15 Flavorful Winter Squash Recipes to Try This Season

Winter squash appears everywhere this season, and with so many varieties to explore it’s easy to fall in love with this hearty vegetable. Below are 15 delicious winter squash recipes to try this year, plus a guide to six popular squash varieties and how to enjoy them.

Winter squashes are hearty, nutritious, filling, and incredibly versatile. Unlike summer squash, winter squash is harvested when its seeds are fully mature and the skin has hardened into a tough rind, usually in September or October before the first frost.

Beyond their attractive appearance, winter squashes are prized for their mild, sweet, and earthy flavors. They’re also low in calories and provide complex carbohydrates and dietary fiber, making them a satisfying, guilt-free ingredient.

This roundup covers six popular winter squash varieties—acorn, sugar pumpkin, delicata, butternut, autumn frost, and spaghetti squash—and offers a curated selection of favorite recipes from around the web to inspire your seasonal cooking.

Enjoy exploring these wholesome, flavorful squashes and the many ways to prepare them.

Acorn Squash

Acorn squash is shaped like an acorn with dark green skin and golden-orange flesh. It has a mildly sweet flavor and a slightly dry texture. This hard-skinned variety is often cooked with the skin on—slice along the natural ribs, toss with oil, herbs, or spices, and roast or bake.

Acorn squash purees well, making it a great addition to soups, stews, risottos, cakes, and other baked goods. Halves can be stuffed with meats, grains, cheese, or vegetables and baked for an attractive main or side. Properly stored, acorn squash will keep at room temperature for many weeks.

Favorite acorn squash recipes from around the web

Easy Roasted Acorn Squash – Primavera Kitchen

Sausage and Apple Stuffed Acorn Squash – Primavera Kitchen

Autumn Frost Squash

Autumn Frost produces attractive, blocky fruits with a tawny hue and a natural waxy bloom. Despite its gourd-like appearance, the flesh is sweet and earthy—similar to butternut squash—making it ideal for roasting, pies, soups, and quick breads. It stores well, so you can enjoy it long after harvest.

Favorite Autumn Frost squash recipes from around the web

Simple Roasted Squash Recipe – Garden in the Kitchen

Butternut Squash

Butternut squash has a bell-like shape with a long neck and a rounded base. Its thin, light-tan skin covers sweet, nutty orange flesh that becomes tender when cooked. Butternut is versatile—excellent roasted, steamed, sautéed, braised, grilled, or pureed.

Slice it into rounds, wedges, or cubes for curries, chilis, soups, stews, risottos, or as a filling for tacos, empanadas, and ravioli. It’s a reliable ingredient for both savory and sweet preparations.

Favorite butternut squash recipes from around the web

Sausage Stuffed Butternut Squash – Garden in the Kitchen

Ground Turkey Butternut Squash Skillet – Garden in the Kitchen

Butternut Squash Turmeric Soup – Garden in the Kitchen

Delicata Squash

Delicata squash are usually small and cylindrical with grooved skin and vertical stripes on a creamy yellow background. The thin, smooth skin is edible, which makes them easy to slice and quick to prepare.

When cooked, delicata is sweet, moist, and holds its shape well, making it ideal for stuffing with grains, meats, or cheeses, or for baking as a flavorful side dish.

Favorite delicata squash recipes from around the web

Quinoa & Spinach Delicata Squash – Garden in the Kitchen

Roasted Delicata Squash Recipe – Foolproof Living

Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti squash comes in various shapes, sizes, and colors—commonly ivory, yellow, or orange—with a seed-filled center. Raw, the flesh is solid, but when cooked it separates into strands that resemble spaghetti, making it a popular low-carb alternative to pasta.

It can be baked, boiled, steamed, or microwaved, then tossed with sauces, used as a base for fillings, or layered into casseroles and lasagnas.

Favorite spaghetti squash recipes from around the web

How to Cook Spaghetti Squash – Love and Lemons

Stuffed Spaghetti Squash – Green Healthy Cooking

Spaghetti Squash Lasagna – Well Plated

Sugar Pumpkins

Sugar pumpkins are small to medium, round, and uniform with dense, moist orange flesh and a seed-filled cavity. When cooked they’re tender and buttery with sweet, earthy, and nutty notes, making them ideal for baking and pureeing.

Use sugar pumpkins for pies, cheesecakes, pancakes, tarts, breads, custards, and flans, or in savory dishes like soups. They can be hollowed and stuffed, roasted in cubes, or sliced and grilled—versatile in both sweet and savory recipes.

Favorite sugar pumpkin recipes from around the web

Maple Sugar Pumpkin Pie – Taste of Home

Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake Bars – Sugar Apron

Cinnamon Brown Sugar Pumpkin Muffins – Simply Delicious Food