Winter Squash 101

Named for its shape, the rind of an acorn squash is dark green, fading to orange. Its yellow-orange flesh is sweet and nutty. Half of a single squash is an appropriate serving size, so these are often halved, roasted and filled with stuffing, rice or other mixed grain dishes.

Buttercup is one of the sweetest squashes, very similar in flavor but slightly less complex and rich than a butternut squash. It has a dark green exterior with a dense orange flesh and may be substituted in any recipe calling for butternut squash.

Butternuts have a tan skin and orange flesh. They’re sweet and nutty, rich and buttery. Butternut is very popular as a soup, and cubes of roasted squash are commonly tossed into pasta or salads.

Named for its thin, delicate, edible rind, the oblong, cylindrical delicata squash has a buttery yellow exterior with green stripes running its length. The creamy, pale orange interior is sweet, with a flavor somewhere between a sweet potato and butternut squash. It is most commonly sliced into rounds or half-moons and roasted.

Carnival is an acorn-sweet dumpling squash hybrid. It's smaller and squatter than an acorn but can be used in most acorn squash recipes. The exterior color may be similar to a delicata, but the carnival has many more color varieties. They're always mottled with some light yellow, green and orange tones. Like a delicata but not quite as thin, you can eat the skin of a carnival squash.

Also called a Japanese pumpkin, Kabocha squash is a round, pumpkin-shaped squash with a dark green skin. It is much sweeter than a pumpkin with a fluffy interior like a sweet potato. It can be used in place of butternut or acorn squash and makes a good pumpkin pie filling.

Tasty Tip:

The seeds and fibers inside a hard squash are most often removed before cooking. An ice cream or cookie scoop is a great tool for scraping them out.

Spaghetti squash is so named because the flesh separates into spaghetti-like strands when cooked. The exterior is a creamy yellow. It is most commonly halved and roasted. Once cooked, the strands are usually scraped from the rind and served as a simple side dish, perhaps with butter and salt. It's also popularly paired with traditional pasta sauces.

Turban squash is sweet with a mild, hazelnut-like flavor and a notably dry texture. It's very large and named for its distinctive headwear-like shape. It may be cooked like other winter squash. The bottom "bowl" of the turban may be scraped out and used for serving soup or stuffed and baked.