27 Mar A Butternut Experiment

Hey yall it’s Jarrett – Rebel Mentor and butternut squash lover. I’ve cooked a lot of butternut squash this winter. I love it blended with cooked apples and onions in a soup. I love it pureed and transformed into a bread, and I love butternut simply sliced and roasted crisp, kind-of-like french fries. Now winter’s coming to an end, and in the corner of the kitchen there’s been a butternut  squash staring at me for the past week. I haven’t had writer’s block, I’ve had butternut squash block. So I decided to do what I always do when I have no idea what to do, and that’s do something. I pulled out all the ingredients I could find and here’s what happened. First I started with a real big butternut and peeled it.

Processing a butternut can be intimidating. How I do it is, I cut the squash in half then separate the ‘ball part with seeds’ from the ‘long, skinny part with no seeds’. Then I scoop the seeds out and chop it up from there.

I coated the squash in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted it in a 375 degree oven, flipping once, for 40 minutes.

In a separate pan, I started sauteing onions (15 minutes) and then added mushrooms.

After the mushrooms and onions cooked together for 15 minutes, I added ground turkey to the pan and cooked it through, about 10 minutes on medium heat. Then I added chopped garlic, fresh spinach, some chopped dried cranberries, and balsamic vinegar and cooked everything together for about 15 minutes, on low heat. I seasoned the mix with salt, pepper, cumin, and smoked paprika.

When the sqaush finished in the oven I let it cool and mashed it up. Then in a baking sheet I put in the cooked turkey/veggie mix at the bottom, the mashed butternut on top, and crumbled some leftover cornbread on top of that. I baked the dish for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, then broiled it at the end for a minute to brown the top.