugars and proteins are heated up, and that rounding is great for creating lots of flavor, but it does have its disadvantages too.
So the browning will help intensify the flavor. It totally creates a, in my opinion, more palatable food. Almost always. I love roasted veggies, but again, like we said, you do lose some of those nutrients a little bit. You also gain some in terms of the vitamin A. Okay, so I have half this chopped up and I am going to put this in a bowl and we will toss it with some oil, but let's talk about some of those other pros and cons of cooking with steaming versus roasting.
So I'm going to put just a little bit of olive oil in here.
So another thing, another disadvantage with roasting is that that mired reaction happens in the oven. So a mired reaction is simply when proteins and sugars are combined with heat, and you get that beautiful browning, super flavorful. I'll give you an example of it really quick. So this is an example of the mired reaction. You see the beautiful brown pieces really caramelized, really beautiful.
The disadvantage of the mired reaction in this case is that it may break down the starches a little bit further, and that does result or could result in a higher blood sugar spike. Now, of course, we rarely eat acorn squash on its own. If you pair it with a good protein and some good fats, then perhaps you won't even see this spike and it will be negligible. But something to keep in mind for sure. But we're just going to toss this oil in.
And then I'm going to add a little bit of sage. Now, you're welcome to do a savory like this and use sage or parsley. You can use thyme, oregano. I mean, sky's the limit here when it comes to what spices you want to use. But I always do recommend that you combine these with a little bit of fat because it'll help to pull out those fat soluble nutrients that are found in those herbs. And gosh, there's a lot of nutrient uniqueness that comes from herbs and spices like that.
I mean, these little sprigs are so nutrient dense. This sage has such a high amount of nutrition that comes with it. There are various benefits to different herbs you add. So I encourage you to play around. There are benefits to rosemary that it may have antimicrobial benefits or to sage or to ginger that has digestive benefits, cinnamon that has blood sugar benefits.
So you can make it savory or sweet depending on the application. But always remember that these herbs and spices don't just kick up the nutrition, but they also help to enhance the flavor and the aromas, which makes your whole experience better. So I'm going to toss these onto my roasting pan, and they'll go into a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes at this size, and they'll become fork tender.
You don't want 'em to disintegrate, so you want 'em to just be fork tender and a little bit soft. If they're bigger, if we say do the whole half chunk, it might be 30 or 40 minutes. And then you can also do it in half moon shapes, and that'll be a little bit longer or 20, 25 minutes around that time. So we'll toss these in.
Now, if I were going to steam these, I simply do the same thing. So I will just chop these up. Now, in this case, you can skin them or you don't have to, but we can shop 'em up and put 'em in the steamer basket. And this will only take five or 10 minutes depending on the size that you cut them in.
So as you can see, there are
Pros and cons to steaming and roasting,
And it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. My best advice is diversity. I always think that variety in food and not just food books, cooking methods really is a great way to make sure that you're getting different nutrients.
So as you can see, steaming helps to preserve things like vitamin C, b vitamins, some of your minerals like potassium, but you might not get the full benefit of some of the phenolics, those phytochemicals like lutein and betacarotene and xanthin.
So there's pros and cons. Of course, flavors are wildly different from steaming. You get that soft, just the nice soft texture. It's really Mashable. You can combine it with a lot of different flavors. It's pretty basic on its own. But yeah, good because it's acorn squash. And conversely, roasting has a flavor all of its own.
That browning effect really helps and it's beautiful. So I don't know wild thought, but you could just combine 'em both do a little bit of steaming, a little bit of roasting, combine 'em in a dish, and you've got something beautiful. So we're going to throw this over the stove for a couple minutes as well.
And here is our roasted acorn squash. Look at that. It's so beautiful. It's perfectly fork tender. Now, if you wanted, you could totally peel the skin off before you cooked it, but I think the skin on is good. Oh my gosh, that's good. That's so good. Now the skin on obviously gives you some better color.
So if you were making it for a salad dish, then skin on might be a great way to preserve some of that texture a little bit better. And if you wanted to do more mashed, well then steam 'em and skin 'em, and it's a great way to still preserve some nutrition, but also get some different benefits.
So in conclusion,
Both steaming and roasting are great ways to cook acorn squash. I just want you to eat acorn squash so you get, again, let's recap nine grams of fiber. You get different phytochemicals like lutein and the antioxidants, your vitamin Cs and vitamin A, so they're great in nutrition, nine grams of fiber.
So that really feeds your gut microbiome and there's lots of benefits to acorn squash.
I hope you enjoy it.
So if you're interested in a 30 minute cooking demo, or if you're just curious of our available titles that we've done in the past, well then
Email us at cookingdemos@oswalddigestiveclinic.com.
And until we see you next time, thanks.
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