Ever since Peter helpfully reminded me about our wild rice stash in the basement, I’ve wanted to make up for my lack of knowledge about anything below our ground floor. While poking around our basement, I discovered several things:
[1] We’ve become experts at buying and forgetting about specialty ramen and snack packs of seaweed strips.
[2] Peter buys way too much chocolate (and I never thought those words would ever cross my … fingers).
[3] So that’s where my three jars of Crofter’s raspberry jam ended up. Behind the five pounds of coconut flour.
[4] Despite being a household of two + two furry beasts, we have an alarmingly large amount of food. For an apocalypse, I suppose.
And, of course:
[5] Apparently, I still have trouble with object permanence (a.k.a. the fundamental psychological concept that supersedes “out of sight, out of mind”, a concept usually gained by age two).
My goal to use more “basement foods” (and yes, that phrase is terrible) led me to this wild rice-stuffed acorn squash. The hearty wild rice, sweet/tart cranberries, and rich hazelnuts made the perfect accompaniment to roasted acorn squash.
I served this with a special main dish I won’t be revealing just yet, but expect a fun post on it in the next few weeks! Until then, enjoy this stuffed acorn squash with any hearty main dish.
Wild Rice and Hazelnut Stuffed Acorn Squash
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Keywords: vegan wild rice hazelnuts
Ingredients (4 servings)
- 2 acorn squashes, cut in half and with seeds removed
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1/2 cup brown rice
- 1/2 cup wild rice
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 1/2 cup hazelnuts, chopped
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Drizzle olive oil inside each acorn squash half, then sprinkle brown sugar on top. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until fork easy pierces squash. Set aside.
In a medium saucepan, bring rice and 2 1/2 cups water to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. Drain any excess water and fluff grains with a fork.
In a large bowl, mix together rice, dried cranberries, and hazelnuts. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stuff acorn squash halves with rice mixture and return to oven for 10 minutes, or until hazelnuts are toasted (don’t let them burn!). Remove and serve.
Have a great weekend!
I have no basement to “lose” food in, but I do have cupboards. And who knows what is in the backs of them! I highly suspect there is some wild rice in there somewhere. Which is highly awesome because that means i can make these this weekend!
like Joanne, I dont have basements but a tiny pantry which holds a large amount of food. I dont know what all I have been accumulating all these years, maybe I will find some ingredients to stuff squash which I have been piling up on.
My squash knowledge is so lacking! I keep seeing these gorgeous squash recipes but never know what to do with the darn things. I do however, love rice, so I can definitely get behind this combo!
This stuffed squash sounds like it would be amazing with Thanksgiving dinner! 🙂
Such a beautiful harvest meal! Looks perfect for the Fall time.
Wow, you’ve discovered a few interesting items – ramen, chocolate, jam, coconut flour & seaweed strips? Hehe, did you eat the “basement foods” quickly? Such gorgeous dish, Jessie, the acorn squash looks ike a flower 🙂 Do you know that homes in the west coast don’t have a basement (I’m not sure why…but I find it funny) while the east coast homes always have basements?
We’ve got a long way to go until we finish the basement foods! I didn’t know that about west coast and east coast homes – I guess west coast homes may have “attic food”? 😉
This looks just incredible! I use spaghetti squash often, but I don’t use acorn squash as much as I should. This gave me new inspiration! Thanks!
squash is not usually something that looks very appetizing to me but this looks INCREDIBLE!!!
I wish I had a basement to put “basement food” in. 🙂 Well, I basically just wish I had more space. 🙂
The stuffed acorn squash looks so pretty and sounds great!
I hope you had a nice weekend, Jessie!