(Clever title involving Butternut Squash)

So every year my firm has a Thanksgiving pot-luck lunch. It’s actually pretty awesome b/c you end up with around 100 side dishes and desserts, plus more gallons of sweet tea brought in than necessary. Last year I brought a butternut squash casserole, and a few weeks ago a friend of mine at work asked if it would be making a triumphant return. With that question, I knew I’d have to bring it back.

I pretty much pulled this recipe from a bunch of different sources (mostly sweet potato casserole recipes). Like I mentioned before, I ended up making this twice last week.

The first attempt was made with the squash roasted still in its skin. I wouldn’t recommend this method b/c it was pretty difficult to get all that good squash flesh out. I didn’t take a picture of my remains, but there was a lot left in the skin.

For the family version, I ended up skinning the squash first and cutting it into large chunks. Although it took some more time on the front end, I would go with this approach in the future. As you can see from these pictures, I roasted a lot of butternut squash (and I did experience some temporary Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata) dermatitis – don’t be alarmed. it eventually washed off).

TMF’H Butternut Squash Casserole
Butternut Squash (a lot - you can guesstimate how much from the pictures)
1/3 C Orange Juice
2 Eggs
½ Stick Butter (melted)
¼ C Brown sugar
1 tsp Salt
a “Dash” of Cinnamon/Nutmeg*

After peeling and quartering the squash, I roasted it for about 45 min to an hour @ 425. It came out fork tender and then it went into the Kitchen Aid. First I added the melted butter and OJ, and let it mix/puree on medium speed. I could have used more OJ, but I wanted the squash to retain its butternut-iness (of course, I lose that with the delicious crumb topping to follow). I cracked two eggs into a separate bowl and took some of the hot squash mixture to temper the eggs down. Afterwards I added the egg mixture back and mixed in the brown sugar, salt and cinnamon/nutmeg. You could check the mixer every couple minutes to make sure it was mixing to your desired consistency, and after I was satisfied, it went into a greased dish. I baked it for about an hour @ 350 (here is what the office version looked like before going into the oven).

So, my office kinda got the raw end of the deal on the topping. I didn’t really look into my “crumb” topping and ended up just throwing random amounts of brown sugar, flour, oats and chopped pecans in a bowl and then sprinkling it on top before putting into the oven.

For the family version, I poked around on the internet and found this.

1 C Flour
½ C Oats (not instant)
1/3 C Brown Sugar
½ tsp Cinnamon
¼ tsp Salt
1 stick Butter, cut into small pieces

Basically pulse all the ingredients in a food processor, and after the butternut squash has baked for 30 minutes, take it out and sprinkle this on top. Afterwards it looked like this, and smelled like an apple pie.

And then we had a Happy Thanksgiving.

* I know no straight man would ever use the word “dash” (or sprinkle, for that matter) when describing anything. Please forgive me.