Pumpkin-Spiced Roasted Squash & Chickpea Salad! Need something a little different to serve alongside your holiday staples? This warm salad dish is sweet, savory and filled with the flavors and aromas of the holiday season!
Delicata squash is having a moment. I noticed its popularity on the rise last fall, and I’ve continued to see more and more people using it lately.
I never jumped on the bandwagon last year, but when I started seeing them piled into pretty mounds at Trader Joe’s at the start of autumn this year, I figured it couldn’t hurt to toss a few in my cart and experiment with them at home. Now that I’ve cooked with them several times, I don’t know why it took me so long to get on board!
If you like squash but dread dealing with prepping it, then Delicata is the perfect variety for you. Unlike its tough-skinned counterparts, there is no need to peel Delicata squash which makes it a huge time saver. Since it’s typically smaller than butternut squash and not quite as wide as an acorn squash, it’s also much easier to chop, which I deeply appreciate since I can’t tell you how many times I’ve feared for my digits. {This is also the reason butternut squash is one of the only vegetables I buy pre-chopped — unharmed fingers are totally worth the convenience charge, if you ask me.}
Anyway, I bought some Delicata squash a few weeks ago to serve as a side dish when I had my family over for dinner, and everyone raved about how I prepared it so much that I decided I’d work on a Thanksgiving-worthy recipe to share here using the gourd-du-jour.
This Pumpkin-Spiced Delicata Squash & Chickpea Salad is what I came up with!
I know I throw this phrase around a lot, but it is SO EASY to make, especially since that Delicata squash is so much less difficult than the other kinds. You just chop, drop and toss everything with a mixture of oil, maple syrup and seasoning {salt and pumpkin spice blend to be exact} on one sheet pan, and let the oven do the rest of the work. The maple syrup glazes both the squash and the chickpeas, caramelizing everything as it roasts, and makes them taste like candy. The pumpkin spice pairs like a a dream with the naturally sweet and creamy interior of the squash. Ugh. It’s so good.
If you want to simplify the prepping even further, you don’t need to chop the squash into cubes if you don’t want to — it’s fairly quick-cooking even when it’s sliced in larger pieces. I thought the cubes worked well with the size of the chickpeas to make it easily “poppable”, but you can chop it however you’d like.
Finish it off by tossing in some pecans or pumpkin seeds, and maybe a handful of chopped greens for color and freshness, and you’ve got a new side dish for you Thanksgiving table that will be joining Delicata squash in the highest rankings of supermarket superlatives, taking the “Most Requested Side Dish” category every year. 😉
Pumpin-Spiced Delicata Squash & Chickpea Salad
