| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 1 hr 40 min |
| Prep: | 25 min |
| Cook: | 1 hr 15 min |
| Yield: | 4 servings |
Ingredients
- 4 small acorn squash, 1 to 1 1/4 pounds each
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
- 1/2 pound ground pork
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 1/4 cup chopped celery
- 1/4 cup chopped carrot
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 1 1/2 cups cooked rice
- 1 (10-ounce) package frozen spinach, completely thawed, drained and chopped
- 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
- 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
- Generous pinch kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
- Cut 1-inch off the top of each acorn squash and scoop out the seeds. If necessary in order for the squash to sit upright, cut off a small portion of the bottom. Put 1 of the 4 pieces of butter in the cavity of each squash. Set squash on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In a large saute pan over medium heat, brown the ground pork until no longer pink. Remove the meat from the pan, add the olive oil and saute the onion, celery, and carrot until they begin to soften, approximately 7 to 10 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the white wine.
- Return the pork to the pan along with the cooked rice, spinach, pine nuts, oregano and salt and pepper, to taste. Stirring constantly, heat mixture thoroughly, approximately 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat. Divide the mixture evenly among the squash, top each squash with its lid and bake for 1 hour or until the squash is tender. Serve immediately.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 4 servings |
| Calories | 631 |
| Total Fat | 34 g |
| Saturated Fat | 10 g |
| Carbohydrates | 66 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 9 g |
| Sugar | 2 g |
| Protein | 19 g |
| Cholesterol | 56 mg |
| Sodium | 144 mg |
Reviews
I’ve liked this recipe well enough to make it at least four times over the years, including today, and I’ve served it to happy guests. As someone who LIKES this recipe, I think i have some ideas on how and why some folks complain about it being bland — it’s possible there’s a difference in technique:
1. The pork MUST be browned — pursue the Maillard reaction.
2. The pine nuts MUST be toasted – heck, I cooked mine in oil on the stove – they need to be brown flavor bombs.
3. You need to add enough salt.
4. You need to add enough butter – the water and oil, the steam, is an important part of adding flavor.
1. The pork MUST be browned — pursue the Maillard reaction.
2. The pine nuts MUST be toasted – heck, I cooked mine in oil on the stove – they need to be brown flavor bombs.
3. You need to add enough salt.
4. You need to add enough butter – the water and oil, the steam, is an important part of adding flavor.
The flavor combination is fantastic! My husband loved it. I flagged it as a keeper.
Really enjoyed this dinner. Perfect for fall. My modifications: used fresh spinach and only half the rice the recipe called for. And a lot more salt/pepper/oregano. Served it with white wine. Quite tasty.
Loved the concept, but the stuffing was a little bland so I added a little more seasoning and garlic to jazz it up. Once all was cooked together the flavor was good but there was a separation of filling and squash. The squash didn’t seem to get any flavor from the cooking process. It became a lot of work to cut it up the to try to get it to meld with the inside. The leftovers were run through the processor to break up the acorn squash and unionize the taste. Then became filling for stuffed shells with the addition of ricotta
Great recipe. Follow the directions and make sure you add enough salt and pepper (fresh ground pork is generally unseasoned) and this recipe is far from bland. We also made sure to drain the spinach thoroughly by pressing the extra water they add to frozen spinach out through a strainer. We used short grain brown rice. We couldn’t find small acorn squash so used sweet dumpling squash (bonus: they’re flat on the bottom) and they worked great.
Typical bland recipe from food network. Notice how all of the good reviews suggested adding ingredients or making changes to the recipe in order to make it taste like something. Wish I had seen that before making it. It’s necessary with this dish. We added Worcestershire, parsley, lemon juice, and parmesan and it ended up tasting fine, but not nearly as good as other acorn squash recipes I have tried. idk why I expected better from Alton Brown. There are plenty of better acorn squash recipes on the internet
I’ve made these several times. I’ve altered the recipe slightly by not adding rice and by using spicy Italian sausage instead of ground pork. I also use two onions. They turn out great!
I made these for dinner tonight and it got voted off the island by all of us. They looked great on Alton’s show but the reality was that the flavor was boring and after a bite or two, none of us saw any point in continuing to eat them and we broke out the frozen pizza rolls and taquitos instead. It was a lot of work to make these so I was extremely disappointed.
rly bad lawl
This is one of the best recipes I’ve ever done. It is simply the best!!! I also add some nutmeg and also cinnamon to the inner part of cavity before adding the stuffing. It really compliments the taste of the squash.