Sheet Pan Chorizo Cakes with Spaghetti Squash

Sheet Pan · Autumn & Winter · Serves 4

The sheet pan comes out of the oven smelling of smoked paprika and rendered fat, and for a moment the kitchen smells like a tapas bar at noon — warm, faintly oily, charged with something savory and red. The chorizo cakes have bronzed unevenly at the edges, which is exactly what you want. Alongside them, the spaghetti squash has roasted until its strands pull apart in long, pale ribbons that hold the meat’s drippings in their grooves.

Sheet Pan Chorizo Cakes with Spaghetti Squash is a dish with two textures working against each other deliberately: the cakes firm and slightly crisp where they met the pan, the squash yielding and fibrous in a way that no pasta quite replicates. Chorizo — the cured, dried Spanish variety rather than the raw Mexican kind — does the flavor work here almost entirely on its own. The fat it releases as it cooks becomes the sauce. The squash catches it. Very little else is required.

This is an autumn and winter dish, suited to the moment when spaghetti squash fills the produce bins and you want something warm on the table without standing over a stove. Everything roasts on a single pan. The oven does the work.

Why This One Earns Its Place

Sheet pan dinners have a reputation for being simple to the point of being uninteresting — a protein and a vegetable, thrown together, hoping the oven does something with them. This is not that. The chorizo cakes require a brief moment of assembly before they go in, and that step — mixing, shaping, pressing — is what transforms loose ingredients into something with structure and a seared crust. It is ten minutes of work that accounts for most of the dish’s character.

Spaghetti squash also asks something of you: it needs time. Forty minutes at a proper roasting temperature, cut-side down so the interior steams in its own moisture while the edge caramelizes against the pan. Rushed, it is watery and bland. Given time, it is dense, slightly sweet, and capable of standing up to anything laid across it.

The dish is also genuinely low in carbohydrates without performing the fact. Nobody eating it is thinking about what it lacks. They are thinking about the fat pooled in the squash strands, and whether there is more.

What You’ll Need

• 1 medium spaghetti squash (about 3 lbs / 1.4 kg) — look for one that feels heavy for its size and has no soft spots; a lighter squash often means a drier, less flavorful interior
• 300g (10.5 oz) cured Spanish chorizo, casing removed — not fresh/raw chorizo; the cured variety is what produces the orange-red rendered fat that defines the dish. Raw chorizo produces a looser, greasier cake that does not hold its shape
• 250g (9 oz) ground pork — acts as a binder and extends the chorizo without diluting it; lean pork (90/10) works but the cakes will be drier. 80/20 is preferable
• 1 large egg — holds the cakes together during the first 15 minutes of cooking before the proteins set; without it, the cakes crumble when you try to serve them
• 3 tbsp breadcrumbs (plain, not seasoned) — absorbs excess moisture from the chorizo as it renders; omit for a gluten-free version, but add an extra egg yolk to compensate for binding
• 2 garlic cloves, finely grated
• 1 tsp smoked paprika — reinforces the chorizo’s existing smokiness; sweet paprika substitutes but the dish loses some of its depth
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil, divided
• Kosher salt
• 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped — to finish
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges — to serve

Making It

1. Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Halve the spaghetti squash lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Brush the cut surfaces with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place cut-side down on a foil-lined sheet pan. Roast for 40 minutes. The squash is ready when the skin yields to firm pressure from a finger and the edges where it meets the pan have turned amber. Do not rush this — undercooked spaghetti squash is waterlogged and stringy in the wrong way.
2. While the squash roasts, make the chorizo cakes. Pulse the chorizo in a food processor until finely chopped but not paste — you want small, distinct pieces that will render and crisp, not a uniform mass. If you do not have a food processor, chop it as finely as a knife allows. Transfer to a bowl with the ground pork, egg, breadcrumbs, garlic, smoked paprika, thyme, and black pepper. Mix with your hands until just combined. Overworking develops the protein in the pork and produces cakes with a dense, bouncy texture rather than a tender one.
3. Divide the mixture into 8 equal portions. Shape each into a cake roughly 1 inch thick — not thinner. A thin cake dries out before the center cooks through; a thicker one stays moist at the center while developing a proper crust on the exterior.
4. When the squash has finished roasting, remove the pan from the oven. Flip the squash halves cut-side up and use a fork to pull the strands loose — they should separate easily into long ribbons. Push them gently to the sides of the pan to make room in the center. Drizzle the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over the squash strands.
5. Arrange the chorizo cakes on the exposed center of the pan. Return the pan to the oven and roast for 18–22 minutes, until the cakes are firm to the touch, their edges have bronzed, and the internal temperature reads 160°F (71°C). The fat released from the chorizo will pool around the cakes and run into the squash strands — this is not a problem to be managed, it is the sauce.
6. Remove from the oven. Let the cakes rest on the pan for 3 minutes before moving them — they will firm up and release from the foil more cleanly. Scatter parsley over the pan. Serve directly from the sheet, with lemon wedges alongside.

The Quiet Decisions That Matter

The size of the chorizo pieces inside the cakes matters more than it might seem. Chorizo chopped to roughly 3–4mm pieces renders in patches rather than uniformly — some spots go crisp, others stay slightly chewy, and the contrast is what gives each bite of the cake its texture. A paste, by contrast, renders completely and evenly, producing a denser, more uniform result that is noticeably less interesting to eat.

