The other day I cooked a spaghetti squash, and when I was getting it onto the plate I thought, “I should blog about this”.
Don’t ask me why you care about this, but maybe you do. Spaghetti squash is a great vegetable. It tastes a bit like noodles, it looks a bit like noodles, and it is pretty easy to make. Well, that depends on how you make it.
I have been cooking spaghetti squash on and off for a long time (17 years or more). And over those years I have cooked it many different ways.
I started with the oven method – slice it in half the long way, scoop out the seeds and center part, place it face down into a glass dish/casserole dish, put enough water in the dish to go up on the squash about an inch, and then bake it for like an hour at 400-degree F (depends on the size of the squash). That worked, but it took a long time and sometimes it would come out not ready or over cooked.
Then I tried the microwave method 1. This method prepares the spaghetti squash just like the oven method, but then you put it in the microwave. Then you run it on high until it is done. This could take anywhere from 15-30 minutes depending on the size. The other issue was that since it was a microwave it wouldn’t cook it very evenly
Next was microwave method 2. This one is the fun one in my opinion. You don’t cut the spaghetti squash open. What you do is stab it all over with a strong fork or a knife (I usually used a knife). Then you put it in the microwave and ran it on high for 5 minutes. Then you rotate it 90-degrees and run for another 5 minutes. You repeat this process until the outside of the squash starts to get “squishy”. Then you take it out, cut it open and scrap out the insides. The downside with this method was not knowing how long it was going to take, and you had to try scrapping out the seeds and such while the rest of the squash was also ready to be scrapped out to eat. It was certainly challenging.
Finally there is the way I do it now. We own a pressure cooker, and I found somewhere online a description on how to cook a spaghetti squash with it. What you do is cut it in half, but along the shorter side not the long side. Then you scrap out the seeds. Then you put it in the pressure cooker with about a cup of water. Set the pressure cooker to high and cook for roughly 9 minutes. When it is all done you have fully cooked spaghetti squash and the “noodle” insides come out easily. There is no babysitting it like with the microwave (and the oven sometimes too). This is what it looks like:
I mean talk about easy to do. You do have to deal with a bit of water coming out with the squash, but it isn’t that bad, and there is water in all the methods (just a little more here).
So, there you have it – the best way to cook a spaghetti squash.