Who loves carbonara pasta? Who loves butternut squash? Well, do we have something for you! Our Butternut Squash Carbonara will knock your socks off. While this still has cheese, it is definitely a lightened up version of the traditional Italian pasta carbonara.
Butternut Squash Carbonara
Ingredients
- 1 butternut squash peeled and spiralized
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- salt
- pepper
- 1 onion sliced thinly
- ½ cup frozen peas
- 3 cup spinach
- ½ cup pancetta or bacon cubed or crumbled
- 9 oz mascarpone
- ¼ cup chicken or vegetable stock
- ¼ cup shredded parmesan
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°
- Peel butternut squash skin but make sure to wear gloves as the orange will stain your skin
- Cut off the bottom of the squash where the seeds are so all you are left with is the long part of the squash to spiralize
- Spiralize butternut squash and make sure to cut the squash so it is spaghetti length
- Lay the spiralize squash on a baking sheet and add olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix well and spread the squash on the sheet so it is not overlapping much
- Bake in oven for 10 minutes
- While squash is cooking in large pan or dutch oven cook cubed pancetta
- Once cooked almost through, add the onion and cook until translucent
- Add spinach and peas and mix well
- Add mascarpone cheese and stir until cheese is melted and mixed with other ingredients. Add chicken broth and thin out cheese
- Slowly add the squash but we careful stirring to not break up the squash as it will be really fragile now
- Once all squash is added lit simmer just 1-2 minutes and serve
- Garnish with parmesan cheese
Come the fall and winter I love to make a Butternut Squash sauce to add over pasta. I make this with some nutmeg and ginger. A few years ago for Christmas my brother gave me a spiralizer. Not just a hand held spiralizer but a larger one like this spiralizer. It got me thinking the next time I bought a butternut squash at the store to try and do something different. You can also just purchase butternut squash pre-spiralized at your local grocery store.
At the time I was seeing people make sweet potatoes and butternut squash toast so it gave me the thought to make them into noodles. Man, butternut squash has really made a big blow up in the last 5 years or so. The first time I made this I tried to make just a normal Alfredo sauce, which was delicious but just not what I was envisioning. But the white sauce gave me the inspiration to make a twist on a carbonara, Butternut Squash Carbonara. If you are a squash fan, check out our Simple Stuffed Acorn Squash.
The pancetta adds a salty taste and the spinach and peas give it the veggies this dish deserves. We garnish this dish with a little crushed red pepper but I know many people want this to be a creamy dish so I didn’t want to add it to the ingredients list and then have you not get what you want! But please feel free! We absolutely love it with the crushed red pepper!
This dish also calls for parmesan cheese, both in the dish and as a garnish. My mom recently turned us onto this easy cheese grater. We always used the traditional types of graters, you know a metal one like this. As we still like the metal ones, this restaurant style grater is so much simpler to use. We went a little over board after these pictures grating more cheese on top because of how fun we were having!
From our kitchen to yours, cheers!
