Processing spaghetti squash

Last fall, if you remember, we had a bumper crop of spaghetti squash.

With this much abundance, we were tasked with how best to store the sheer volume.

In the end, we divvied up the ripe squash from the unripe, then stored the ripe squash in the well house.

The unripe squash was stacked in crates in the library, where it slowly ripened over a period of two months or so. As it ripened, we stored it in a cool room off our porch.

Aside from handing squash out like candy to neighbors, periodically we also brought crates of the stuff to church with a "free" sign on it.

Still, we were left with dozens of squash. And now, in February, they were reaching the tail-end of their natural storage life. It was time to get them processed or we'd lose them.

So I took about three days and got everything done. I started by splitting each squash lengthwise.

After splitting, I laid them on cookie sheets. I could fit eight (sixteen halves) into the oven at once.

The best – the very best – tool I've found to scoop out the seeds and guts is a humble ice-cream scoop. It's tough, with just enough sharpness that I can rip things out cleanly. (The black spot in the center of the scoop is just a worn part of the metal.)

Lots of pulp.

Here's the first batch, all de-pulped (gutted? scooped?).

The next step is to brush all cut surfaces with oil or melted butter. I used olive oil.

Then I flipped all the squash halves cut-side down on the pans...

...and put them in the oven at 400F for about an hour.

When they were finished baking, I let them cool for about half an hour (cool enough to handle). Then out came the faithful ice-cream scoop again, and I started scraping out the strands.

For me, this is the perfect degree of "doneness." Just the slightest bit burned, which adds a sweetness to the final product. Plus everything is easy to scoop out of the rind. Not every squash came out this well, of course.

The rinds piled up in the sink (these later went onto the compost pile).

This is eight squashes' worth of "spaghetti."

My goal was to freeze the strands. Before doing this, though, an important step is to let the strands drain overnight. Not doing this step means the frozen squash strands will be mushy after they're defrosted. So I scooped them all into my largest colander, then put the colander into a bowl.

I covered the whole thing with a plastic "shower cap" and put it into the cool room for the night.

This is how much liquid drained by morning. Other batches had even more liquid.

While another batch baked in the oven, I portioned out the drained strands into two-cup increments into Ziploc bags.

Here is a processed batch (bagged up), with another bowl full of strands ready to drain overnight.

As I bagged them, I squeezed out the air and flattened the bags, then stacked them on a cookie sheet, which I then put in the freezer overnight.

I sliced, baked, scooped, drained, and bagged for three days.  The very last one I processed was this Big Boy.

It was so big that it took up an entire cookie sheet by itself (another Big Boy, though slightly smaller, also required its own pan).

These big ones also had to bake for an extra 30 minutes due to their sheer size.

In the end, I had (I think) 34 bags of squash. In the photo below, everything is frozen except the newly bagged stuff stacked on the cookie sheet.

At this point I think it's understandable that I don't want to see another spaghetti squash for quite some time.