It’s time here on The GFCF Lady for another episode of “Tricking Your Children Into Eating Their Vegetables.” Today’s super secret spy vegetable is: the spaghetti squash!
I had been pondering this thing for some time, wondering if it could really be as cool as people said it was. I was finally pushed into action when my cousin Stacey revealed it was her new favorite food. (Strictly speaking, she’s my cousin’s wife, but I’ve never heard of a cousin-in-law, have you?) Stacey doesn’t cook GFCF, but she works really hard to make sure her family eats lean, unprocessed foods, which is probably 75% of this diet when you get right down to it. And boy am I glad I listened to her!
Prep it just the way you would any other kind of squash: cut it in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. There are several different ways you can cook these things, but it should not surprise you to hear I go for the quick and easy way out, every time. The microwave only has a bad reputation because people put deplorable things inside it and try to pass them off as food. It’s a perfectly legitimate way to cook healthy food too. So put one half of the squash on a plate, with 1/4 cup water poured around the base.
Cover with plastic wrap, and microwave on HIGH for 10 minutes.
Now here comes the magic. Start gently scraping down the length of the squash with a fork, and the whole thing will just fall apart into these strands that look like… spaghetti!
Stand it upright in a bowl while you’re scraping, and you don’t even have to hold it with your other hand. Which is good, because this sucker is hot. If you want, cook your second squash half while you’re doing this, or if you don’t need that much food right now, just wrap it up tightly and stick it in the fridge for up to a week or so.
Keep scraping until the whole thing is hollowed out, then just toss the skin.
At this point it’s as good as cooked pasta, and there are a ton of things you can do with it. For now, we’re going with the most basic: plain old GFCF spaghetti sauce. I’m a fan of all the Classico flavors, I just get whichever one strikes my fancy when I’m at the store. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]
I use one whole jar with one whole squash, but I find it’s helpful to pour in about half of the sauce first, and stir gently with a fork to really get all the strands separated and coated evenly with sauce.
Also, you can brown about 1/2 lb. of ground beef if your family prefers a meaty sauce.
Okay, here comes the rest of the sauce, like I promised.
And voila! Now listen, you’re not going to fool anyone into believing this is real spaghetti. It’s got this faint little crispness to it that is not quite like soggy wheat pasta. But if you’re already having to force pasta substitutes on your kids, I guarantee you they will not know this one is a vegetable. There is absolutely no squash flavor to explain away; it’s extremely mild. Just tell them it’s a special rice pasta that’s better than all those other mushy rice pastas, or some entirely new pasta that’s made from a unique blend of gluten-free flours and unicorn dust. Either way, they will devour it and beg for more.
Happy Eating!
Spaghetti Squash Marinara
1 spaghetti squash
1 jar Classico red pasta sauce, any flavor
1/2 lb. ground beef
I’m surprised you’d never had spaghetti squash, I know for sure it’s been commonly available around Philly since at least the 70’s. There’s so much you can do with it, because it so easily succumbs to any flavor you add.
I’m wondering about that plastic wrap that you put in the microwave against the hot squash. Since most plastics leak toxins when heated, I’d be tempted to cover with a cloth or a paper towel instead.
Yeah or parchment paper. Another nifty trick with spaghetti squash is cutting it perpendicular to its axis into rounds about an inch thick and cook normally.
Then carefully scoop out the “pasta” and it is really long and you can twirl it on your fork. The fibers grow in a spiral/circular direction around the axis.
Wow! Thanks for all the suggestions. Guilty admission time: I’ve never seen parchment paper. But I would imagine it’s stocked alongside the foil and plastic wrap, right?