Sweet and Savory Roasted butternut squash noodles are tossed with crispy bacon, broccoli rabe and tomatoes for a delicious Whole30 friendly grain free and Paleo Butternut Squash Pasta dish! Your spiralizer will be your new best friend after tasting this incredibly healthy and tasty meal.
One of the fun parts of being a blogger is looking back on all the insanely ugly photos you posted throughout your blogging “career.” Photos that, at the time, you thought were “fine”, “acceptable” and had no problem ignoring the gagging sensation you most definitely felt when looking at them.
And, those were just the selfies, not even the food.
Haha.
Actually, I have many gag inducing photos in the archives of this blog, both food and non-food related. It goes with blogging. We put our worst foot forward so we can look back and learn how to improve. The blog grows just how a child would grow. Since my blog is almost 2 years old at this point (April 1st!) I’d say it’s learned a decent amount in that period of time.
But talk to me in 2 more years and see if I can read this post without gagging. Okay enough about gagging, this is a recipe post and all I’ve done so far is kill your appetite. So can we talk about Paleo butternut squash pasta now? I’m a fan, and I’m about to make you one, too.
The reason I took a walk down blog-memory lane though, is because this recipe is actually a very old one, maybe one of the first I ever posted. Sort of. You see, instead of butternut squash pasta, back in the day I made it with spaghetti squash, and, currently, I’m just not that into spaghetti squash.
No offense to spaghetti lovers of course, this is a great recipe with whatever “pasta” you want to use. Even real “pasta”, if you go that way (and by “pasta” I mean pasta.)
However, I felt it was too good not to give it a makeover with sweet and savory roasted butternut squash spiralized noodles. My spiralizer wasn’t getting enough love and it was the perfect opportunity to make a veggie noodle comeback, and another excuse to eat bacon. As if I need an excuse for that, but, maybe some of us out there will appreciate it.
I will not lie – this Paleo Butternut Squash pasta involves several steps, but it’s worth the extra work. I will not call it an “easy” recipe (lots of quotes today) even though it’s not difficult, just time consuming – since you have to show your butternut who’s boss in a few different ways, i.e., peeling, cutting, spiralizing, roasting. But that’s it – the rest is lemon squeezie-ish.
Paleo Butternut Squash Pasta with Bacon & Broccoli Rabe {Whole30}
Paleo Butternut Squash Pasta with Bacon & Broccoli Rabe (Whole30)
Ingredients
- 1 whole butternut squash with long part you'll spiralize that peeled.
- 1 and 1/2 -2 tbsp olive oil for roasting the noodles
- sea salt and pepper for roasting
- 6-8 slices nitrate free bacon* cut into 1 inch pieces
- 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
- 1 medium sized bunch broccoli rabe stems removed
- Generous pinch sea salt or to taste
- Generous pinchItalian Seasoning blend
- Pinch crushed red pepper optional for spice
Instructions
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Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
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Use your spiralizer to turn the long part of your butternut squash into noodles. I used a medium sized squash which made 2-3 servings. It will look like a ton of noodles, but they'll shrink when you roast them. Save the "bulb" of the butternut squash for another use, or discard.
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In a very large bowl, toss the noodles with the olive oil plus salt and pepper to taste. Do not completely omit the salt since it adds great flavor when roasting.
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Spread the noodles out as much as possible on the baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes, stir and spread out, and roast again for about 20 more minutes, until butternut squash is soft and browning.
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While the squash is roasting, heat a large skillet over med-hi heat, and also heat a large pot of salted water.
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Cook the bacon in the skillet, stirring, until crisp, then remove and drain on paper towels. Reserve a few tbsp of bacon fat to cook the broccoli rabe and tomatoes.
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When the water begins to boil, add the broccoli rabe and cook for just under one minute, then drain and rinse with cold water. Heat the skillet to medium heat, shake the water out of the broccoli rabe and cook in the skillet for a couple of minutes (until bright-dark green) then add the tomatoes, sea salt, pinch of Italian seasoning and pinch of crushed red pepper. Stir and continue to cook another two minutes.
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Add the bacon back to the pan and stir to heat through, then remove skillet from heat.
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Toss the skillet mixture with the roasted butternut noodles, serve hot, and enjoy! Makes about 3 servings.
Recipe Notes
*For Whole30 compliant bacon, use sugar free - I like this one!
Nutrition
Are you a spaghetti squash fan? For some reason I haven’t been into it for a while.
