How To Cut and Peel a Butternut Squash

How To Peel and Cut a Butternut Squash

Ingredients
Whole butternut squash

Equipment
Cutting board
Large sharp knife 
Vegetable peeler, preferably Y-shaped
Spoon

Instructions: 

1. Remove the ends first.

Choose a large, heavy, sharp knife to pierce the skin. Once you have the knife wedged in, lean into the knife adding weight (make sure the tips of your fingers are way out of the way!) and let the knife slice through the sturdy flesh, removing the top and the bottom ends of the squash.

2. Peel the squash.

Grab a sharp vegetable peeler that fits comfortably in your hand . Peel up the neck of the squash and around the base until all the peel has been removed. 

3. Halve the squash and remove the seeds.

Peeling the squash will leave you with areas of the squash that are slightly more flat. Find a flattened side, then use your knife to slice the neck of the squash away from the base. The anatomy of these two parts is slightly different. You’ll see that the neck is a solid piece of squash, while the base is where the seeds reside. Scoop out the seeds and stringy pieces. You can rinse and roast these as you would pumpkin seeds.

Determining How to Cut the Squash

From here, consult your recipe to determine whether you need to cut the squash into rounds, slices, wedges, or cubes.

If you are cutting it all the way down to cubes, the most efficient way to do it is to cut the neck into rounds, then cut those into sticks, and then turn and cut the sticks crosswise into cubes. Doing it this way means you’ll complete your chopping more quickly, and the cubes will be more uniform.