 Hey everyone welcome. Today I'm going to be making some spaghetti squash mac and cheese casserole. Now this is going to be low carb. We're going to be using spaghetti squash instead of pasta and then I'm going to be adding some broccoli, some bacon and some basil along with some you know grated up cheddar cheese and then I'm going to make a sauce out of cauliflower and garlic and it's going to tie everything together. It's delicious. I'm rocking Robin and I'm going to show you how to make it right after my chef joke. What did the linguine say to the spaghetti squash? Impasta! We're going to start our recipe by roasting our spaghetti squash so we're going to start here with a pan covered with parchment paper to make cleanup easier and we'll preheat our oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Now because our spaghetti squash is basically rock hard I like to cook mine ahead of time a little bit in the microwave for about five minutes so I'm going to poke a few holes in my squash with a fork so that it doesn't explode in the microwave. Pre-cooking the squash for five minutes before we actually roast it is just going to make it easier and safer to cut the squash up. Here's my squash after five minutes and it's still not that easy to cut but it's way easier when it's soft like this. Then I'll cut each half into thirds and we'll remove the seeds. At this point you can cut each ring in half like I did here and then just easily scoop out those seeds. Then we're going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil over all of the pieces and just rub it in with your hands. Now this will definitely keep the squash from drying out as it roasts in the oven because we're going to roast this for about 45 to 55 minutes. Once all the pieces are coated in oil then we're going to pop these right in the oven. Well the squash is roasting in the oven we're going to start on our bacon. Go ahead and lay in there about five pieces of bacon or maybe six if you want a little snack while you're waiting. Cook your bacon over a medium low heat turning it frequently until it's browned nice and golden like this and crispy. Place it on a paper towel covered plate and then after it cools we will chop it up. Chop the bacon into bite-sized pieces and set it aside for later. At some point you're going to want to grate up some sharp cheddar cheese here. You can use the kind that's already shredded but I prefer to do it myself because I don't like to eat mold inhibitors so do what works for you and don't forget you can get the written recipe below the video in the description area. It's time to start our cauliflower garlic sauce so I've got it half of an onion here which I'm going to chop up small and then we're going to place that into a frying pan the same one that had that bacon grease because that's going to give this so much great flavor. Now I poured some of the bacon grease out but I added a little bit back in there and then I'm also adding a little bit of olive oil too. Now we'll saute the onions for probably about 10 minutes until they're nice and golden brown. Now I have a half of an organic cauliflower here that I'm going to take the florets off just by cutting them off and then we'll cut this into kind of medium-sized pieces and then I'm going to steam it. Here's my nice big steamer so I'll just place everything in there with some water in the bottom of course and then you want to steam this until it turns you know fork tender but there is still some resistance to the fork. You don't want to overcook this. See how nice the fork goes into this but there is still some resistance. Here's what our onions look like after about 10 minutes of cooking they're getting a nice golden brown don't they look delicious. Then I'm going to add my fresh minced garlic and we're going to saute that for one minute more when the onions and the cauliflower are done and we're going to place both of them into my blender. Then we're going to add some paprika, a pinch of salt, some whole milk. I'm going to give this a little whirl and then I'm going to add some maple syrup. Now I would say you could add anywhere from one to two tablespoons of maple syrup here it just depends really on the volume of your sauce but we do need some to balance out the flavors. Mix it one more time taste it if you want then it's ready to go. It must be time for chef joke number two. Did you hear about the explosion at the cheese factory? There was debris everywhere. It's time to take our spaghetti squash out of the oven. Now check out how nice and golden brown this looks this is perfect. We'll let this cool for just a few minutes and then we'll start taking out the spaghetti squash. While that's cooling a bit I'm going to trim up some broccoli just like I did the cauliflower and we're going to steam this until it's just fork tender and by the way this is organic broccoli. It is time to shred the spaghetti squash so take a fork and just pull it right out you can see how it comes out like spaghetti and then I'll just place this right into my eight by eight baking dish. I almost forgot we want to chop up some basil fresh basil here is always the best so you just want to roll up your leaves and chop it up and you want to do this at the last minute because basil will oxidize and turn black rather quickly. Now I'm going to layer the casserole so after the spaghetti squash comes a little bit of bacon the little bit of basil a layer of cheddar cheese now for some garlic sauce this sauce is pretty thick so you're going to want to kind of spread it out a little bit as you pour it on. I will warn you this is a little bit difficult to mix in so you know making your layers maybe even do more layers would make it even easier but just keep stirring it and trying to blend it all in because you want that sauce everywhere so at this point I added the rest of the basil the bacon and more cheese and sauce do your best to mix this in you'll find it a little bit challenging but eventually you'll get it and then it should look something like this and then we're going to add the broccoli that we've steamed earlier so with that we're just going to set it on top and then I'm just going to kind of try and push it in with my spoon to kind of get it nestled in there then we'll finish that off with some cheese a little sprinkle of cheddar and then our parmesan cheese now I'm going to bake this in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes here's our spaghetti squash casserole just out of the oven it is smelling really wonderful here and I'm going to scoop some up and you're going to see how nice and cheesy and delicious this looks it makes an excellent side dish and it even looks like spaghetti check this out it is so savory and delicious you are going to love the flavors now even though this dish is chock full of vegetables it is very filling and rich now to go with this dish you're going to want to try my oven fried chicken click the link on the screen it'll take you right to the recipe this is easy and delicious too I hope you enjoyed today's video if you did let me know by smashing the like button and we'll see you back here next week for another delicious and healthy recipe