Ditch The Spoon For Another Kitchen Tool When Removing Squash Seeds

While there are several types of squash, including winter and summer varieties, winter squash is known for its thick skin, dense flesh, and messy innards, making it particularly tough to prepare. One of the biggest challenges to preparing squash, especially in hearty varieties, such as acorn and butternut squash, is the part where you find yourself elbow-deep, covered in sticky orange juice, trying to scrape the seeds and the stringy, wet insides out with a flimsy, bending spoon. And all of this work is just to get the squash to a place where it can be sliced or cut into cubes.

While many home cooks are deterred from even picking up a squash from the grocery store in the winter, fall, or off-season months due to the laborious prep it takes, the prerequisites to cooking deliciously sweet, earthly nutty, and nutritious squash doesn't have to be so hard. Accept a little help and enjoy the world of recipes that squash provides, including butternut squash ravioli and spaghetti squash with toasted pine nut pesto, by swapping the spoon out for a better kitchen tool you likely already have in your kitchen drawer: an ice cream scoop.

For seamless removal of squash seeds that doesn't feel quite like conducting surgery, use an ice cream scoop. There are a surprising amount of ice cream scoop models on the market, including three main types: the classic round scoop; the disher (which has a lever to remove the contents of the scoop); and the spade, with sharper edges and a flat surface, such as a little shovel. Though the shape and material, ranging from aluminum and stainless steel, can differ, whatever ice cream scoop you have on hand will do. 

Using an ice cream scoop provides an extra boost to take some of the pressure off of your muscle strength when removing the innards of the squash. It will also allow for a cleaner separation of the inside strings and seeds, which will come out in more cohesive scoop-fulls due to the heavy weight, sharp edges, and handheld support that ice cream scoops provide.

To scoop away the seeds, first prepare the squash by slicing the top and bottom with a sharp knife to provide a flat surface to rest it on a cutting board. Peel the skin with a vegetable peeler if needed, then cut the gourd in half lengthwise and use a scoop to thoroughly scrape the inner surface and lift the juicy, stringy insides and tough inner bits away from the tender squash flesh.

Once you've removed the insides, you'll be ready to slice or cut the tender squash into cubes to be tossed in butter or oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, then baked in the oven or thrown on the grates of the grill for a caramelized char. You can even purée the juicy, sweet cubes once baked to form a creamy squash soup or a mash to be used in muffins and cakes. Separate cooked spaghetti squash from its shell with a fork and use it to make gluten-free or veggie-forward twists on saucy pasta recipes.

And all the work you've done to remove those string-covered seeds? With the energy saved with the handy use of an ice cream scoop, you may find that you have added time and curiosity to roast the seeds in the oven or blend the stringy parts into a purée that can be used as an addition to soup stock or homemade juice. 

Once you've scooped them out, separate the fibrous stringy pulp from the seeds, rinse them in a strainer, and place the seeds on a prepared baking sheet. Then, pat the seeds dry with a paper towel or dishcloth and toss them with desired oil and seasonings before baking them to roasted perfection.