Roasted spaghetti squash with homemade broccoli pumpkin seed pesto makes for a light yet filling and nutritious low-carb vegetarian dinner – Add your favorite animal protein to make it even more filling and well-balanced.
While from where I stand, spaghetti squash bears zero resemblance to actual spaghetti, it still makes for a comforting meal during those chilly winter nights when all you want to do is curl up with something hot and steamy and stringy-cheesy.
All in all, this recipe is…
- Healthful
- Relatively quick and easy
- Gluten-free
- Vegetarian (can easily be made vegan, or can easily include animal protein)
- Fun to consume
- Flavor-blasted
Let’s talk about broccoli pesto for a hot second. SAWEET ramalamadingdong, I’d never think in a million years broccoli would make a good pesto…it does folks. Truly, madly, deeply, it does.
So much so, that I made this exact meal 5 out of 7 sequential days until all of the pesto had been used up.
Which brings me to my next point: the recipe for the broccoli pumpkin seed pesto makes enough for 3 to 4 spaghetti squashes (totaling 6 or 8 spaghetti squash halves).
You can either bang out dinner for 6 to 8 or do as I did and eat on the pesto throughout the week. Or, you can store the pesto in a sealed jar and keep it in the freezer for future uses.
The roasted pumpkin seeds are everything in this pesto – roasting the pumpkin seeds is easy and speedy quick, and the process yields so much nutty, rich flavor. Of course you can skip the roasting if you’re under a time crunch.
How to Make Spaghetti Squash with Broccoli Pumpkin Seed Pesto:
The order of operations here is you roast the spaghetti squash in the oven (if you’re new to spaghetti squash or could use some tips, check out my tutorial on How to Roast Spaghetti Squash), and prepare the pesto while the squash is roasting.
I blanch the broccoli prior to turning it into pesto mostly to be sure nothing wacky inhabiting the broccoli makes it into my pesto, but also because I prefer the flavor and texture over using raw broccoli.
Once the spaghetti squash and the broccoli pesto are finished, I simply combine the two forces, grate a metric ton of parmesan over the meal, and savor every bite of this plant-centric dinner.
More Healthy Spaghetti Squash Recipes:
- Mixed Vegetable Spaghetti Squash Marinara
- Spaghetti Squash Pad Thai
- Turkey Bolognese Spaghetti Squash
- Greek Spaghetti Squash with Chicken
- Red Curry Meatballs with Spaghetti Squash
My cookbook, Paleo Power Bowls, is now available! CLICK HERE to check it out. Thank you for your support!
If you make this recipe, please feel free to share a photo and tag @TheRoastedRoot on Instagram!
Spaghetti feed!
Spaghetti Squash with Broccoli-Pumpkin Seed Pesto
Ingredients
- 3 to 4 spaghetti squash roasted
- 1 large crown broccoli chopped into florets
- 2/3 cup raw pumpkin seeds
- ½ cup Parmesan cheese grated
- 2 cloves large garlic minced
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt to taste
- 2/3 cup olive oil
Instructions
- Follow these instructions on How to Roast Spaghetti Squash.
- While the spaghetti squash is roasting, place chopped broccoli into a saucepan and cover with water. bring to a boil and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, just until bright green. Drain the water and immediately rinse the broccoli in a collander with cold water. Allow broccoli to cool all the way and pat dry.
- Spread the pumpkin seeds on a baking sheet and roast at 375 degrees F for 5 minutes, or until seeds are golden-brown.
- Add the blanched broccoli, pumpkin seeds, parmesan cheese, garlic, and sea salt to a food processor. Pulse until roughly chopped. Leaving the food processor on, slowly pour the olive oil through the opening at the top to combine. Continue processing until desired consistency is reached (Note: You may need to stop the food processor a few times to scrap the sides in order to get everything to combine). This recipe makes a very thick pesto sauce. For thinner consistency, add more olive oil until your desired consistency is reached.
- Serve spaghetti squash with desired amount of pesto sauce and garnish with more roasted pumpkin seeds and grated parmesan cheese.
Notes
Nutrition
Do you think this would work without the cheese? I’m dairy free but would love this recipe!
Hi Darby! I think the recipe will still taste great without the cheese! I’ve made pesto a bunch of times without it and I always love the way it turns out 🙂 Hope you enjoy! xo
I can see how you have added so many nutritious vegetables and made them into a fine dish that the kids and adults of the house would all enjoy. I can already see that my kids will love it when I surprise them with this amazing dish on the weekend afternoon. Can’t wait to try it out!
Parmesan cheese is definitely not vegetarian so I’m confuse why you’ve included it in a vegetarian recipe segment?
The other dishes look wonderful so thank you for publishing them.
Cheese is vegetarian, I think you may be referring to vegan. Vegans do not eat dairy (or meat) or anything that comes from an animal. Vegetarians do not eat meat, but still consume dairy ect, that includes cheese.
This was good and I enjoyed the interesting combination. I added some lemon and added a bit of the blanched broccoli to serve. It was a little too garlicky but overall I’ll definitely make this again.
Omigod, I cannot even. These have left me speechless and soundless, except for the part where I laughed out loud at seeing “ramalamadingdong” spelled out. Made. My. Day. It happens to be one of the words I have never known quite how to spell. So, THANK YOU for the recipe and THANK YOU for spelling out ramalamadingdong. The former will be happening in my kitchen and the latter will be happening in all forms of written communication. Could I pull it off in a faculty email chain? 🙂
LOL pretty please use, “ramalamadingdong” in a faculty email chain! It would be most ingenius! So happy you like the recipe and the use of the word, “ramalamadingdong” 😉
THese look so healthy and tasty for a chilly night! Love that the pesto is nut free!
I love all sorts of pesto, but I have yet to try broccoli, so that needs to change right away!
I am all about different kinds of pesto but never thought to try broccoli. Can’t wait to give it a go! And with pumpkin seeds I know I’m going to love it.
i like so very much
I love spaghetti squash and can use all the healthier flavor-blasted recipes I can get after last week. ????. I have a lot of broccoli in my garden and can’t wait to make pesto out of it — awesome idea!
Broccoli pesto AND spaghetti squash?! YES. I’ve never had broccoli pesto but I think it’s genius. I can only imagine the flavors in this baby!