Movies at Dinner: Spaghetti Squash with Sausage
This spaghetti squash with sausage recipe is a classic and always a reader favorite. Enjoy! 
Spaghetti Squash and Sausage Recipe
Films and Food. Oh, when they are good, they are sooooo good. Take the dialog from the following iconic scene:
“Goddamn, that’s a pretty fu**ing good milkshake.”
“Told ya.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth five dollars, but it’s pretty fu**ing good”
It’s hard to order a milkshake, especially not a $5 shake without thinking of Pulp Fiction. I can’t even order a high-$$$ everyday eatable without thinking of Pulp Fiction. The $12 burger? $16 pho? They all get the Vincent Vega skepticism.
Video for Delicious Spaghetti Squash with Sausage recipe:
This film and food connection extend way past burgers, shakes, and the cult dialog of Pulp Fiction. Sometimes it is the music linking the food & film forever in our minds. Mambo Italiano and Big Night, anyone? Or take Paolo Conte’s “Via con me” and the kitchen scenes of Mostly Martha.
Other times it will be a certain dish or ingredient which sparks the TCM flashback. Spice and chocolate – Chocolat. Any mention of bear meat – A Chef in Love. (Weird, I know but if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know what I’m talking about.) Nearly all of our Top 10 Food Films will inspire some sort of culinary trigger.
Sometimes they will even inspire or influence our cooking or techniques. I first tackled the challenge of Puff Pastry due to Babette’s Feast. And an obscure scene from Dinner Rush forever changed how I cook sausage.
One of the boys in the kitchen whips up a quick meal of sausage and pasta for the boss (Danny Aiello). To cook the sausage, he took an uncooked sausage, pulled pinches of sausage out of the casing, dropped the perfect little balls into the pan and quickly sauteed them up.
So simple. So brilliant. Something I had never seen or read about. We didn’t grow up in an Italian household so my ways about cooking Italian stemmed from books. And now, the movies have become our teachers too.
In a salute to the great food movies, here’s a simple little dish using this movie inspired cooking technique… Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Sausage.
We love spaghetti squash. It is a perfect winter squash, giving up a great texture when cooked right. Try not to cook it until it gets mushy. It should still have a little bite like… spaghetti. Mangia!
-Todd
P.S. Would love to hear your food and film connections! Whether it is just your favorite food movies or scenes (can’t end this without giving a shoutout to Tampopo – one of our favorites of all time), foods you associate with a movie, or anything else related. Hit us with your Fave Fives.
How to make this spaghetti squash with sausage recipe:
roast in oven until squash separate easily
sauté onions or shallots and garlic until lightly golden
cook pinched sausage until golden brown
add squash, cook until heated, toss with parmesan cheese & herbs. Enjoy!
Dive in. This spaghetti squash with sausage is soooo good.
Nothing beats tried and true kitchen tools and products, plus a little bonus of some of our favorites for entertaining. Here’s some of the favorites:
Paderno Spiralizer – The Classic! We’ve lost track of how many meals this one has made for us. Fantastic spiralizer.
KitchenAid Spiralizer Attachment – Spiralize, peel, core, slice. All from the power of the KitchenAid stand mixer. 
OXO Julienne Peeler – For those who love it simple. This great julienne peeler has seen a lot of mileage in our kitchen. This recipe was originally published in 2011 and re-published in 2020 with updated video.
Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Sausage
Ingredients
- 1 Spaghetti Squash (@3lbs or 1.35 kg)
- 2 Tablespoons (30 ml) Olive Oil , divided
- 1/2 large onion , thickly sliced
- 3 cloves Garlic , crushed or finely minced
- 1 pound (454 g) uncooked Sausage (any kind you prefer)
- 1 cup (100 g) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) finely chopped fresh Oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried oregano), or other complimentary herb to the sausage
- Kosher Salt , to taste
- fresh Cracked Black Pepper , to taste
Instructions
- Preheat Oven to 375°F. Oil a sheet pan with 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.
- Slice spaghetti squash in half lengthwise. (Kitchen Tip: Use the tip of the knife to first pierce and get the cut started. Once you get the first cut started the rest of the squash should slice easily.) Scoop out the seeds and strands, then place cut side down on the prepared sheet pan.
- Bake for 45 minutes, or until the squash flesh separates easily into strands with a fork. When cool enough to handle, finish loosening and removing the "spaghetti" from the shells and set aside.
