Lentil and Buckwheat Stuffed Acorn Squash Rings

Hello my friends and welcome to another beautiful and delicious recipe post! :)

I’ve been embracing squash season fully and I’m having so much fun trying new recipes with these beauties. These French Lentil & Buckwheat Stuffed Acorn Squash Rings are something I threw together super quickly but it ended up being such a WOW dish that I knew I had to share.

These Acorn Squash Rings are filled with the tastiest toppings that are super healthy and taste great ~ there’s lentils, buckwheat, dried cranberries, toasted pine nuts, spinach, balsamic glaze and pomegranate arils. All these flavours combined create a divine taste when paired up with the baked squash underneath.

Feel free to change up the ingredients to what you have on hand, for example if you don’t have buckwheat, use quinoa or brown rice instead.

How to bake Acorn Squash:

Keep the trimmed parts and end pieces and bake them too – those are great to add to a salad or leave uncooked and add to another recipe like this Squash Apple Soup:)

This healthy acorn squash recipe is naturally gluten-free, grain-free (because buckwheat is not a grain), and vegan. You can easily swap out the buckwheat and replace with a quinoa or brown rice or farro – depending on what you have on hand. I used buckwheat because it’s what I already had some leftover buckwheat – which was really the inspiration for this dish… I was like, what do I do with this buckwheat??? ;) I saw the two acorn squashes on the counter and voilà – this happened! :)

Lentil Buckwheat Stuffed Acorn Squash Rings

Ingredients:

1 acorn squash

1 cup buckwheat, cooked

1 sm can lentils, drained

1 small onion, diced

1 cup spinach, chopped

1/4 cup dried cranberries

2 tablespoons balsamic glaze

1/4 cup pine nuts

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

salt and pepper to taste

grapeseed oil for cooking

fresh thyme for plating

1/4 cup pomegranate arils for plating

Directions:

Cook the acorn squash rings as per instructions above.
In a saucepan, sauté the onion with grapeseed oil until golden. Add in the buckwheat and lentils and spinach and stir often. Add a little water if the mixture starts to stick to the pan. Add in balsamic vinaigrette. Season with thyme and basil and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in cranberries.
For serving, place the squash rings on a flat plate and top with the lentil mixture. Top with pine nuts, pomegranate arils and fresh thyme.

This dish was so amazing! I love how versatile squash is and also…. how gorgeous???

The flower shaped rings from this Acorn Squash make me just so happy! I LOVE when food looks beautiful – food should always be gorgeous because we eat with our eyes first! We really do… and this presentation is so beautiful for all your senses. Your eyes, your nose and taste buds are in for a treat! And the pomegranate arils look like jewels that top off this dish.

I hope you’ll enjoy this soon. It’s a lovely dish to make for your family or friends and makes it great for a buffet table or makes a great Thanksgiving recipe.

 

Ella Leché is a cookbook author (‘Cut the Sugar‘), recipe developer, and photographer/stylist behind Pure Ella; where she shares delicious and healthy recipes. Eating PURE is clean ingredients, whole foods, plant-based nourishment and delicious desserts – with quality ingredients and sweeteners so they’re treats with benefits so you won’t have to feel deprived or restricted to eat healthier.
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