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I’m always a bit slow to embrace fall. I love summertime, sunshine, water, fresh tomatoes, and eating lunch on the patio. I’m not a huge fan of snow, shovels, ice, and cold. But, you take what comes, and since it’s October I finally embraced fall a bit and made some stuffed acorn squash for dinner.
Fall Flavors: Pumpkin and Squash
As far as fall flavors go, I’m a “pumpkin spice” everything kinda gal. Pumpkin spice coffee, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin walnut pancakes … give me pumpkin everything!
I also love squash. I bought a couple of acorn squash at the grocery store from a local Minnesota farmer and used those for this stuffed squash dinner.
Cross-Pollinating Squash Varieties
It turns out, the acorn squash in our garden actually cross-pollinated with something. They are these really pretty green and white squash. We tried one, and it is edible but not quite exactly like regular acorn squash.
We plant a lot of our squash and melons out at my mom’s farm because we don’t have space in our yard for the wandering vines.
Every year we end up with a few mystery varieties – sometimes they are edible, sometimes not really. One year we had a gourd variety mix with some of our squash and didn’t realize until we had dinner ready that gourds don’t really ever cook to be tender, nor do they taste like anything.
She has some beehives on the farm from Adee Honey Farms, and I don’t know if the extra bees cause our squash cross-pollination, or what exactly the issue is. Lucky for us, some Minnesota farmers have it figured out, so the acorn squash we stuffed was delicious!
About the Meal: Stuffed Acorn Squash
I outline the ingredients and directions fully in the recipe below, but basically first I get a cutting board and a sharp knife and cut the acorn squash in half. Be careful with this part – the squash is awkward and hard. Keep your digits out of the way, people. Be smart knife wielders, please!
Once the squash is successfully halved, I use a grapefruit spoon with serrated edges to scoop the seeds out. Then, I put the squash halves on a parchment-lined baking sheet, drizzle them with a bit of olive oil and a little salt, cover them with tinfoil, and bake at 400 degrees for 45-60 minutes until they are fork-tender.
While the squash is cooking, I also cook wild rice in a saucepan and prepare some stuffing in another saucepan. I like to use Stove Top Low Sodium Chicken Stuffing Mix, but you can use whatever stuffing mix or recipe you like. I also dice my yellow onion, mushroom, Swiss chard, fresh sage, and garlic clove.
The Swiss chard and fresh sage were from our garden – yet another reason I love summer!
For this recipe, we used some of my husband’s homemade wild turkey sausage, but you could use any sausage of your choice.
First, I brown the sausage in a 12-inch cast-iron pan until it is nearly done, then remove it from the pan to rest on a plate. In the same pan, I cook the onion, Swiss chard, mushrooms, sage, and garlic.
When the vegetables are done, remove from heat and at this point, you can stir your sausage back in and also add the rice.
We Are Almost There
When the squash is done, remove it from the oven to cool. Leave the oven on at this point, but turn it down to 350 degrees – we will use it again in a minute. Once it’s cool enough to touch, remove the squash from the skins and mix the squash into your other mixture. I like to do it this way, similar to how you make twice-baked potatoes. It makes it easier to eat and combines the flavors better, I think.
Don’t do anything with the stuffing just yet.
When you have all of the squash mixed into your vegetable, meat, and rice mixture, at this point, stuff the mixture back into the squash shells. When done with that, top each squash half with some stuffing mixture. Depending on the size of your squash, you may not need the full box of Stove Top. See what you think.
Now, you are ready to put the squash back in the oven – uncovered at 350 degrees this time. Bake for 30 minutes or so, until heated through and the stuffing is starting to get brown and a little crunchy on top.
Cranberry Sauce and Other Options
We served it with some Cranberry Rum Sauce that I made, which tasted delicious but kind of made the plate look like Halloween. You could also add dried cranberries and/or chopped walnuts into the stuffing if you’d like. I also considered celery, but I actually kind of shy away from celery. You could sure put it in there if you wish, I will still like you.
So, there we have it! My very favorite fall dinner. I hope you enjoy!
Ooh – sidenote! I only used 8 ounces of ground turkey sausage for this recipe, but we packaged it in 1-pound portions when we froze it. So, I took the other 8 ounces and made some meatballs, and they went with some of the spaghetti sauce I made last weekend from our garden tomatoes.
Stuffed Acorn Squash
Equipment
- Baking sheet with parchment paper
- 12-inch cast iron pan
- Small saucepan
- Cutting Board
- Sharp Knife
Ingredients
- 2 small acorn squash
- 1/4 cup wild rice, cooked (yield = 1 cup cooked)
- 1 box Stove Top Stuffing, Low-Sodium Chicken flavor (or stuffing of your choice)
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 pound ground sausage (we use our homemade wild turkey sausage)
- 1 small yellow onion, diced
- 3 big leaves Swiss chard, chopped
- 8 ounces baby Bella mushrooms, chopped (or mushrooms of your choice)
- 4 leaves fresh sage, finely chopped
- 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. While it's preheating, cut your acorn squash in half, being careful to not cut off your arm in the process. Seriously - be smart with your knife, I'm not being funny. Take your halves and scoop out the seeds from the middle I like to use a grapefruit spoon with serrated edges for this.
- Place your squash on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle some olive oil and sprinkle a little salt on the top of each squash half. I like to cover mine with tinfoil while they bake, it keeps the moisture in the squash. A baker with a lid would also work if you have a large enough one.
- Put the squash in the oven and bake until the middle is fork-tender. This will take between 45 and 60 minutes or so, depending on the size of your squash.
- While the squash is baking, you can prepare the rest of your ingredients. To make for quicker meal prep at dinner time, you could bake the squash earlier in the day or the night before - that's up to you.
- In one small saucepan, cook the wild rice per package directions. You could also use brown rice here, a rice pilaf blend, or other grain of your choice.
- In another small saucepan, prepare the Stove Top (or other stuffing of your choice) per package directions.
- In a saucepan on medium heat with olive oil, brown the sausage. When it's nearly done, remove it from the skillet and put it on a plate. In the same saucepan, toss your diced onion and let saute for a couple of minutes, add Swiss chard and cook for several more minutes. When the onions and Swiss chard are starting to get tender, toss in the mushrooms, then the fresh sage and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper. At this point, you can stir the sausage back into the mixture, add the wild rice, and remove from heat. (Don't do anything with the stuffing yet.)
- When the squash is done, take it out of the oven. Turn oven down to 350 at this point but leave it on - we'll use it again in a minute. Let the acorn squash cool for a bit, until you can touch them to remove the squash from the shells. I like to remove all of the squash pulp from the shell and mix it into my meat and vegetable mixture - like you do when you make twice baked potatoes.
- When you are done getting the squash out of the shells, you then have your mixture of sausage, rice, vegetables, and squash - and you stuff it back into the shells. Finally, you top each one with stuffing. For this recipe, I used two small acorn squash and didn't use the full box of stuffing. You can see what you think when you make it, but you can always save some of the stuffing for something else if it seems like it's too much.
- Once the squash is stuffed and topped with stuffing, put the baking sheet back in your 350-degree oven for 20-30 minutes - uncovered this time. Cook until heated through and stuffing is starting to get crunchy on top.
- Serve with cranberry sauce as a garnish if you would like, or you could actually put some Craisins in with the filling mixture too if you'd like. Walnuts would also be good in the filling! There isn't an exact science to exactly how to stuff them, this is just how we like to do it.
