How Long You Should Actually Bake Spaghetti Squash

Quite a few foods, it seems, have names that could be considered slightly deceptive. Rocky Mountain oysters do not come from the ocean, while none of the ingredients in Welsh rabbit ever had long ears and a fuzzy tail. Spaghetti squash, however, is unusual in that while it bears little resemblance to pasta, is still used as a substitute for its eponymous foodstuff. This is likely due to the fact that its flesh, when cooked, can easily be separated into long strands that are kind of like squishy zoodles — squoodles, if you will. Still, whether you want to eat the stuff as a spaghetti stand-in or as its own squashy self, you'll first need to bake it.

If you're baking spaghetti squash at a moderately high temperature it should be soft enough to eat in ½ hour to 45 minutes — toward the lower end if you're baking at 425 F, longer if your oven's at 400 F. This is if you cut it in half before cooking, in which case it's advisable to bake it in a foil-covered pan with a bit of water to provide some steam. You can also bake a whole squash if it's too tough to cut, in which case it may need a full hour to get to the point where you can easily stick a knife in it. No need for foil or water with an uncut squash, but you'll have to poke some holes in it to let the interior steam out.

If you really want to fly in the face of naming conventions, you can always use spaghetti squash as a stand-in for lasagna noodles rather than for the macaroni whose moniker it bears. While there are numerous different ways to cook spaghetti squash, we have to say, this spaghetti squash lasagna casserole recipe by Mashed developer Ashley Schuering is one of the tastier ones we've found. To make it, you'll need spaghetti squash, ground turkey, and a jar of marinara sauce, plus cottage cheese and mozzarella for the filling (along with some other functional ingredients like seasonings, cooking oil, and an egg).

In this recipe, Schuering suggests roasting a cut squash at 400 F for about 40 minutes — she eschews the foil and water and goes for an olive oil rub, instead. Once cooked, the squash is shredded and layered with meat sauce and cottage cheese filling before being topped off with a final layer of mozzarella. Then back into the oven it goes for another 40 minutes, albeit at a lower temperature (350 F) this time. A single serving of this squash lasagna comes in at 416 calories and 26.5 grams of carbohydrates. For comparison purposes, the USDA estimates that a serving of turkey lasagna made with pasta has 476 calories and 32.5 grams of carbohydrates.