Chili Picante Butternut Squash Salad

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

1 butternut squash, cubed (mine was 2 lbs)

2 tbsp grapeseed oil

1 tsp New Mexican Chili powder*

2 fresh ears of corn (you’ll want about 1 cup of corn kernels)**

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 c chili picante corn nuts

½ c chopped parsley

Dressing

¼ c Follow Your Heart Ranch

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350℉. Peel the squash - you may have to do two passes to get down to the orange flesh. The exterior is not delicious, so make sure to get it all off.

2. Cut open the squash. Harder than it looks. I find the best way to hacking it in half. I employ a stab and slam technique. Take a sharp chef’s knife and work the point into the middle of the squash lengthwise. You may have to wiggle it a bit to get in there. Once you’re in, slam the base of it down onto the cutting board. Repeat on the other side.

3. Once you have two halves, you’re going to want to scoop the goop out. Clean it really well. I find that if I don’t, it can taste the vegetable equivalent of “gamey.”

4. Now do a medium dice. For even cooking, it is good to try and keep your pieces of even size. If you’re feeling fancy, try to use this large vegetable to work on knife skills. A medium dice is about ½ in cubed.

5. In a bowl, toss the cubed butternut squash with 2 tbsp grapeseed oil, 1 tsp new mexican chili powder, ½ tsp salt, and ½ tsp black pepper.

6. Pour onto a non-stick baking sheet and roast it in the oven about 25 minutes, or until soft enough to poke through with a knife. You want to get it out before it gets mushy. Let it cool for a bit.

7. While the squash cooks, trim the corn off the ears with a knife and boil in a small pot for 2 minutes. Let it cool a bit. You can also hit it with cold water in a colander to stop the cooking process.

8. While the squash and corn cool, chop your parsley and measure out your Corn Nuts and dressing.

9. Once the squash and corn are reasonably cool, toss it all together with the remaining ingredients and dressing. I like to keep some parsley leaves aside to beautify it once on the plate.

Notes

*You can definitely use regular chili powder in this recipe. I find new Mexican Chili powder to taste a bit more tomato-ey and bitter, while classic chili powder is more roasty.

**You can easily use frozen corn. Just thaw before using. I usually do this by putting frozen corn in a colander and run hot water over it for a minute or so.

This super simple revision was adapted from a dish I’ve had at Lemonade - a fast casual chain with good fresh salads in a sort-of deli setting. Before I committed to not eating dairy, I fell in love with their butternut squash salad which has a buttermilk ranch-style dressing.

I had a butternut squash lying around (I don’t know why I buy them, I’m not a huge squash person), so I searched for the recipe online to see if I could revise it. I found one on the OWN website that definitely used dairy, but was also missing ingredients I remember. So I took a stab for completing it with only plant-based ingredients, plus the missing elements and it turned this squash-meh person into a squash-yea person.

I used pre-made Follow Your Heart High-Omega Vegan Ranch, because for me it needed too tiny an amount to make a whole batch from scratch. Here’s a good ranch recipe though, if you’re v committed: https://detoxinista.com/vegan-ranch-dressing/

So, Corn Nuts. Turns out some flavors are vegan. Heads up: they do have MSG, but I’m cool with that. If you’re allergic, I’m sure they could be replaced with some other type of stay crunchy snack. I bet Trader Joe’s has some good stuff. I could also see changing up the flavors in the whole kit & caboodle by replacing the parsley with cilantro and maybe adding jalapeño. Maybe for next time.