Recipe of the Week: Butternut Squash Stew

Going through all of my Paleo recipes made me realize just how much I love sharing successful recipes with other people.  Because I love to cook, I’m always looking for awesome recipes…and now that I’m a mom, I’m also always looking for easy recipes.

So, starting this week, I will be sharing a “recipe of the week”.  It will be a recipe that I made the week before, and it will be one of two things: either (1) a more challenging recipe that was totally worth it, or (2) a quick and easy recipe that either moms or busy people will appreciate.

Please don’t expect awesome pictures, because I’m not interested in starting a food blog.  Please don’t expect a ton of original recipes either, because I’m not THAT amazing of a cook.  But please do expect:

• Descriptions that will hopefully help you quickly determine whether it’s worth your time to even try the recipe.
• Lots of substitution options.  Lots.  Because it’s silly when a recipe requires you to go spend $30 on a bunch of random ingredients you’re never going to use again.
• Recipes that are either healthy or worth it.  So if it’s not healthy, it’s going to be delicious.

Without further ado, our very first recipe of the week:

Butternut Squash Stew

This recipe comes from Allrecipes.com, and is technically called Moroccan Tagine.  But I didn’t want to freak some of you out.

Description

• Easy/fast
• Minimal ingredients
• Stuff you probably already have in your kitchen
• Cheap
• Kid-friendly (at least the chicken and the butternut squash)
• Can be made vegan
• Gluten free

Ingredients 

• 1 tablespoon coconut oil, butter, lard, or olive oil
  • Suggestion: refined coconut oil because it’s easy to find and can be heated to high temperatures.
• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves cut into chunks
  • Substitution: skip this to make a vegan meal, and just double the garbanzo beans.
  • Time saver: get yourself a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken and just throw 1-2 cups in there.
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
  • Suggestion: um…more like 5-6 cloves.
  • Time saver: it’s okay to skip fresh garlic and use garlic powder if you really need to.
• 1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped
  • Time saver: get the pre-peeled and pre-chopped butternut squash from Trader Joe’s.  I think they have it year-round.
• 1 15.5 oz can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
  • Substitution: as mentioned above, skip the chicken and double the beans to make this a vegan meal.  We do this a lot because it helps save money and get more plant-based meals into our diet so we’re not gorging on meat.
• 1 carrot, chopped
  • Time saver: skip this if you want to; it won’t change the recipe that much.
• 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
  • Suggestion: get fire roasted.  You can put this stuff in anything and it’ll make it taste amazing.  Props to Christina Trudgian for teaching me that!
• 1 14 oz can chicken broth
  • Suggestion: make your own ahead of time.  Let me know if you need help with this – it’s so ridiculously easy to make your own chicken broth, it will blow you away.
  • Substitution: use vegetable broth to keep the recipe vegan.
• 1 tablespoon sugar (don’t skip this, even though it’s weird)
• 1 tablespoon lemon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • Substitution: it’s hard to substitute for coriander, and if you have the cash, I’d suggest buying some because it’s useful in other recipes.  If you’d rather not buy some, you can substitute cumin, fresh cilantro, lemon oregano, or sage….just depending on what flavor you like best!
• 1 dash cayenne pepper

Directions

1. Heat your oil in a large pot over medium heat and cook the raw chicken and onion until done (or just onion).  When done, toss in your garlic and heat it up a bit, but don’t cook it for long – it’ll burn and taste gross.
2. Throw in the squash, garbanzo beans, carrot, tomatoes with juice, broth, sugar, lemon juice, and all seasonings.  You can also put in your cooked chicken at this point, if you are going with pre-cooked chicken instead of raw.
3. Bring everything to a boil, and then let it simmer on low for 30 minutes with a top on it.  You can actually go a bit longer if you want, but don’t go so long that the butternut squash turns mushy.
4. Serve alone, over rice/quinoa/couscous, or with toast.

Enjoy!