Add Pancetta To Your Roasted Squash Pasta For A Blissful Texture

Fall is the perfect season for cooking with squash, and what better way to enjoy these autumn fruits than in a delectable pasta dish? Whether you're using butternut, acorn, kabocha, spaghetti squash, or the star of the fall season, pumpkin, adding them to your pasta recipe will bring earthy, nutty, and lightly sweet flavors. Blending them up can make for a delightfully creamy sauce, while gutting a spaghetti squash results in noodle-like tendrils that can substitute for the real thing. And yet, if you're relying on squash alone to define your pasta, you're going to end up with a pretty mild dish full of soft textures. 

What is the solution to balance out your recipe? Throw in some pancetta, an ingredient that boasts a crispy texture once cooked but remains silky enough to blend in with the fruits in your dish. While cooked squash tends to melt in your mouth, regardless of whether it's blended, diced, or in noodle form, pancetta will bring a much-needed bite. Plus, it has a strong salty flavor that will balance out the mild sweetness in your fruit.

If your recipe involves diced squash, such as a recipe for sausage and butternut squash pasta, it couldn't be easier to add in this meat. You can roast the fruit and the pancetta together in the oven, but make sure to pull your pancetta out before the squash. Then dice the meat and toss everything into the sauce before adding in the noodles. However, if you need all the space on your baking sheet for your fruit, you can also sauté the pancetta on the stove before adding the rest of the sauce's ingredients.

If you're making stuffed shells with squash or a spaghetti squash lasagna recipe, you can still cook your pancetta in the same way. Then chop it up and add it to your shell stuffing mixture or your sauce for the lasagna. But if your dish involves blended squash, leave the meat out of the sauce. After cooking up your pancetta on the stove, add the creamy sauce and pasta and stir everything together. Regardless of which type of squash pasta you're making, there's a delicious way to incorporate pancetta that will leave you with a yummy, salty bite.