Harvest Cooking Tip: Roast Garlic Cloves Inside Squash

Here's a quick, flavor-boosting tip we've been using with our acorn squash lately.

We love baked acorn squash straight from the rind, or mashed with a little cheese and milk. It's an easy, easy side dish, lunch, dinner - or even breakfast, with some cinnamon sugar. (See directions for roasting acorn squash here: Sweet and Spicy Acorn Squash.)

Lately we've been dropping one or two cloves of peeled garlic into the cavities of each acorn half. The garlic slowly roasts, partially sheltered by the squash so it doesn't burn, and mellowed by olive oil and salt.

Then when the squash is fully tender we mash the roasted garlic into it and eat together. Easy and delicious!

How are you eating squash this fall?

(Images: Faith Durand)

Comments (8)

We like it sweet - with maple syrup, brown sugar, butter and a touch of salt.

I'm going to have to try this! I bake squash a lot. I take the two halves and make one savory and one sweet. My favorite savory is cheese and my favorite sweet is maple syrup, a touch of butter and some raisins.

Growing up my mom would sometimes put sausage in the savory half. Served with bread, it was a complete meal in it's own container!

And the best tool I've found for scraping out the cavity? A grapefruit spoon. Those little teeth on the end work wonders to cut the strings.

I've been eating a lot of squash this fall: spaghetti squash, butternut squash and acorn squash. Here's what I've tried:
Spaghetti squash: With a meat sauce and with a brown butter sauce (soooo good)
Butternut squash: Mashed with maple syrup and butter; Roasted with sage.
Acorn squash: This epicurious recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ROASTED-ACORN-SQUASH-WITH-CHILE-VINAIGRETTE-236007
The hardest part of this recipe is cutting the squash and it is just amazing!

I must admit, acorn squash does not usually excite me like other squashes do. My favorites are butternut and kabocha. But I will definitely give the garlic tip here a try! Also, kumquat: the epicurious acorn squash recipe sounds AMAZING. Thanks for posting!
-Julie

I've made that roasted acorn squash with chile vinaigrette recipe posted by kumquat. It was divine and simple too. I have two delicata squash from my CSA - any thoughts?

We often take a head of garlic and just cut it in half and stuff it in the "seeds hole" in the middle.

After being served some delicious acorn squash at a wedding a few weeks ago, I went home and tried to replicate it. I did learn one trick: you can quickly and easily cook winter squash in the toaster oven if you slice it into thin pieces, like 1/2-1" thick. It takes about half the time (30-40 minutes) instead of an hour or more.

Now, if only I could figure out how they got the sweet glaze down the sides. I tried maple syrup and that didn't work. My mom says honey, but it tasted more like brown sugar, but without any crystallization. Thoughts?

My BF and I made sweet and spicy squash with a turkey filling that was delicious. I posted about the process - with a few photos - on my website:
huntpeck.blogspot.com

I love the fall-squash-a-thon!