What is summer squash

They're also low in saturated fat and cholesterol. In addition to its praise-worthy nutritional benefits, winter squash also happens to be delicious. It typically boasts a sweet flavor and a creamy, buttery texture that lends itself beautifully to roasting or mashing. In addition to the flesh, you can often also roast some squashes' seeds to make a tasty and healthy seasonal snack. Acorn squash can be recognized for its distinctive dark, ridged exterior and orange interior.

It's sweet and buttery, making a great simple vegetable side. Unlike other winter squash varieties, the skin of acorn squash is tender and flavor, so there's no need to peel this vegetable before roasting. It also boasts more calcium and potassium than other winter squash varieties, so this is one of the healthiest veggies you can cook this season. Try a simple preparation with our Roasted Winter Squash recipe. Butternut squash has recently skyrocketed in popularity; today, it's one of the most popular winter squashes, often found pureed in soups, simply roasted and added to winter dishes, or boiled and mashed.

Its starchy texture makes it a great, healthier alternative to potatoes. The thick-skinned orange vegetable can be difficult to break down you'll want to peel this squash , but with these tips you'll have no problem cutting and preparing your butternut squash. You've probably seen this trendy squash all over—it's recently surged in popularity because, when baked and shredded, it bears remarkable resemblance to spaghetti but it's a vegetable.

The squash is large, round, and yellow, and once halved and roasted, the inside easily shreds to noodle-like strands. Make spaghetti squash when you're looking for a healthier, yet still satisfying alternative to pasta.

You can even buy it at Costco. Once cooked , this squash can be treated similarly to spaghetti—bake it with marinara and mozzarella or try more eclectic flavor combinations. This fancy squash variety is beloved for its stunning green-and-white markings. Although it's a winter squash, it's known for its more delicate rind like zucchini and yellow squash, the delicata's skin is edible.

The delicata squash doesn't need much dressing up. It tastes great when cut into half-moon strips no peeling required and simply roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Try adding it to a light pasta dish. The dumpling squash is miniature around the size of an apple compared to its winter squash cousins. Like the delicata squash, the dumpling squash boasts a thin, edible rind, so it can be roasted whole. Its flavor is sweet and mild, making it a great vehicle for meats or cheeses.

Like the pattypan squash, the dumpling squash can be stuffed and baked. Try stuffing it with ground beef or adapting one of our stuffed vegetable recipes to use this cute squash variety. It can be difficult to classify a pumpkin because it fits into so many different food categories: a pumpkin is technically a squash, a gourd , and a fruit. It can be cooked and baked or used decoratively. The round orange pumpkin is extremely versatile, and different parts of the squash—from the meat to the seeds—can be used for different purposes.

Typically spherical and a speckled light green, the gourmet globe is a French heirloom squash. This is a weird one: pale green, perfectly smooth, and shaped like a large beefsteak tomato. The tinda squash is not closely related to the zucchini or any other squash, but is the immature fruit of a related squash family plant. Flickr user Jakukyo Friel. The luffa squash sometimes called the luffa gourd is a bizarre variety that, if allowed to fully mature, will turn into a loofah.

When young, though, the luffa squash is a ridged squash that tastes pretty similar to a zucchini. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Thank you so much, I have been trying to identify the patty pan for years! Never see it at the grocery but my friends brother is a chef and he grows it.

So delicious! As anyone who has let a prolific zucchini get out of control van tell you, summer squashes turn into winter squashes just by growing on the vine until mature. At that point they can develop a hard, inedible rind and be cooked just like a winter squash.

By the same token, you can pick a winter squash early and treat it just like a summer squash. The flavors develop with time and maturity, though, so just like a summer squash, … Read more ». This recipe is inspired by my mother […]. You can use regular squash for this recipe as well. Read more about different types of summer squash on the Modern […].

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Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. So if you want to eat them, you'll need to harvest them young, when they have the appearance of a ridged zucchini.

Immature luffa can be eaten raw or used in place of zucchini in any recipe. Nope it's not a flying saucer, it's pattypan squash. These uniquely-shaped squashes come in a variety of colors from yellow to green or a mix of the two. They have scalloped edges, making them as fun to look at as they are to cook with.

Round zucchini, also known as eight ball zucchini, have the same mild flavor and texture of green zucchini, but with a spherical shape. Their short and wide size makes them ideal candidates for stuffing, or you can use them anytime you'd typically used classic zucchini.

Yellow squash comes in two varieties: straightneck and crookneck. Crookneck squash pictured above has a bulbous bottom and slender neck that's curved at the top. Crookneck squash has larger seeds and a thicker, waxier skin than many other squash varieties.

It's typically harvested when it's more mature to produce a curved neck. This shape can make it harder to slice into rounds, so it's best to dice it and toss it with some diced zucchini for a colorful vegetable side. Straightneck squash closely resembles crookneck squash with its tapered neck and bulbous base, but its neck doesn't curve as much, if at all.

Like crookneck squash, straightneck squash has a bumpy skin, and a pale white flesh. Harvest this squash when it's 6-inches or shorter for the best flavor and texture. It makes a great complement to zucchini, and its uniform shape makes it easy to slice for use in squash casserole. This stunning squash is a hybrid between yellow crookneck, delicata , and yellow acorn squash. It's easy to recognize for its two-tone coloration: light green on the bottom and yellow on top. Zephyr squash is dense like pattypan, but easier to slice due to its shape.

Use it as you would other yellow squash. By Melanie Fincher March 06, Pin FB Share.