Brown butter butternut squash Alfredo

I’m not going to bore you with an elaborated blog story about how I ended up with too much butternut squash and how I’m now challenged with putting it on everything I’ll cook for the next couple of weeks. Simply put, fairly big butternut squashes were 99 cents EACH–great ‘deal’– so I bought a lot of them. Now, I have them all in my counter, looking at me as if they expect to become something more than soup!

I started downsizing my butternut squash stash with this brown butter butternut squash Alfredo recipe. Although I called it “Alfredo” this isn’t exactly the right name tag for this sauce. It’s not “real” Alfredo! The original stuff is much different than the Parmesan-heavy and delicious but pretty generic cream sauce normally described as Alfredo.

Tagliolini nests was the only pasta left in my pantry so that’s what I used, but you can use any kind of stringy pasta (fettuccini, spaghetti, even angel hair.) As long is cooked in water with loads of salt and ‘al dente’ it’s all good!

Roasted butternut squash always turns out sweeter and flavorful but it does take time. If you are in a hurry you can simply boil it for 15-20 minutes. Once your butternut squash is cooked, blend it with the milk and cream.

The last ingredient to be added to the sauce is the cheese. I used a mix of parmesan and Catamount Hills cheese–you can read more about it here) Parmesan and asiago can be a good combination too but if you only have Parmesan so be it! I transferred the pasta directly from the boiling pot to the sauce pan. Toss and twirl and lift and toss and twirl some more. Eventually the cheese will be melted and smoothly coating the pasta.

Serve it immediately!  Don’t wait. Plate it hot. Eat it hot. Even better with some chilled white wine!

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