This Roasted Squash Recipe Is the Ultimate Vegetarian Main

I need more vegetarian meals in my life. For reasons ethical, environmental, and healthful, I’ve been trying to find more plant-based meals that I love. But also ones that keep me full. And, if I’m being honest, ones that keep my husband full, because most of my home-cooked meals feed him too, and a disappointing number of my vegetarian dinners have sent him rummaging through the snack cabinet by 9. So I was excited to take on this roasted squash recipe, decked out with tahini-honey and crispy fried eggs which sounded not only tasty but also hearty enough to satisfy my cabinet-rummaging husband.

I decided to double it because I had a feeling it would make good lunch fixings. (I was right. More on that later.)

First up was toasting the farro, a nice step that a) makes your house smell like popcorn and b) adds a nice depth and nuttiness to the finished dish. Then I sliced up the acorn squash, which I was glad to see in the ingredient list instead of impossible-to-cut butternut squash. Had I been a more resourceful cook, I would have saved and rinsed the seeds, and roasted them with spices for a Healthyish snack. Sadly I was not that resourceful cook.

While the squash and onion did their thing in the oven, I made the sauce. Tahini is one of those things I didn’t cook with that much a year ago, and now cannot stop cooking with, so any dish with a tahini sauce is one I’m interested in. Last up are those crisp-edged fried eggs, one of my favorite finishing touches of all time.

The verdict: delicious. The salty-sweet sauce was a nice balance to the nutty farro, and those jammy roasted onions were nicely lightened by a flurry of fresh herbs. It also qualifies as the kind of dish that, as mentioned previously, can be oh-so elusive in my house: a filling vegetarian main that left neither of us craving a snack later. And, it turns out, a filling vegetarian lunch, too: I turned the leftovers into several days of take-to-work lunches, which I never got tired of and kept me full for hours. It’s great as is—though I did swap the fried eggs for jammy soft boiled ones for the sake of portability—but also the various components can be used separately. That sauce is delicious on simply-cooked chicken thighs (we can't be vegetarian every night, can we?) and the roasted squash and onions will lend heft to a simple green salad. A win on all counts.

Get the Recipe:

Roasted Squash and Grains with Tahini-Honey