Today I'm going to share a recipe for one of my absolutely new favourite meals (I've cooked it twice in the past week and a half and will probably cook it again soon). I've been slacking on getting this post up, but
my dear friend Shannon has been hounding me to get this posted.. so here we go.
Side note: these pictures do NOT do this dinner justice because my photography skills were not on point when I made this.
Now before we get started, do yourself a big favour and pour a big glass of wine. I'm a 75% glass full kinda girl, don't judge me.
First, cut your spaghetti squash in half and gut it (like a pumpkin). Just go ahead and throw out all the goopy stuff and the seeds... unless you want to roast the seeds, then go ahead and keep them. I'll wait until you're done. Done yet?
Okay so bake the squash face down on a baking sheet (or in a baking dish, I'm not fussy) with a bit of water (I like to put a little bit of salt and pepper on the squash for added flavour).
If you don't know how to cook spaghetti squash,
this is a great recipe.
Here's a list of the ingredients I used. I'm a terrible blogger and forgot to take pictures of my spices, but oh well.
Things & Stuff You'll Need to Cook This:
- 2 medium spaghetti squash (or one big one)
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- salt and pepper
- garlic salt
- basil (dried)
- sriracha (if you like spice)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 bell pepper
- 1 carrot
- 1 jar of pasta sauce (whatever kind you like, really)
- 5 cloves garlic, chopped (I really like garlic - add more or less depending on what you like)
- 1lb lean ground beef (lean ground pork, or turkey would work really well)
- 2 chorizo sausages
- 1 lb can crushed tomatoes
- Lots and lots and lots of cheese (for this recipe I used marble cheese, last time I made it I used Mozzarella)
How To Make This Deliciousness:
Step One:
Cut a hole in the box. Preheat oven to 400ºF and put your spaghetti squash in (as directed in link provided above).
Step Two: Have your boyfriend (or girlfriend, or spouse friend) chop your onions for you.
While they're cutting dem onions, toss a little olive oil in your pan, and throw all that heavenly garlic in there and let that deliciousness sizzle up. Then, have your spouse friend throw the onions in the pan and toss those babies high. The higher the toss, the closer to Jesus, and then clearly you have blessed garlic and onions (and this is really the secret ingredient to the worlds most delicious lasagna spaghetti squash) ... so don't miss this step, unless you want average lasagna spaghetti squash.
Holy side-track moment.
Okay, Step Three: Go ahead and toss that beef in there. Nothing like raw meat to really make a meal look delicious.
Toss in a few generous pinches of salt and pepper (..nobody wants bland meat). While this is cooking a bit, get to work on chopping that chorizo.
If you like big pieces of meat in your mouth (TWSS) then cut your chorizo into slices like the picture above. If you'd rather have small pieces (like me) then you may want to chop it like this:
Either way, it's still going to be delicious and how you chop your chorizo doesn't really matter. I'm a fan of draining my meat, so I drain the beef/onion/garlic mixture to get rid of all the excess fat and juices, and then put the pan back on the stove. Now just toss that chorizo in with the beef and stir.
Step Four: Look
super busy while stirring this. Now have your spouse friend chop the carrot and bell pepper for you and toss that in to get things really going.
Step Five: Stir stir stir. Let all of these ingredients get to know each other. Once it all looks happy and yummy,
dump in place a few pinches of garlic salt in there. Add a few pinches of basil (really, however much you'd like), then add a bit more salt and pepper. If you're a sriracha (or Frank's hot sauce) kinda
girl person, add it now. Wait another few moments and add the jar of sauce to this delicious mixture of beefy goodness.
Once everything is mingling quite nicely and the sauce is cooking, go ahead and grate a ton of cheese. You could probably get by with a cup, maybe two, but I like to grate cheese until the plate is full - just use your judgement here:
What Step are we on? Six? Okay, Step Six: Once your spaghetti squash is done, take it out of the oven and flip it over in the pan (I had a really good picture showing this step and I forgot to upload it and I'm typing this from my phone and I'm currently mad at myself for this).
Anyway, take a fork and scrape the inside of the spaghetti squash to get the 'spaghetti texture' happening. Scoop a bunch out and put it in a bowl and set aside, we'll need this in a minute. Now put a layer of cheese in the squash bowls, then add a big scoop of your sauce, then add some of the squash you just set aside, then cheese, sauce and a LOT of cheese on top to finish it off. Easy, right? Just make layers like lasagna.
Step Seven: Turn your oven to broil. Put these babies in there and keep an eye on them. Remember, everything is already cooked, we're just wanting to melt that cheese. For me, the more bubbly, and 'burnt' the cheese is looking, the better it tastes.
This is what it should look like going into the oven (on the left), and this is what it'll look like coming out. I should've left my squash in there for another 2 minutes, but the boys and I were starving and we needed to devour this meal right away.
Bonus Step: I'd recommend making garlic bread. You won't regret it.
And now you get to enjoy your final product! The pic on the right is the first spaghetti squash I made last week, and the two on the left are from this weeks squash.