All time favorite pasta dish? I have so many I don’t know what wins!
I am a spaghetti squash fan. I’m a squash fan in general, but I do not like kabocha. Either I have had terrible onces, or I just don’t care for it.
Luckily, I don’t get better at this whole blogging thing. I just stay static 😀 I wish I could say that my photography has gotten better, but we ALL know that is a lie !
I actually really like the flavor of kabocha roasted! It’s definitely possible to get bad squash though..
You know I’m a butternut squash fan! I see you finally got the apiralizer out. I will need to try this. I can never say no to a butternut dish.
You’ll love butternut noodles roasted – so good.
Very beautiful, gourmet looking dish. The mixture of ingredients sings of deliciousness. Now if only I had the patience to make it lol.
Thanks! Actually not that bad to make! Actually getting my spiralizer out is half the battle 🙂
This pasta looks delicious. I have never used a spiralizer before… it does look pretty intimidating 😉 I have given up on gluten-free pasta that pretend to be pasta… I am always disappointed with the texture. But this is different. I want to say that I made your Coconut flour carrot and raisins muffins yesterday and was happy with the result! I had pretty much given up on baking (I cannot eat gluten, chocolate or nuts and have hypoglycemia!) but these were good and they didn’t bother my blood sugar at all. Thanks for the recipe!
My kids actually like gf pasta which we have now and then, I’m not the biggest fan though! So glad you made the muffins and liked them! Hearing things like this makes me so, so happy 🙂
Butternut squash is always a pain, but I don’t even care because it’s always beyond worth it! This pasta sounds AMAZING, thanks for sharing!
True, this is actually not much more work than chopping up a whole one to roast! Thanks!
I can comment! lol — was going to say I assumed it had to be time consuming just trying to spiralize the butternut squash. I so want to try to though! I lose my patience peeling and dicing but I want to force force myself to try sprializing it because it looks so good!
It’s actually not that bad, peeling and chopping is basically the same amount of work although taking my spiralizer out for some reason doesn’t happen often!
Funny you mention spaghetti squash, I am NOT a fan but the rest of my family is. Probably because I never cook it right (too soggy/watery) but I prefer vegetable noodles in general. This looks so good! I rarely spiralize butternut squash because it’s one of the harder ones.
I’ve found that when I cook spaghetti squash al dente the texture is fine but it’s too “raw” and bothers my stomach! So butternut it is!
Spiralizers make the best pasta! I usually use sweet potatoes, but know I need to give squash a shot. This recipe looks absolutely delicious!
Sweet potato noodles are amazing, definitely my top 2! Thanks!
So funny b/c I’ve tried to like spaghetti squash and it just doesn’t do it for me. Butternut all the way!
Yes!
First off, love the idea of butternut squash pasta, although spiralizing is more work than spaghetti squash. Second of all, I cannot believe what I thought were good food photos way back when, although a lot of the recipes it’s tough to decide whether to update the photos or give them up for lost causes and do new ones, since my baking has also improved!
I know what you mean – there are recipes in my archives that are awesome and some that aren’t great and I haven’t updated. I have a lot of meat recipes that I don’t even eat anymore and wouldn’t want to go through the trouble of buying ingredients and everything! I think I might have reached my updating limit!
I used to eat spaghetti squash all the time, but now it’s much more rare! I just don’t feel satisfied with it!
Mac and cheese will always be the king of pasta dishes…always!
(P.S. I love broccoli rabe!)
Broccoli rabe is one of my favorite and one thing I can’t turn down when out to eat! And for now, I’m over the spaghetti squash 🙂
Ive made the spaghetti squash version of this a bunch of times! Looks like it would be great with butternut squash.
That’s awesome! In my opinion the roasted butternut makes it better, but definitely more work!
I keep forgetting to spiralise butternut squash whenever I have some but I REALLY need to remember! This looks amazing!
Thanks! I put it off too – put this off for way too long!
i LOVE spaghetti squash- but it is SQUASH. if i want pasta/spaghetti, heck i get that omut!
i’ve never spiralized a butternut. but i love that you roasted it like that!! that might convince me to give it a try 😀 i’ll have to save this for when school is over 😀 (but, no bacon, sorry but- bleh!)
It’s definitely good roasted, give it a try sometime!
my new favourite veggie side dish… delicious!
That’s great!
Would regular broccoli work in this dish?
Yup it would be fine 🙂