Baked Squash & Sticky Red Onions

Tom Walker

Featuring:

Butternut squash

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 4

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash

2 red onion

4 garlic cloves

1 large rosemary sprig (optional, but adds great flavour)

2 tbsp oil

large pinch salt

large pinch black pepper

2 tsp smoked paprika

400g tin chickpeas, drained (or any tinned beans or pulses)

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Watch the video

It’s butternut squash season! But what should you make with one? Why not keep it simple and delicious with a sticky, sweet and creamy traybake like this baked squash with sticky red onions and chickpeas? Check out the video if you’re more of a visual learner!

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C (fan)/200C/gas 6.

Prepare the squash, remove the seeds and cut lengthways into 2cm thick wedges, leaving the skin on.

Deskin the onion, trim the top but leave the root intact, and cut into wedges. Take the skin from the garlic cloves and leave whole. Finely chop up the rosemary leaves.

Place all of the prepared vegetables on to a large baking tray, add oil, seasoning and chickpeas – toss well coating everything. Then drizzle over

the balsamic vinegar.

Bake for aprox 25-30 minutes, until the butternut squash is soft, and the red onion is soft and sticky. When removing the tray from the oven

squish the garlic cloves with a fork, add in a glug more oil and stir all together.

Serve on a mixed leaf salad with fresh bread or a herby couscous.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Tom Walker

Tom is the Head Food Educator, and a founding member of Hackney School of Food, a specialist teaching kitchen and garden devoted to 'seed to spoon' education.
Previously the Head Teaching Chef of the Jamie Oliver Cookery School, with a background in restaurants, recipe development and school kitchens, he has spent the last 10 years in food education, sharing his infectious love of all things food related with children and adults alike.
He believes that it's never too young or too old to learn a new trick in the kitchen.