Grain-Free Butternut Squash Lasagna

Do you LOVE pasta?

Do you WANT to love veggies?

Then you have to make this. 

Butternut Squash Lasagna:

Ingredients:

(Prep time: 20 minutes)
(Cook time: 45 minutes)
(Time for the lasagna to rest: 20 minutes)


Total Time Start to Finish: about 1 hour and 30 minutes

• 1 medium butternut squash
• 16 oz (2 cups) of your favorite tomato sauce
• assortment of vegetables (a good list to choose from is spinach, kale, mushrooms, & collard greens)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 yellow onion, diced
• optional: sausage or ground beef
• 1-2 tbs cooking oil (like avocado or olive)
• salt and pepper, to taste
• optional: 2/3 cup grated parmesan or other cheese

Recipe Notes:

This can be made ahead of time and simply baked off when needed.

This can be adapted with any meat or any vegetables (thinking a ground chicken pesto lasagna might work nicely too)

Directions:

For the "Lasagna Noodles":

*Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F

1. Cut off the bottom round part from the neck of the squash (for the lack of a better description)

2. Peel the squash

3. Chop off the ends

4. Cut the round part in half and scoop out the fibers and seeds (if you can't get all of the fibers it's okay - they will bake into the pasta and go unnoticed)

5. Cut the peeled neck of the squash in half



6. ***This is the most challenging part of the recipe - please be careful with your knife***
Slice the neck of the squash into long planks (try not to make them super thick - think about 2x the thickness of normal lasagna noodles) - perfection here doesn't matter, because they won't be perfect!

7. Take each of the halves of the round part and put the hollow side down. Slice it into noodles the same thickness as the planks in the step above. (They should look similar to thin cantaloupe slices)



8. Now you have all of your "lasagna noodles"

For the Filling (Without Meat):

1. Heat the oil in the pan
2. Sauté garlic until it starts to brown and becomes fragrant 
3. Add onions (and any meatier vegetable like mushrooms) to the pan and sauté for two minutes (about half way cooked)
4. Add any greens (like kale, spinach, or collards) to the pan  
5. Add salt and pepper
6. Sauté until vegetables are tender 
7. Remove from heat

For the Filling (With Meat):

1. Heat the oil in the pan
2. Sauté garlic until it starts to brown and becomes fragrant 
3. Add ground beef or sausage removed from its casing to the pan
4. Sauté for one minute (until it starts to brown)
5. Add onions (and any meatier vegetable like mushrooms) to the pan and sauté for two minutes (about half way cooked)
6. Add any greens (like kale, spinach, or collards) to the pan 
7. Add salt and pepper 
8. Sauté until vegetables are tender and meat is completely browned
9. Remove from heat

 For the Lasagna:

1. Take a lasagna pan (9x9 oven safe dish) and coat the bottom with a thin layer of sauce (like the picture below)

2. Pick some sturdy plank pieces of butternut squash and use them as your base layer. Do not overlap the slices. 

3. Spread on some more sauce (thin layer!! you don't want it to be soupy!) and add some of your filling mixture

4. Layer with more pieces of squash (anything that fits and covers the filling in one layer)

5. Repeat until all of the filling and butternut squash is used (It took me 4 layers of squash including the top and bottom)

*Note: if you are not topping the lasagna with cheese, you may want to reserve sauce to spread on the top layer - but it is not necessary)

6. CONGRATULATIONS! You're almost done :)

7. Optional: top with cheese!

8. Bake in a 400 degree oven, uncovered, for 45 minutes (until it is bubbly and nicely browned on top)

9. *IMPORTANT: let it cool for at least 20 minutes so that the pasta is not liquidy when it is cut into (as it cools it will become more solid and the pasta will stay bound together nicely when you serve it)

10. DIG IN!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S ABOUT TIME ;)

Recipe adapted from Health-Bent - Thank you!!!

Find their version here.