Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash: Crammed With Enormous Flavor

Tired of boring acorn squash that isn’t crammed full of sausage? Then this sausage-stuffed acorn squash with apples, onions, cheese, and maple syrup is for you! Get ready to embrace Autumn and a mouthful of sausage.

Fall is in the air and there is no better way to cope with this than to cook up a batch of these sausage-stuffed acorn squash (squashes???). Such a satisfying meal. Full of savory breakfast sausage, sweet apples and onions, and the salty, nuttiness of the Parmigiano Reggiano…..and that final drizzle of spicy sweet maple syrup. This is the best (and only) way to pay your final respects to these squash (squashs???) before entering your digestive tract.

Why should I stuff my acorn squash with sausage?

Because it’s delicious and some guy on the internet told you to (everything on the internet is true!). Plus, why would acorn squash have such a big hole, if it wasn’t meant to be stuffed with sausage? Explain that.

Wow! What a great way to use sausage!

I know.

For those of you who may not know, I have been writing articles for the last couple of months for a magazine called The War Kitchen. It’s a great magazine! They do a monthly digital magazine that is free to read, as well as one or two REALLY nice printed editions each year. If you haven’t already been reading, here is a link to their page> WAR KITCHEN MAGAZINE

So, for the November issue, I decided to do an article about homemade sausage and how much better it is for you without all of the preservatives and crappy ingredients. You can see the recipe on my site HERE, or check out the article in The War Kitchen November 2024 issue once it is released (should be any day now). It should be issue 30.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and include a “Fall” inspired recipe to utilize our homemade breakfast sausage in the article. So, we landed on Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash. This recipe is great! So many great flavors, all swimming around inside of this perfect serving vessel.

What am I going to need for making sausage-stuffed acorn squash?

• Acorn squash
• Good quality breakfast sausage: Make THIS ONE!
• Sweet yellow onion
• Honey crisp apple
• Garlic
• Fresh sage
• Fresh thyme
• Parmigiano Reggiano
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Spicy Maple Syrup
• An oven OR, even better, a pellet smoker/grill. I use a Pitboss. You can find one similar HERE!

Sausage -Stuffed Acorn Squash

Tony

Roasted acorn squash, crammed full of sausage and flavor!

Print Recipe

Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Servings 4 Humans

Ingredients

  

• 2 each Acorn squash
• 1 pound Breakfast sausage
• 1 each Sweet yellow onion
• 1 each Honey Crisp apple the best apple
• 4 cloves Garlic
• 1 tbsp Fresh sage leaves, chopped
• 1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
• 1½ cups Parmigiano Reggiano, freshly shredded
• Extra virgin olive oil for coating the squash
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Spicy Maple Syrup (Recipe in link above)

Instructions

 

Preheat oven or pellet smoker to 400 degrees

Cut your squash in half and open it up. Before you cut it in half, it is helpful to cut a small piece off of what will become the “bottom” of the half. This will provide a flat area on the squash for it to sit on and prevent it from rolling around as you move them to the oven. (if you have question on how to do this, go watch my video at https://www.youtube.com/@oakandblade)

Now that the squash is opened up, use a spoon to remove all of the seeds and fibers from the inner cavity of the squash.

Brush the squash halves with the extra virgin olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and place in the preheated oven/pellet smoker for about 40 minutes, or until “fork tender” (a fork can easily pierce the flesh of the squash). Once cooked through, remove from oven and allow to rest and cool. Decrease the oven heat to 375 degrees.

While the squash is roasting you can begin to make the stuffing.

Prep the onion, apple, garlic and herbs. Onion can be cut in half, from root to tip and then sliced into ¼ inch slices. The apple should be diced into roughly ¼ inch cubes. Mince the garlic and chop the herbs.

Cook the sausage in a skillet, crumbling and browning it nicely. Remove from the skillet once cooking is complete.

Add the onions to the skillet and cook in the rendered sausage fat. Season with salt. Cook the onions until they begin to brown and caramelize a bit.

Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

Add the apple and herbs, shut off the heat, and stir to mix.

Now that the squash has finished cooking and cooled slightly, use a spoon to remove about half of the flesh from the squash, leaving about ¼ inch all around the inside of the skin of the squash. Add the removed squash to the onion and apple mixture.

Now add the cooked sausage and about half of the Parmigiano Reggiano to the onion and apple mixture. Stir to combine all of the stuffing ingredients.

Add the stuffing mixture to the remaining squash skins and place them back in the 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, remove the squash from the oven and top with remaining Parmigiano Reggiano while still hot, to allow it to melt. (pop it back in the oven for a minute or two if it doesn’t want to fully melt)

Drizzle the squash with the Hot Maple Syrup and DIG IN!