The Ultimate Squash Guide: All the Varieties and Their Best Uses

Want to learn how to cook spaghetti squash? Recipes featuring this classic gourd are a must as soon as the weather starts to cool. After baking your squash, the shredded flesh of this pulpy gourd looks identical to spaghetti, making it a healthy substitute for pasta. Its cavernous nature also makes it stellar for stuffing. For more inspiration, check out these healthy and delicious spaghetti squash recipes.

Of all the different types of squash, the rich orange flesh and sweetness of butternut makes it one of the most popular varieties of winter gourd. Want to learn how to cook butternut squash, but not sure where to start? Good news! It’s ideal for soups, risotto, gnocchi and ravioli – including this scrumptious hand pie recipe.

Mild in flavour, versatile and perfect for roasting, the acorn squash is dark green with a firm, yellow flesh. Earthy, slightly sweet and perfect for stuffing.

Similar in appearance to the acorn squash pictured here, a sweet dumpling is a perfect size to be carved and used as soup bowls. It tastes like a sweet potato and can be used in the same way: baked, roasted, mashed or in soups. While this recipe does call for acorn squash, you could easily substitute for sweet dumpling squash.

The sugar pumpkin is mainly used for pumpkin pie. However, much like other orange-fleshed squash, it’s delicious in soups or simply roasted.

The thin-skinned delicata has a soft, creamy consistency similar to sweet potatoes. It can be baked, sautéed, steamed or stuffed – and you can even eat the tender skin.

This gourd is large, grey-blue and lumpy. The unusual skin hides a sweet orange flesh that’s perfect in pies — and makes for a great pumpkin substitute if you’re whipping up a seasonal dessert or entree. This recipe does not include blue hubbard squash, you can however substitute the pumpkin puree for the blue hubbard due to their similar consistency.

Their light yellow skin and long shape mirror the banana fruit. The sweet, orange, meaty flesh is great in soups (such as this versatile recipe that calls for any type of yellow-fleshed squash), curries or thinly-shaved in salads.