There is a common trend with most of our recipes. This trend is that our recipes use few ingredients, and are fairly simple to create. From a quick glance this recipe may look a bit complicated, but in reality it’s quite simple. I love to cook great food, but I get overwhelmed by complicated recipes (it might be the artist in me). I don’t like to read a lot of steps or have to worry about measurements. I like to see a pretty picture for inspiration, glance over a few ingredients, and then have my own fun with it. Most of the time when I cook, I will just use olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Less is more right?
This recipe came to me when I was shopping at Trader Joe’s. Pasta is not something that I miss, nor do I crave, so I’m a bit surprised that I even thought to cook it, but this recipe would make any linguini-lover drool. I was walking down the aisle at Trader Joe’s looking for hearts of palm and out of the corner of my eye I spotted the pasta sauces. At that moment I had the idea to throw together a sauce using ground turkey with the intention of eating it on it’s own with lots of delicious veggies cooked in, but as the recipe marinated in my mind I thought to add spaghetti squash to complete the dish. As a child, I remember my mom taking half of a spaghetti squash, pouring pasta sauce over top, adding a sprinkle of cheese, and eating right out of the squash. How cool is my mother? Thanks mom for inspiring this dish!
Ingredients:
- 1 spaghetti squash
- 2 cans of Muir Glen Organic No Salt Added Tomato Sauce, plus 1/2 a can of water**
- 1 pound lean ground turkey
- 1 vidalia onion, chopped
- 1 medium to large zucchini, chopped
- 1 pack of sliced white mushrooms
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
**For this original recipe we used the Trader Joe’s brand tomato sauce. For the revised version we used the Muir Glen Organic No Salt Added tomato sauce. Both brands have similar ingredients, but it’s always best to go salt free and add the salt in to season yourself. Upon revising this dish, we realized that it actually does not need any salt added what so ever. It is delicious on it’s own! As we said before, we can’t stress enough the importance of reading ingredients. That is the first thing we do before taking a product off the shelves in the grocery store. Always know what is in your food!
Process:
For the Sauce
- In a medium frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of coconut oil.
- Add onion and zucchini to the frying pan and saute in coconut oil until both onion and zucchini are tender. Remove from heat.
- Brown ground turkey in a large pot (10 quart, if you have one) on medium heat.
- Once the turkey is fully cooked, add the sauteed onion and zucchini, and season with cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.
- Pour two cans of tomato sauce, and half a can of water over the ground turkey and veggies.
- Add in sliced mushrooms.
- Bring sauce to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and cover.
- Simmer for 20-30 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender.
For the Squash
- Cut spaghetti squash in half.
- Discard the seeds.
- Put one half in a microwave safe dish, and cook on high for 9 minutes.
- Let cool, and remove the squash by scraping the inside with a fork.
I have not tried spaghetti squash but this sounds great! Might have to make it tonight 🙂
Hey Priya!
I hope you and Nick are enjoying your new home together. This is a great meal – one that reminds me of "home cooked" meals growing up. If you do make it, let us know how it turns out!
-Bill
Our new home is great! It has been fun painting and decorating…there is always something new to buy of course. I made the Turkey Tomato Sauce last night and it was delicious! My grocery store did not have spaghetti squash so I used thin whole grain spaghetti noodles. I was impressed with all of the flavor considering I did not use a lot of S&P; or other seasoning. You guys are doing a great job with the blog, I look forward to trying more recipes!
Hey Priya –
Glad to hear things are going well in your new home! Also, I'm glad you guys found success with the Turkey Tomato Sauce. I think it'll be a great dish to have regularly during the fall and winter (though i'm not ready for cool weather just yet).
Thanks for the kind words on the blog! We are having a great time sharing our meals with everyone! We have many meals just waiting to be posted, so we will keep them coming.
Enjoy!
-Bill & Hayley
This recipe turned out great! I had to add a little extra spice because I didn't have the cayenne pepper, but it was delicious and even better the next day! 🙂
We make a version of this all the time. It's delicious. A turkey tomato sauce is one of those things that really compliments squash taste well. I like your addition of zucchini, I am going to try that next time.
Made this for dinner last night. It's delicious. I did add some sea salt and a few springs of fresh basil.Also cut the cayenne in 1/2 as my husband is heat sensitive! I cooked the whole spaghetti squash as it was smaller but we have half of the sauce in the freezer for next time. I stumbled on your site yesterday as I was ordering a copy of Paleo magazine. I'm a newbie at Paleo although I have been following a gluten free/low carb lifestyle for years. Your site is a great find. Thanks
Wow! So good! I would have never added the zucchini with the spaghetti squash (too much squash, right?), but it's so nice.
You guys totally rock!