Butternut squash is one of most well known squashes at the dinner table. Having a sweet, nutty taste that’s similar to a pumpkin, butternut squash pairs well with a variety of flavors like brown sugar (sweet) to garlic (savory). Delicious when roasted or pureed in a soup, butternut squash is a household favorite. Check out how to cut and prep your butternut squash like a pro with our own Chris Tavano:
Video Transcript:
Hi, I’m Chris Tavano for Tundra Restaurant Supply. In today’s episode I’m going to show you how to properly cut your seasonal squash.
So here we have a butternut squash. The easiest thing to do here probably is remove the bulb bottom part so we can focus on getting most of the flesh from the top portion. In this scenario, it’s kind of nice to use a serrated knife—helps go through the sawing motion to get it out quicker.
Be careful while cutting through these hard gourds. Be sure to not put your fingers in the dangerous areas with your knife work. So, never, if you need the leverage to push down on both ends of the knife, be sure your fingers are away from the blade and not down here. Because as you cut through the gourd, you’re going to cut through your fingertips. The last thing you want to do on Thanksgiving is go to the ER.
So now we that we have the bulb removed, set the bulb aside and focus on the top portion. From there, I can get a trusty chef’s knife. And just like any other melon, or citrus, we’re now just trying to shave and peel this off.
So I’m kind of going pretty deep into the flesh, but that’s to be sure that I get off any of these other grainy, fibrous pieces in the skin…so that way we’re left with a nice piece of orange. Set the scraps aside, and cut off the top. From here, we begin dicing our squash.
So, I’m focusing on the way I cut my squash here, so that way it has nice, even cooking. You can either par-boil it and pan sear it, or roast it whole or in the dice.
There we go.
So squash keeps really well over time. All you have to do is freeze it. You can freeze it raw once you’ve prepped it and peeled it, or you can go ahead and freeze it after you’ve roasted it. But the nice thing about squash is that it’s got a long shelf life. So once you buy it from the store, whether it be organic or retail, it’s still going to last for easily 4 weeks on your shelf.
So then we get down to the last of the bulb. Be sure that you’ve cut off the last piece and go ahead and grab a spoon and gut it. So once you have a clean inside, you can turn it upside down and proceed like we did earlier: peel and dice.