- Pinch and pull small balls of sausage out of the casing (or make small balls from bulk sausage). Continue making small balls out of all of the sausage.
- Heat a large saute pan over medium heat. Heat remaining 1 Tablespoon of olive oil in pan, then add onions and garlic. Cook until soft, stirring every 30 seconds, then add sausage. Cook untouched until bottom side of sausage starts to brown, then stir. Continue cooking and stirring occasionally until the sausage is cooked through (@ 2-3 minutes depending on heat and size of sausage).Add spaghetti squash strands to the sausage and continue cooking until heated (usually less than a minute.)
- Remove from heat. Toss in paremsan cheese and oregano. Season with salt and fresh cracked pepper. Serve immediately.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned Today’s Special or Chef, although Chef is from 2014. Both really cute movies. My favorite food movies are Julie & Julia, Ratatouille and Eat Pray Love.
I love spaghetti squash and eat it all the time! I will be trying this recipe this week! Thank you!
This was REALLY delicious! I made it for lunch but I think it would’ve worked better as a dinner item since it was heavy and filling. I wish I used slightly less garlic than the 3 cloves (which I equated to 3 tsp of minced garlic) because it was just a TAD too much for me. Also, I ended up using about 3/4 cup of parmesan cheese which was plenty for me. I also substituted Al Fresco chicken sausage for the regular sausage and added in some spinach. It was really tasty and I’ll bet it’s good with some garlic bread.
no longer doing pork or beef but I’ll bet this works well with chicken sausage too…
It seems like every year I buy a spaghetti squash, hoping I’ll find that great recipe for it. Well, I guess this is the year! I liked the squash better roasted as in your instructions. Any other way seems to evaporate its delicate flavor. I added a little green pepper, mushroom and tomato because I had those on hand. I put the squash in the oven, prepped the ingredients and garlic bread. When the squash was done I sauteed everything and put the garlic bread in the oven to bake. Things came together quite easily. Thanks for the great recipe.
Love the Spaghetti Squash recipe! Either Home Alone 1 or 2 make me want cheese pizza and whenever I’m slicing garlic I think of Pauly in Goodfella’s…slice it paper thin with a razor….
Bought your beautiful book and made this recipe yesterday. It was fantastically delicious! Thank you so much.
As for movie-food connections, mine are both French movies: Amelie from Montmartre always makes me crave Creme Brulee, and Guardian Angels (1995) has a decadent looking Paris Brest pastry!
I made this tonight, and I thought it was AMAZING!!! Thanks for the creative recipe!
My favorite food movie, other than “Chocolat”, is “Tortilla Soup”.
Made this tonight, absolutely loved it!
I was looking for a unique spaghetti squash recipe, since we harvested 16 of them this season. It was great! We added feta cheese, and next time we will add grape tomatoes and kalamata olives…. mmmmm delish and thank you!
Had this last night it was simply amazing, my first spaghetti squash experience and I’m hooked!
This looks delicious! Gorgeous photos!
I made this tonight and it did not fall short of my expectations! I don’t eat grains, and so it totally hit the “pasta” spot for me:-) As far as food-movie connections go, definitely hands-down the Lady and the Tramp spaghetti and meatballs scene! It’s classic!
For me, my favourite food film so far has to be Julie and Julia, the film on the life of Julia Childs and the woman who dedicated a blog to working her way through all her recipes – made me want to try lobster, I’m just still saving up…
Put me off onion a bit though, especially when she tried chopping her way through a mountain of the stuff just to get some practice in!
I also whole-heartedly agree with whoever mentioned chocolat… Mmmmmm….
I’ve admired and followed you guys for years, shyly and from a distance, but had to emerge briefly to congratulate you on your growing success because I’m so excited about it. Whole Foods contract!
Re movies: I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Casino and Goodfellas — there are so many great food scenes in each. The one in Casino where all the bosses meet in the back room “and one of the guys even made his mom do all the cooking” always makes me hungry for homemade meatballs and red sauce. And the prison scene in Goodfellas (“. . . ah, the pork, that’s what gives it the flavor”), I could watch that over and over again.
I know this is a bit late and you may not see it, but we made this dish tonight and it was excellent! We used hot Italian sausage and we’ll definitely make this one again. Thanks for a great recipe!
It’s never late to share. So glad you loved it. Initially when we were making it, I thought about getting spicy sausage too. Right now we have 12 lbs of homemade sausage we’re using – so it might be a bit before we get to try a spicy sausage version. Glad to know it came out great!
Todd