Jared brought home a butternut squash from the grocery store, and I had to find a way to use it. A quick look around my Dinners board on Pinterest led me to the idea of using the squash in a lasagna.
The catch is that the squash replaces the lasagna noodles.
Of course I didn't take any pictures of my cooking process or even finished product. But this was just so darn tasty that I had to share it, even without my own pictures.
The above pictures and the original recipe are from Health-Bent.
I altered the recipe to fit the ingredients (and time) that I had.
Here's what I did.
Ingredients
1 butternut squash
1 lb. ground beef (or whatever meat you'd like)
1 can (15 oz.) pizza sauce (we love Contadina brand)
2 c. shredded mozzarella
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Brown the ground beef in a skillet and drain and discard grease.
3. Peel the squash. Cut it in half lengthwise. Cut each half in half (crosswise) by cutting just above the seeds. I didn't need the bottom half of the squash (the two quarters with the seeds). I saved those for a future dinner side dish. Have I lost you yet? If not, thinly slice the two squash quarters that have no seeds. Using a mandolin would be ideal, but I don't have one (it's on my Christmas list!). I simply stood up the squash quarter on one of it's half-circle-shaped ends. I carefully sliced, making my cuts parallel to the flat side of the squash quarter. Sigh--why didn't I just take pictures of this part??
4. Spread a small amount of pizza sauce in the bottom of a 9x9 square pan (just enough to cover the bottom of the pan).
5. Lay the squash slices over the sauce in the pan. Try to lay them close enough to make a solid layer, but don't overlap them. You can always trim to fit. Plus the squash slices are all slightly different widths, so choose wisely.
6. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the browned ground beef over the squash.
7. Sprinkle shredded cheese over the beef.
8. Spread some pizza sauce (not too much) over the cheese.
9. Repeat layers: squash, beef, cheese, pizza sauce, squash, beef, cheese, pizza sauce. I had enough ingredients to add one more layer of squash topped with the last of the pizza sauce and the last of the cheese.
10. Bake for 40 minutes. I got a phone call as my oven timer went off, and I forgot to take my lasagna out. About 10 minutes later, I remembered and panicked as I ran to the oven. No harm done. The cheese was brown but not burned. We liked the crunch.
I have to say that this was amazingly tasty in my opinion. I liked it way better than my Spaghetti Squash Lasagna. I will definitely make this again!
Jessica
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