I know some pretty rad bloggers out there. Know, meaning I read their blogs. Read, meaning I look at their pictures. And then I sometimes steal their ideas. It’s just easy to do. I’ll see their blog post about some kind of ridiculously amazing paleo food invention and can’t help but try to make it my own. I do that often. Stealing? Maybe. Judge me. Do it. Sorry for not being sorry.
So I recently decided to steal Health Bent‘s paleo butternut squash lasagna idea. Have you ever seen this website? Holy sh*t, it’s STUPID fantastic. By far one of the best paleo blogs around. Not only is their website ridiculously good, but their recipes are to.die.for. When I first started eating paleo, their website was what made me believe I could actually stick with paleo. And I absolutely love their view point on the paleo diet. It is very 2011. AND the couple that runs the website is pretty damn good looking. I like good looking people.
Now it’s time to cook.
Garlic Chicken Butternut Squash Lasagna
Ingredients
- 1 large butternut squash
- 1 head garlic clove, roasted
- 1/2 yellow onion, diced
- 1/2 lb chicken, diced
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup canned coconut milk
- 1/8 cup tomato sauce
- 1 teaspoon basil (fresh or dried)
- 1 teaspoon parsley (fresh or dried)
- salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Cut the end off the bulb of garlic to reveal the cloves inside. Wrap in aluminum foil and throw in the oven for 20-25 minutes.
- While the garlic is roasting, you’ll need to cut your butternut squash. Use a sharp knife ya dummy.You can do this a couple different ways but remember, you are trying to get the long squash into “lasagna type strips”.
- What I did (Megan and Brandon at Health-Bent taught me this): Cut the end off the squash, then use a peeler to take off the skin. Then cut the squash into 1/4s lengthwise. Remove seeds and strings. Then you can do 1 of 2 things: either use a knife to slice the butternut squash into strips or use a mandoline to slice the butternut squash into thinner strips (that’s what I did).
- Set aside and begin to make your chicken and sauce.
- Add olive oil to a skillet over medium-high heat. Add your diced onion to begin to cook. After about 3 minutes of coating your onions and bringing out their flavor, add your diced chicken along with a bit of salt. Let the chicken cook under low heat while you make your sauce.
- Your head of garlic should be roasted by now, so pull it out of the oven and remove the roasted cloves and put directly into your food processor. You can you a fork to pull them out of just squeeze the b*tch. Up to you.
- Add olive oil to your food processor along with the roasted garlic and turn your food processor on. Prepare yourself for your kitchen to smell like heaven. Sh*t, I love garlic. Once the garlic cloves have become a paste, add your coconut milk and tomato sauce along with basil and parsley. Pulse until saucy. Taste and add salt and pepper to your liking.
- When the chicken is ALMOST done cooking (yes, it can still have a little pink to it), remove from heat.
- Now for the lasagna stacking. Pull out a 8×8 or 9×9 glass baking dish, coat the bottom of the dish with a bit of sauce, then add a layer of butternut squash strips, a layer of chicken, and a layer of sauce. Repeat until you are all out of chicken and butternut squash. The last layer should be butternut squash and topped off with sauce.
- Bake, uncovered, for around 40-45 minutes. The squash should be tender BUT do not cut into it until it has set for a while. I gave mine about an hour. I know, I know, it sucks ass. But it will be a difference and will actually be like lasagna instead of a throw together. Got it? Cool.
Steffer- You are my kind of human. I like you.
Kat- did you try it?!
Lisa- So glad you liked it!!
Kaitlin- lol what?
Monica- That's awesome!! Glad the family/friends even liked it!
I was looking for something different to make for dinner last night and settled on this. It was FANtastic. I gave the sauce mix the side-eye at first becuase I wasn’t sure how coconut milk and tomato sauce would taste together, but it was amazing and I feel shame for being skeptical that anything involving coconut milk could be bad…..thanks for the recipe !!
Glad you liked it Chlow!! I’m proud of you for trusting me. If I’m good at anything, it’s eating so I don’t tend to post stuff that i cook that turns out like crap
I feel like you would be MORE proud if I could spell my own name correctly. I fail at typing.
I lost the battle with the butternut squash. WAY too hard to slice.. my knives suck.
Such a biotch to slice, it’s all about the knives. Sharp knives are the best investment in a kitchen
I made this tonight, but also threw in a couple of yellow squash and zucchini that were about to turn questionable in their age. And half a can of sliced olives I had laying around. And then I had to use a bigger pan. And then I ran out of sauce, so I had to MacGyver some more out of tomato paste and coco milk. Now it’s sitting and waiting for me and I’ve never had a longer hour in my life! I’m contenting myself with a nice Strongbow cider while I wait. I think you’d approve. Thanks for all your awesome recipes! They’re deeeeeeee-lish!
lalala loved this recipe! Well I’ve loved all the ones I’ve tried so far this is just the first one I’m posting about 🙂 Totally added 2 yellow squash & 1 large zuchinni to the chicken & added in a roasted red pepper to the food processor (that I had left over from your avocado roasted red pepper dip for the steak hash). Basically doubled all the other ingredients, the worst part was waiting for it to cook! Def worth the wait! Keep the awesome recipes coming!!! I plan all my meals for the week off of your site!
*Squee* This is baking in the oven right now! My whole house smells like smoooooooth garlic. NOM. One suggestion though, I’d double the coconut milk and triple the tomato sauce called for. The recipe as stated doesn’t leave you with much sauce to get a decent cover of the squash IMHO. Can’t wait to chow down!
This recipe is one of my faves! But My thoughts exactly. I thought the garlic to “sauce” ratio was a little off?
Made this & it was delicious! Didn’t have tomato sauce on hand so I used fire roasted tomatoes with tomato paste & chicken stock ( cus thats what I had) & added roasted bell peppers like Heath-bent did in their sauce, sooo good with the coconut milk addition! I also doubled the Recipe which fed me & my hubby…no leftovers. So make more people! I’ve made Heath-bents version too, which is to die for, And this is a nice way to change it up! Thx for your genious Juli!
When you say let it set for an hour do you then mean the 45 minutes of cooking + 15 minutes of “setting” or 45 minutes of cooking + 60 minutes of “setting”? 🙂
An hour of setting. It’s annoying and tough and you most likely will not last that long, but that will get all the ingredients to “stick”together
Hi there, when you say tomato sauce do you mean the condiment or rather pureed tomatoes? I’m looking forward to trying this recipe!
Thank you 🙂
pureed tomatoes