autumn chop
AKA maple-roasted butternut squash and chicken salad
It’s that fuzzy end-of-summer, early-autumn time of year when we are desperately craving all the fall things — pants, sweatshirts, soups, etc. — but we can’t actually enjoy them yet because it’s still way too hot (in most parts of the country, at least!).
Rather than forcing a soup upon us simply because it’s the first official Saturday of fall, we’re going with a hearty and delicious good-all-week salad that is both cozy and fresh — one that meets the seasons in the middle. It has the fall flavors we’re yearning for like butternut squash, roasted red onion, apple, dates, thyme, and maple syrup, but also offers the cooling crunch our bodies crave when it’s 80- or 90-something degrees outside.
OK! If you’d prefer a completely warm and cozy sheet-pan dinner — maybe you live in a city where fall weather has blown in to stay — here’s the switch up: Add several handfuls of chopped kale and an extra tablespoon or two of the dressing to the sheet pan along with the squash and onion. Bake everything as written (if you need to use another sheet pan to fit the chicken, do it!) and serve the sliced chicken with a side of roasted squash and crispy kale topped with goat cheese and a drizzle of the dressing or balsamic glaze. You could add some brown rice or quinoa to your plate/bowl, too, if you’d like!
If you have the chance to prep ahead and want to take things up a notch, marinate your chicken before you cook it. Double the dressing and pour half of it into a zip-top bag or airtight food storage container, add your chicken breasts, and let them marinate in the fridge for anywhere from 2 to 24 hours. Shake excess marinade off the chicken before you add it to the sheet pan then discard the used marinade.
Most grocery stores stock chopped butternut squash this time of year, which is a very helpful hack when you don’t feel like cooking, because peeling and chopping butternut squash is a P.I.T.A. If your store doesn’t have pre-cut squash, grab a small butternut squash (it’ll probably be about 3 pounds), peel it, then rinse it with water — this will get rid of that slippery, slimy feeling. Cut it in half vertically, use a spoon to scoop out the seeds, then chop the squash into 1-inch cubes (for reference, your top thumb joint is roughly 1 inch long).
You will wind up with more than 1 pound of cubed squash (the amount this recipe calls for), but go ahead and roast the entire thing! You can add the extra squash to this salad, turn your leftover squash into butternut squash soup, or freeze it to make this salad again in a few weeks.
Years ago, a What To Cooker said she doesn’t do butternut squash because, “it tastes too squashy.” If you, too, think that you don’t like winter squashes like butternut, delicata, acorn, etc., because they’re too “squashy” tasting, I’d argue that it’s not the squash’s fault — you just need to cook it longer! This theory also applies to roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, fennel, and many other hard vegetables. If you think you don’t like them, try cooking them until they are golden brown and super tender — like until you’re thinking to yourself, “did I cook this too long?!” When you toss your borderline-overcooked squash into this salad, it should fall apart a little bit. You should not bite into a dense cube — it should be entirely squishy. When squash roasts for long enough to caramelize, that “squashy” flavor vanishes and is replaced by one that’s sweet and delicious.
You are looking for a golden brown color on the outside of your squash and, like I just said, an entirely squishy center. If your butternut squash is turning black on the outside, your oven likely runs hot and you’ll need to lower the temperature a bit. If you suspect that your oven runs hot or cold, you can use this in-oven thermometer to gauge exactly how off it is.
This sheet-pan chicken and squash dinner has similar notes as today’s, but uses delicata squash and chicken thighs, and skips the salad part. If you’re not yet ready to embrace fall flavors, make my lemon-parm chicken, quinoa, & kale salad good-all-week instead!
Serves 3 to 4
Cook time: 45 minutes
