With this chicken and spaghetti squash casserole, you can enjoy the cheesy pleasure of baked spaghetti without the added carbohydrates.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr |
| Additional Time: | 5 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 20 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
| Yield: | 1 9×13-inch casserole |
Ingredients
- 1 medium spaghetti squash, halved and seeded
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 1 small onion, minced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pound ground chicken
- 4 cups spaghetti sauce
- 1 (12 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained
- 1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
- Drizzle cut sides of spaghetti squash with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place on a sheet pan with the cut sides down.
- Roast in the preheated oven until a fork easily penetrates the skin, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside until cool enough to handle. Shred flesh with a fork until it resembles spaghetti noodles; transfer to a colander to drain for 20 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- While squash is draining, heat remaining olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion; cook and stir for 2 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add ground chicken and season with salt and pepper. Cook until chicken is browned and crumbly with no pink remaining, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in spaghetti sauce.
- Transfer drained squash to a 9×13-inch casserole dish. Add sauce mixture, spinach, 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese and 1/2 of the Parmesan cheese; toss to combine. Sprinkle remaining cheeses over the top.
- Bake in the preheated oven until casserole is bubbling and cheeses have melted, about 20 minutes.
- You can use use ground beef, turkey, or pork in place of ground chicken.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 349 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 27 g |
| Cholesterol | 58 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 5 g |
| Protein | 26 g |
| Saturated Fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 890 mg |
| Sugars | 12 g |
| Fat | 15 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
My family loved this! When I make it again, I’ll probably do it without the spinach. My wife doesn’t like spinach and picked out most of it. She couldn’t finish hers, so I did. I think I prefer it without. But this is a GREAT recipe!
Made for company tonight, and this was a hit! Only changes I made were 1) used cubed chicken 2) had to bake longer than 20 minutes to reduce juices and 3) added cheese toppings during the last 5 minutes.
This was really good. My wife and I wanted a healthy, low carb meal and this recipe appealed to us. Made a double recipe last night. Used cubed chicken breast instead of ground chicken, and added a green pepper. Delicious. This seems to be a flexible recipe; one could change or add ingredients as desired. Looking forward to leftovers.
We really liked this casserole–it’s great tasting, and has the added bonus of being pretty good for you too. I used a rather large spaghetti squash, and it still produced quite a bit of moisture, even after draining. As such, I found that I needed to bake this casserole about 40 minutes to get it to thicken a bit (this is my bad, not anything to do with the recipe). I used fresh spinach instead of frozen, and sliced mozzarella instead of shredded; as that’s what I had on hand. The majority of the flavor of this casserole comes from whatever flavor your tomato sauce is–so just be aware of that. Additional herbs/spices wouldn’t be a bad idea. I had some fresh oregano, and threw some of that on at the end–that tasted pretty good. This made for a nice dinner when served with some crusty bread. Thank you for the recipe!