Soy Chicken Spaghetti Squash Lo Mein

Summer has come to a close out here and that means dropping temperatures, weekend-long football binges and mountains of squash at the farmer’s market. There are so many gourds, zucchini and other fall veggies in our area that they easily give the best bang for your buck at our farmer’s market as we quickly realized when we stumbled onto a seller offering theirs in a $5 Fill-a-Bag.

That’s right, fill your reusable bag with your choice of acorns, butternuts, zucchini and the like and walk away having only spent $5. We ended up with 3 spaghetti and 3 butternuts, coming out to just 84 cents each!!
Right away, we were thinking we could turn one of the spaghetti squash into a Lo Mein, so we schlepped our weight lifting set... I mean, reusable shopping bag straining to contain all the weight back to the car, grabbed a few extra ingredients and headed back home to get cooking.

Spaghetti Squash Lo Mein

(Approx. 4 hours; 3 hours baking and prep, 1 hour to cook)

(Serves 6-8)

1 large spaghetti squash
2 1/2 lbs. of chicken thighs
1 onion
1/4 head of cabbage
5 oz. shredded carrots
1/2 of a large head of broccoli
6 Tbsp supreme soy sauce
4 Tbsp sesame oil
2-3 cups of bean sprouts (optional)

Prepping The Squash

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
Take a sharp knife or skewer and poke three to four rows of shallow holes along the top of the squash to allow steam to escape.

Bake for about 45-60 minutes or until the interior begins to soften.
Pull from the oven and let cool for 30 minutes to an hour.
When your squash is cooked and cooled, it should be decently soft and the skin should begin to split and crack.

Roll the squash along your cutting board, pressing down lightly to separate the skin from the noodley bits and peel off the skin.

The rest is pretty intuitive; set down a couple layers of paper towel and then just rip the squash apart,  laying the “pasta” down across in even layers, alternating between layers of squash and layers of paper towel.
If you have youngsters, they might have some fun helping you with this part.

Keep pulling the squash apart until you get to the seeds in the center and top with another layer of paper towels, keeping some weight on top with a cutting board. Let sit for 30 minutes to draw out some moisture before we cook the noodles down (this seems like a lot, but it’s totally worth it).

Heat up a large pan to high on your stove top and add a 2 Tbsp of sesame oil and the dried spaghetti squash.

Cook for 30 minutes, stirring every few minutes to soften and remove for use later.

Prepping The Veggies

Take your cabbage and remove the core before slicing into shreds or running through a food processor.

Go ahead and do the same with the onion.

 

Lastly, chop down your broccoli into bite-sized florets before putting all the veggies off to the side.

Cooking The Chicken

Stovetop space is at a bit of a premium here at the Table, so we opted to cook the chicken beforehand and add it in after the veggies were cooked.

Start by thinly slicing the chicken thighs into strips and then pop them in a large pan on high heat, portioning out a third of the strips at a time.

Add a Tbsp of soy sauce each time you add chicken and heat until browned through.

This next part was kind of a happy accident; when all the chicken was cooked, there was still a good amount of liquid in the pan, so we decided to utilize it and it totally paid off.

Remove the chicken and reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 7-10 minutes. It may be a bit greasy, so we took the liberty of removing some of the oil by dabbing the oily areas with a paper towel.

Pour the reduction on top of the cooked chicken and mix thoroughly. Keep off to the side for use later.

Putting It All Together

Add the chopped veggies, 3 Tbsp of soy sauce and 2 Tbsp of sesame oil to the pan and heat for 20 minutes before adding the squash and chicken back in. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat, give it all a stir and serve right away.

This is so simple, flavorful and filling while keeping carbs and sugar super low. If you’re willing to put in the work (and maybe have some fun with the whole family in the process), you can have a dish so irresistible that you may want to have seconds, or even thirds!!