Spaghetti Squash with Bison Ragù

Being limited to the house by COVID started us off the wrong path, gaining a ton of weight through the summer when we are normally a lot more active than we were this year. We've really been watching what we're eating and drinking since the end of August and we're down over a combined 30 pounds now.

We're eating a lower-carb diet and the carbs we are eating are complex carbs such as beans and oats. In addition, we are watching our fat intake, eating mostly lower fat proteins. In recent weeks, we are shifting to a mainly seafood and vegetarian diet, so the meat that we are eating is limited to what we have stored in the freezer.

We still had a pound of 90% lean ground bison in the freezer and what better to do with ground meat on a cold day than a ragù? We also have a local produce store that is seasonal, closing just before Thanksgiving each fall. In the last week or so, everything is marked way down and we stocked up on storage vegetables: onions and several winter squash, including a few spaghetti squashes. So it is natural with our low-carb outlook to want to put our lovely bison ragù on ersatz spaghetti, roasted spaghetti squash.

Spaghetti Squash with Bison Ragù

Don't get me wrong: this dish is not handmade pasta with long-cooked salsa bolognese, but it is a waist-friendly dish for a cold day, delicious in its own right.

Soffritto for Ragù

Sauce Starting to Cook

Note Color Change in Finished Sauce

When I am making a long-cooked full-fat ragù, I first cook cubes of meat in plenty of fat to brown it well, then remove them from the pan, leaving behind the fat in which to cook the soffritto with garlic and dried basil. My soffritto is generally equal parts onions, carrots, and celery, and I typically have a higher vegetable to meat ratio than is traditional, because I am often trying to stretch a little meat a long way.

Once the soffritto is soft, I deglaze with white wine and reduce that to nothing, then add a good amount of heavy cream and a bunch of peeled and seeded tomatoes along with the meat. The sauce will then cook for several hours until is ready to go, the meat being shredded just by the action of stirring the pot. You need to be attentive to stirring the pot towards the end because the sauce will be really thick and can burn easily enough.

Right, so that's the traditional method that takes hours to make. But what if you only have 45 minutes to get dinner on the table and you want a low-fat sauce?

I start by browning lean ground meat, in this case bison, as best as I can with a little pan spray. When the meat is cooked through, I add the soffrito right in with the meat and cook for a few more minutes until the onions turn translucent.

Then I splash the pan with a little white wine for form, not because there are any brown bits on the bottom of the pan to scrape off into the sauce. I omit the cream to lower the fat, but also because I find that cream takes hours to integrate into the sauce and become that je ne sais quoi for which salsa bolognese is renowned.

The tomatoes go in and the sauce cooks for as much or little time as I have before needing to get dinner on the table. The sauce above cooked for about 45 minutes. You can see the color change from beginning to end.

Kitchen Basics: Roasting Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti Squash Ready for Oven

Stringing Roasted Spaghetti Squash with a Fork

Roasting spaghetti squash is dead simple. The only tricky part is splitting the squash in two lengthwise, principally because the squash wants to roll on the cutting board. If you are uncomfortable with the squash rolling a bit, wedge a dish towel under both sides to form a cradle for it.

Drive the tip of your knife into the top of the squash and lever the blade down like the handle of a paper cutter. Then remove the knife and reposition it to the end of the cut you have opened, repeating until you split the squash in two.

The stem end is often a really tricky proposition in that the stem will not split, so start at the stem end and work your way to the other end, leaving the stem intact. When the two haves are nearly separated and joined only by the stem, you can break the two halves apart with your hands.

Using a spoon, scrape out all the seeds. You can roast and eat the squash seeds if you like or put them in the compost pile so you have baby squash coming up everywhere in the spring!

Oil the cut surfaces of the squash and place the cut faces down on a sheet tray. Place in a moderate oven (350F) and roast until you can easily pierce the shell with a knife, half an hour or longer.

Remove from the oven and let cool to the point where you can handle the squash. Using a fork, scrape out the squash strands lengthwise down the squash, leaving an empty shell.

You can pitch the shells or for something different, you can combine the squash with other ingredients and stuff it back into one of the halves, then rebake it for twice-baked spaghetti squash. If your stuffed squash wants to roll on your sheet tray, wedge both sides with a ball of aluminum foil.