This recipe for Caramelized Butternut Squash with Fried Squash will make you want to ditch your sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Cubed butternut squash is roasted with butter, salt, brown sugar, maple syrup, and a touch of cinnamon, and then topped with fried sage. By cooking the squash the day before Thanksgiving, and reheating it for an hour on Thanksgiving Day, the squash becomes caramelized. It's sweet, but not overly so, and the crispy fried sage on top was the thing my friends couldn't stop talking about.
Butternut Squash, like all squash, it firm and challenging to chop, but most grocery stores sell chopped butternut squash. In my opinion, this is a time to pay the extra price and save yourself the hassle. Using chopped squash shaves a significant amount of time and effort off of this recipe, which is incredibly simple otherwise.
Ingredients
- 2 Whole Butternut Squash or about 4-5 cups chopped
- 5 tablespoons Butter
- 1 cup Brown Sugar
- 2 tablespoons Maple Syrup
- ½ teaspoon Cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 8 Fresh Sage Leaves
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Start by preparing the squash. Like I said, squash is challenging to chop. This is my method: make sure you have a sharp knife, then slice the ends on the squash. The slice the long thin half of the squash off. Set the other half of the squash - the part with the seeds - aside for now. Then slice the squash into rounds about 1 ½ inches thick. Then slice the skin off the rounds and chop up the rounds up creating 1 ½ inch cubes. Then with the other half of the squash, slice it in half from top to bottom. Scoop out all of the seeds, and then chop into 1 ½ half-rounds, remove the skin, and chop. Place all the chopped squash into a bowl.
- Melt 4 tablespoons of butter and pour it over the squash. Add ½ cup brown sugar, and the maple syrup, cinnamon, and salt. Toss everything together.
- Pour the squash onto a baking sheet and roast for 1 hour, flipping the squash after 30 minutes. Then refrigerate.
- On Thanksgiving Day, add another ½ cup of brown sugar to the squash. Then melt 1 tablespoon of butter. Once the butter begins to bubble, add the sage and let it fry for 3-4 minutes, until stiff. Pour this and any extra butter over the squash.
- Cook the squash at 350 degrees for at least 40 minutes before serving.
- **If you don't want to make this a day ahead, I would add all the sugar at once, roast the squash for an hour and 20 minutes, and add the fried sage just before serving.
