Serve this spaghetti squash salad with Thanksgiving or other holiday feasts. It also makes a tasty salad for the summer. Low in calories, spaghetti squash is a favorite among most of my meat-eating pals.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 2 hrs |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs |
| Servings: | 8 |
Ingredients
- 1 spaghetti squash, halved and seeded
- 8 ounces cherry tomatoes, halved
- 6 ounces pitted kalamata olives, halved
- 2 English cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and sliced
- 1 small red onion, sliced thin
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- ¼ cup olive oil, or more if needed
- 1 tablespoon garlic salt
- ground black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place squash halves into a large baking dish with cut-sides facing down.
- Bake in the preheated oven until you can easily cut into skin side with a knife, about 30 minutes; remove from oven and set aside to cool.
- Toss cooled spaghetti squash, tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, red onion, and garlic together in a large bowl until evenly mixed.
- Stir lemon juice and lemon zest together in a small bowl; slowly pour olive oil into lemon juice mixture while whisking vigorously. Season with garlic salt and pepper; drizzle over spaghetti squash mixture and toss to coat. Refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving.
Reviews
Used regular tomatoes diced up. Added grated carrots as well as broccoli came out awesome. Everyone ate and loved it. Even the toddlers!
I love spaghetti squash and wanted an easy salad recipe. The olive oil and lemon juice was too bland. The vegetables are a lot like my pasta salad and I make pasta salad with Italian or Ranch dressing. If I make this again I’m going to change the dressing to see if that will zest it up.
I’m not a fan of onion so I used a sweet bell pepper
Loved this recipe! So light and refreshing and healthy. I had a medium squash and cooked it for about 45 min. Let it cool and then looked in my refrigerator to see what I could add. I used: red onion, chopped zucchini, tomatoes, 1 clove minced garlic, fresh red peppers, feta cheese and some leftover sausage that I had grilled the night before. Mixed it with lemon juice and olive oil (equal parts but not as much as stated in the original recipe) And also salt and pepper. Let it sit for about 2 hours and it was great. I will definitely make this again.
i’m so glad i stumbled across this recipe.. i was looking for something other than the usual spaghetti squash with pasta sauce for a side to our dinner.. i subbed half chopped roma tomatoes/half red bell pepper for the cherry tomatoes, 4 oz black olives for the 6 oz kalamata, left out the cucumbers, used half the red onion, forgot about the fresh garlic, used bottled lemon juice for the fresh, left out the lemon zest, only used 1.5 T olive oil, halved the garlic powder, and added 4 oz feta cheese, 1 T of red wine vinegar, and a few shakes of oregano.. this is exactly what i wanted.. ty for the recipe
Yum! Great taste, very light and refreshing! Can save in fridge and still good next day!
Great salad! Even for winter, lol. Only had hot-house cucumbers, so that’s what I used. Cut back a little bit on the olive oil. Other that that, it’s great! Thank you
I usually love spaghetti squash but this was this first time I have ever tried it served cold and I just wasn’t loving it prepared like this. I made the dressing according to the recipe and I am glad I tasted it first. It was way too salty and lemony. I ended up drizzling a little italian dressing instead.
I so wanted to enjoy this, but it’s much too salty. I recommend starting with 1 teaspoon of garlic salt then adjust to taste.
We love spaghetti squash & this was fantastic. Only thing is I have always cut the raw squash in half, nuked 1 half at a time. A med sized squash half takes 8 to 9 min. If I’m using it hot, we leave the seeds in until the last min. The faster you take the seeds out, the faster it cools.
The spaghetti squash was not cooked after 30 minutes, I gave it an extra 30 because it wasn’t even close, and at that point it was still kind of crunchy. Should have specified on size of squash. The sauce made it too lemony and oily. This kind of made me feel sick, but my husband said it was alright so that’s why I give it 3 stars, rather than 2.
Nah. Thanks for an original idea using spaghetti squash, but this dish just didn’t sell. Cold spaghetti squash is not my preferred way to enjoy it and with the cukes and the sauce, it just really didn’t seem to jive. Oh, well.
Took it to a turkey dinner – everyone loved it. Used red and orange bell peppers instead of tomato and added feta.
Nor yet but thee is a spaghetti squash on my counter and it will be utiized to the fullest tomorrow.
I followed this recipe to the letter as it was my first time cooking with spaghetti squash and I loved it! I thought the flavors were great together! Will be making again!
Great Idea! I love spaghetti squash and this is such an original recipe. It was still good without the olive oil and the lemon zest. (I didn’t have a fresh lemon on hand, and I eat a very low fat diet.) My only suggestion would be to salt the sliced cucumbers and let them sit in a strainer for 30 minutes and then blot water off with paper towels. Otherwise this salad will probably get very watery in the fridge.
This seemed like a different and interesting way to prepare spaghetti squash. I served it for company. It was NOT a hit. The flavor was okay but most people did not care for the cold spaghetti squash. I also found it to be too heavy on the lemon flavor. I think adding feta cheese could improve it but overall, I don’t think I’ll make this again. It was a lot of work and not worth it plus what waste of expensive kalamata olives! You’d be better off making a standard mediterranean salad than making this salad and it really doesn’t look very good.
Meh. While the flavor of this salad we found excellent, we felt the need to tweak it by adding balsamic vinegar to kick it up somewhat. What we didn’t like about the recipe is the addition of squash. It seemed that someone took a perfectly good Mediterranean salad and just decided to dump in squash they had on hand. In our opinion, squash is much better hot than cold–it gave the salad a weird texture. I’d make this again, omitting squash and instead using spinach.
Cooking time for can vary greatly depending on the size of the squash. Excellent recipe, followed it exactly first time. Be careful with amount lemon juice and oil. Might be a little too much for tatses. Optional ingrediant would be some dried figs sliced paper thin. About 1/4 cup.
Was quite surprised. Never thought spagetti squash would be good in a salad, but this was different and tasty. Was still good 4 days later. The only downfall was the appearance.
I tried this salad out today and it is very tasty! I’m not a fan of olives so I left those out, and I like a lot of lemon and thought it needed more dressing. A very simple and delicious salad, I will definitely make it again.