PM's Guide to the Ultimate DIY Thanksgiving: Squash Bowls

• Thanksgiving
• cooking
• DIY
• projects
• holidays

Winter squash may be most famous as pie filling and soup, but we like to make our squash pull more weight. Hard squash is a great substitute for bowls, or even great-aunt Hilda's tacky disposable serving platters. And even better, DIY bowls make for fewer dirty dishes to slog through before you can relax on the couch and enjoy some football.

Step 1: Pick a squash. There's a plethora of squash varieties—from butternut and spaghetti to sweet dumpling and kabocha. But to make a sturdy bowl, you can't rely on a flimsy base material. Choose from one of the harder round or oval squashes: sweet dumpling, carnival, buttercup and acorn are good for individual servings of soup; the larger pumpkin and kabocha can hold more volume and substitute for a serving dish.

Step 2: Cut and clean. No one wants to serve Thanksgiving dinner on dirty dishes. Make sure you rinse and dry the skin before cutting and cleaning. For pumpkin, kabocha or buttercup, cut around the stem to remove enough of the top section so that you can reach your hand inside. Shave off any rounded edges to produce a flat top. Cut the acorn and carnival in halves to produce two bowls from one squash. Remove the strings and seeds. A metal serving spoon or jack-o-lantern scoop makes quick work of this sticky job.

Step 3: Cook your bowl. When baking squash solely for consumption, you want the cooked flesh to be soft. But the shell of your bowl needs support from the flesh, so don't overcook it. Place the squash upside (or cut-side) down on a greased baking sheet. About 30 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees should do the trick.

Step 4: Remove excess flesh. Give the bowls some time to cool before handling. For the smaller squash, scoop out enough flesh so that your bowl has volume, but leave about a half-inch to provide support and shape to the shell. Not sure what to do with the innards? Check out the recipes below.

Step 5: Once you're finished scooping, you can fill them with soups, stuffing and any other Thanksgiving foods that go well with a little squash flavoring.

Now that you have squash innards to spare, here are some recipes for some tasty side dishes.

An acorn squash dish from our sister publication, Good Housekeeping, calls for a brown rice and turkey sausage stuffing.

Butternut squash apple bisque makes a great starter for Turkey Day, and presents well in the dark shell of a buttercup squash.

Want to present in a squash bowl without the squash soup? Try this roasted garlic soup recipe.

How to Fry a Turkey	Make Hard Cider in 30-Minutes	Build a Grill
Thanksgiving Gadget Guide	Simple Beer Brewing	Canning Basics
Gourd Dinnerware	Carving a Turkey	Turkey Day Home Prep

Comment Title
Your Name
Email Address
Website	make public
Comment
Please enter the characters shown below:
	Make sure your comment is relevant to the topic discussed. Comments not relevant to the topic will be deleted. Neither you nor Popular Mechanics has the ability to make your e-mail address public. However, we ask that you submit your e-mail address to us just in case we need to contact you. Thank you for your understanding--The Editors.