Recipe: Wholesome Acorn Squash and Wild Rice
To be honest we didn't really know what to do with it, we had several ideas like stuffing it with couscous, making a curry and just roasting the segments and having a bit of fish with it. We didn't fancy any of this though, especially the couscous as we'd had baked couscous and roasted veg the night before - recipe to come. In the end we had a browse through some books and websites and came across loads of different variations of squash (butternut included) with wild rice.
We borrowed ideas from various recipes and came up with this, I hope you give it a go and hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as we did!
Ingredients
- 1 Acorn or Butternut Squash cut in to 1-2cm segments - Skin left on if it looks nice and thin
- 125g Black Rice - Washed & Dried
- 125g Red Rice - Washed & Dried
- 250g Basmati Rice - Washed & Dried
- 2 Red Onions - sliced finely
- 8 Cloves of Garlic - Crushed
- 2 Red Chillies - Deseeded & Finely Sliced
- Bunch of Dill - Chopped
- Bunch of Parsley - Chopped
- 1 Lemon - Zest & Juice
- 1L Vegetable or Chicken Stock
- 100g Dried Cranberries
- 100g Mixed Nuts - Chopped
- Small Handful Mixed Seeds
- 1tsp Ground Cinnamon
- 1tsp Sugar
- Sea Salt and Black Pepper
Method
- Get the oven on - around 200°C/392°F/Gas Mark 5.
- Put the squash in an oven dish - toss it with a glug of olive oil, cinnamon, half the dill, the chillies and a pinch of salt & pepper.
- Put in the oven for 15 minutes. This will half cook it.... roughly.
- Get a pan that can go in the oven if possible (we couldn't). Put it on a medium-high heat.
- A glug of olive oil in the pan with the onions, garlic, red and black rice. Fry for roughly 10 minutes or till the onions are soft and the rice fragrant.
- Add the other half of the dill and the stock - Bring to the boil and simmer gently with lid on for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- 5 minutes in to simmering the squash can be removed from the oven and allowed to cool - toss in the small teaspoon of sugar.
- Remove the lid and stir in the basmati rice, lemon juice, lemon zest, cranberries, mixed nuts and seeds - reserving a little of each for garnish.
- Poke the squash segments half in and out in to the rice.
- Put in the oven covered for around 30-40 minutes - basically till it's cooked and golden coloured.
- Remove the lid and bake for another 5-10 minutes if you want some crispiness (who doesn't?)
- Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the remaining seeds, nuts, cranberries and chopped parsley.
- EAT!
This was a seriously tasty dinner - even my meat obsessed house mate enjoyed it. I was thinking after the meal that maybe some apple wedges could be poked into the rice as well - the tangy but sweet cranberries were amazing in it so I figured apples would add a nice juicy element to the dish - as well as being sweet and tangy.
I'm sure this could be served as an accompaniment to some grilled or pan seared fish or meats but, as I've already said, it made an excellent meal in itself.
I feel I should mention this amount will probably feed around 8 people, maybe more. You only see one oven dish in the photo - that was the leftovers, we ended up having to use two.
nom nom nom.

