Smash the Squash if...

When to smash the squash? Well, normally never, unless you are feeling really angry. But I've never been angry enough to want to smash a squash or pumpkin.

Well, I learnt tonight that if your spaghetti squash looks a little funky in the inside when you cut it, you really need to smash it. Do not use it! Although when I looked it up online, the article I found on Eat or Toss said that we can eat our spaghetti squash. What a mistake that was!

If you slice your squash in half and find that there are sprouts in side of your squash, toss your squash out! I repeat, TOSS YOUR SQUASH OUT!

Our spaghetti squash tasted SO DANG bitter. Not even our delicious beef ragù could cover the taste of this squash.

Also, in case you have never dealt with a spaghetti squash, we did not eat the seeds or the sprouts. When you slice a spaghetti squash in half, you'll just scoop out the "guts" like you would a pumpkin. Then you can oil the meat of the squash and season as you wish and place in the oven to roast.

The reason we were going for spaghetti squash today was because I decided to make a wonderful beef ragù in the Instant Pot and I wanted it to go on top of a low carbohydrate product. Pasta always ends up being way too high in carbs and we already had polenta this week, so I wanted to use my squash up.

Shame it didn't work out in our favour, because the ragù was delicious! I'll be adding the recipe for that here as well. I got the original recipe from The Modern Proper, but like every other dish I seem to make, I added way too much liquid. I think my fear with the Instant Pot is that the pot will start beeping and saying that my food is burning, so I compensate by adding too much liquid. Otherwise, this is the recipe that I used:

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Ingredients:

• Tablespoon olive oil

• 1/2 red onion, chopped

• 3 large carrots, chopped

• 6 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped

• 1 kg chuck roast, chopped into 2 inch cubes

• 1 can stewed whole tomatoes

• 1 Tablespoon dried thyme

• 2 Bay Leaves

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 4 whole cloves

• 1 cup beef stock

Instructions:

1. Pour olive oil to your Instant Pot and turn on to sauteé mode. Add your red onions and carrots to oil and allow to cook till soft. Add your garlic to your carrots and onions and cook until fragrant.

2. Place your chuck roast cubes in with your vegetables and add remainder ingredients.

3. Change sauteé mode to pressure cook mode and switch to meat setting.

4. Allow meat to cook for 35 minutes on high.

5. Once meat is completed, allow Instant Pot to vent for 10 minutes or until valve goes down.

6. Serve with your choice of starch and enjoy

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As you can tell from my photo, my ragù was way too wet and I left a lot of the meat pretty chunky. But, the ragù was really tasty even if the squash wasn't.

Instead we will have LOTS of leftovers for tomorrow where we'll enjoy the ragù with either pasta or I'll make some more polenta. We shall see. At least we know that we'll be fed either for lunch or dinner.

I hope that you never experience a sprouted spaghetti squash. Though I hope you eventually make yourself this delicious beef ragù!

Hope you had a wonderful Saturday and even better Sunday.