The cut-side-down position of the squash during the first roast is not optional. When the squash rests cut-side up, moisture evaporates freely from the interior and the strands dry out before they cook through. Cut-side down, the squash steams itself in its own trapped moisture, which cooks the interior fully, and the heat conducts through the pan into the flesh rather than passing through hot air. The result is strands that are cooked through and have structural integrity when you fork them apart — not ones that fall into a wet tangle.

Resting the cakes before serving is a small thing with a noticeable effect. The proteins in the pork continue to firm as they cool from 160°F to roughly 145°F in those three minutes. A cake moved immediately from oven to plate will break along its edge. The same cake rested briefly will hold its shape cleanly when lifted with a spatula.

Where It Goes Wrong

The cakes fall apart on the pan. This happens when the chorizo was too coarsely chopped and the mixture did not bind properly, or when the cakes were shaped too thin and dried out before the egg had time to set. Keep the cakes at least 1 inch thick and make sure the chorizo is finely chopped before mixing. If the mixture feels loose before shaping, refrigerate it for 20 minutes — the cold firms the fat and makes the cakes easier to handle.

The squash is watery. The squash was either underoasted or placed cut-side up from the start. Forty minutes cut-side down at 400°F is the minimum. If you pierce the skin with a knife and the flesh resists, it needs more time. A watery squash will dilute the chorizo drippings and make the finished dish loose and flat-tasting.

The cakes taste greasy. This is a chorizo quality issue, not a technique issue. Mass-produced cured chorizo contains a higher proportion of fat and a lower proportion of meat than artisan varieties, and it releases more grease than the squash can absorb. Use a higher-quality chorizo and the rendered fat stays at a level where it reads as richness rather than excess.

The squash strands are pale and bland. The drippings from the cakes did not reach the squash. This happens when the cakes are placed too far from the squash strands on the pan, or when the pan is too large and the fat spreads too thinly to pool. Keep the squash pushed close to the edges and the cakes in the center so the fat flows naturally toward the strands.

Ways to Make It Your Own

Add a fried egg. A fried egg placed on top of each cake at serving, yolk unbroken, turns the dish into something more substantial for a late breakfast or brunch. The yolk breaks at the table and runs into the squash strands as a second, richer sauce. The combination of smoked chorizo fat and egg yolk is not subtle, but it works completely.

Swap the spaghetti squash for roasted fennel. Two large fennel bulbs, halved and roasted cut-side down alongside the cakes, develop a sweet, anise-forward character that plays against the chorizo’s smokiness in a way the squash does not. The fennel absorbs the rendered fat differently — more visibly, more intensely — and the finished plate looks quite different while the method stays identical.

Add crumbled feta at the end. Two ounces of crumbled feta scattered over the pan when it comes out of the oven melts slightly against the heat and introduces a sharp, briny note that cuts through the fat. It also makes the dish look considerably more finished without any additional work.

Use merguez in place of chorizo. Merguez — North African lamb sausage, spiced with harissa and cumin — produces a different rendered fat, darker and more mineral, and shifts the dish’s flavor profile entirely. The method remains the same; the result is earthier and less sweet.

Putting It on the Table

Serve the Sheet Pan Chorizo Cakes with Spaghetti Squash directly from the pan at the center of the table, with lemon wedges on the side. The lemon is not a garnish — a squeeze over the cakes immediately before eating cuts through the rendered fat and lifts everything. Do not skip it.

A simple green salad dressed with something sharp — a mustard vinaigrette or a plain red wine vinegar dressing — is the right accompaniment. The dish needs acid and crunch alongside it. A dressed arugula salad with shaved Parmesan works particularly well: the bitterness of the arugula and the salt of the cheese both complement the chorizo without echoing it.

For a more substantial table, warm crusty bread to serve alongside catches any remaining fat on the pan. The dish works well as a weeknight dinner for four, or scaled up to eight on two pans for a casual gathering where the cooking should feel effortless.

Keeping and Reheating

Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator, keeping the cakes and squash together. The rendered fat from the chorizo will congeal overnight into a pale, waxy layer. This is not a problem — it re-liquefies with heat and the flavor is entirely intact.

To reheat, the oven is the right tool. Spread everything on a sheet pan and place in a 375°F (190°C) oven for 12 minutes. The cakes will crisp slightly on the exterior again, and the squash will warm through without going watery. The microwave produces a softer, steamed result that is acceptable but noticeably different in texture — the crust on the cakes goes soft and the squash releases moisture it had absorbed from the fat.

The cakes hold well for up to three days. Beyond that, the squash begins to break down and the texture of the combined dish suffers. Freeze the cakes alone, without the squash, if you want to extend their life — they freeze well for up to a month and reheat from frozen at 400°F for 20 minutes.

Approximate Nutrition Per Serving

All values are approximate estimates for informational purposes only. Based on 4 servings. Actual values vary with specific ingredient brands and chorizo fat content.

What It Leaves You With

There is a particular satisfaction in a dish that does not require you to perform for it — where the oven handles the transformation and you arrive at the table with something that looks and tastes like the result of more effort than it asked for. Sheet Pan Chorizo Cakes with Spaghetti Squash is that kind of recipe: quiet to make, vivid to eat, the kind of thing that earns a place in regular rotation not because it is impressive but because it is reliably, consistently itself.

The lemon wedge at the end is not an afterthought. Neither is the rest. Make both happen and the dish will return the favor.