This colorful, flavorful dish will have guests excited to come to Thanksgiving each year! Filled with nutrients and naturally sweetened, you’ll love how it balances your more indulgent dishes.

Prep Time | 10 mins
Cook Time | 40 mins
Total Time | 50 mins

Ingredients

  • ½ medium butternut squash (roughly 3 lbs)
  • ½ stalk Brussels sprouts (~30 pieces)
  • 1 ¼ cups fresh cranberries
  • 1-2 tbsp avocado or olive oil
  • 2-3 tbsp pure maple syrup
  • salt & black pepper to taste

Instructions

  • Heat oven to 400°F.
  • Halve the butternut squash, peel, and cut into into 1/2 inch pieces and Halve or quarter the brussels sprouts, lengthwise.
  • Mix Brussels Sprouts, Squash, and Cranberries in a large bowl before drizzling oil and maple syrup over top, and stirring well.
  • Place mixture into two large baking dishes and place in the oven. If you layer the vegetables in one pan, cooking time will increase and texture may be compromised. Lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper as desired.
  • Bake a total 35-45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

Full article written by Kelly Jones MS, RD, CSSD, LDN on kellyjonesnutrition.com

We don’t only get satisfied from the nutrients in food and how the fill our stomach, but also from the taste and enjoyment they bring. This dish helps promote satiety with it’s color, flavor, texture, and fiber! It’s important to enjoy all the foods you love on Thanksgiving, even if that means an overly full belly at the end of the day. But, including nutrient dense filling foods alongside your special indulgences may help you feel a bit better the next day.

Maple Syrup is a source of added sugar but can have some benefits versus refined sugar. It provides small amounts of calcium, iron, mangnesium & zinc. One study in 2010 found Canadian Maple Syrup to contain over 26 antioxidant compounds (3).

Eat a 1/2 Cup cooked of Butternut Squash and you’ve hit 2x your Vitamin A needs for the day as well as 1/4 of your needs for vitamin C! You’ll even get Vitamin E and some B vitamins from this nutrient powerhouse as well as good amounts of magnesium and potassium. The carotenoids & bioflavonoids in butternut squash are known to boost immunity and work as antioxidants.

Brussel Sprouts contain many antioxidant phytochemicals including sulfurophane which is found in research to aid the liver’s detoxifying actions and fight cancer cells in the body, especially linking to colon cancer. Other immune and antioxidant benefits may come from the prebiotics. The vegetable is also a good source of Vitamins C, K and folate.

Cranberries are very low in sugar, hence why sugar is added to dried cranberries and I included maple in this recipe! Fresh cranberries contain more fiber than sugar, so this helps to blunt sugar rises when sugar is added to the fruit. They’re rich in vitamins C, E, K, and the mineral manganese. They pack in phytochemicals like flavonoids, flavonols, phenolic acids and proanthocyanidins. Some new research shows cranberries can protect from certain bacteria, inflammation, cardiovascular disease (1) and act against cancerous tumors (2).