We all know spinach is good for you, but could it taste good too?
Wanna know how to keep your spinach from becoming a soggy, tasteless mess?
Keep watching to learn how to take your spinach from slimy to savory!
Baby spinach is great. Eat it raw any time you want — just don't add it to your skillet,
put it in the oven, or use it in any other recipe that requires heat.
For that, you want mature spinach, which are those dark green, leafy bunches you
see at the store or farmers' market. You might have to look a little bit harder to find it,
as most spinach at the store is the baby stuff. But trust us when we say it will be worth it.
That's because the very qualities baby spinach is prized for when eaten raw — tender leaves with
a delicate flavor — cause it to break down too quickly when it's cooked. Thus leaving you with
a slimy mess. Mature spinach, on the other hand, has a more robust flavor and texture that stands
up to cooking without losing too much structure or becoming soggy. Mature spinach performs
much better in heat-requiring recipes, like sautéed spinach, soups, pasta sauces, and more.
If you can't find raw mature spinach, we recommend you look for frozen spinach.
It has the same flavor and texture, and it's just as nutrient-rich as the fresh stuff.
Martha Stewart gets behind this hack, too, and notes frozen spinach is picked and frozen at
its peak so it's always fresh and ready to go. Frozen vegetables are typically flash-frozen,
a process invented in the 1920s by the founder of Birds Eye.
It freezes vegetables so fast their cell walls can't be damaged. This preserves their texture,
flavor, color, and nutrients so well that their quality can be better than fresh.
Another benefit to frozen spinach is that it comes pre-blanched.
Blanching vegetables by cooking them very quickly in boiling water preserves nutrients, texture,
and flavor. And it helps you get that perfectly cooked spinach recipe every time. Even if you're
using fresh spinach, we recommend taking the extra step. It's quick, and a trick we swear by for the
ultimate creamed spinach. You can also do your own blanching to make it easier to freeze vegetables.
This is especially useful if you find mature spinach and want to stock up while you can.
If you've ever grabbed spinach from your fridge and have been met with a slimy,
wilted mess, you know how quickly it can go bad. Like many leafy greens, its high water content and
delicate structure leave it particularly prone to spoiling. The best way to help it stay fresh
longer than a day is to make sure it stays thoroughly dry. We recommend picking out any
leaves that have already yellowed or gone bad and rinsing the remaining spinach. Afterward,
pat it dry with a paper towel. Once every single spinach leaf is dry, it's best to store it in an
airtight container or salad spinner lined with more paper towels to soak up any moisture you
missed. Kept in the refrigerator this way, spinach should stay good for up to a week.
If you buy pre-packaged spinach, it's probably already been washed,
but if you're getting it fresh, you'll want to rinse it before cooking. Rinsing veggies helps
wash away bacteria that could make you sick, along with residue leftover from farming or processing.
Just wait to rinse your spinach until right before it's ready to cook.
Otherwise, your greens will go bad faster if you continue storing them in the fridge.
While you might see products made specifically for washing produce,
water works just as well. Research conducted at the University of Maine indicates that soaking
produce for a minute or two in distilled water works just as well as soaking it in the produce
wash. Speaking of soaking, though, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually
recommends rinsing under running water — which is great since that's even easier than a soak!
Make sure your spinach is completely dried off before you cook it to keep it from getting soupy.
Chances are you've probably noticed the mysterious vanishing act spinach pulls every
time you add it to a pan. The science behind this illusion is a rapid and drastic loss of water.
According to data published in Nutrition Review, spinach is more than 90% water,
so it's no surprise it shrinks so much when you cook it as that water evaporates away.
Keep that in mind when you're cooking with spinach and add a heck of a lot more to the
pan than what you hope to end up with in the end. We recommend using 10 to 12 cups of fresh,
torn spinach leaves for every one cup of cooked spinach you want to have at the end. If you're
using frozen spinach, one 10-ounce package should cook down to about a cup and a half.
It's interesting to note that since some vitamins are water-soluble, the water loss spinach
experiences when it's cooked means it loses a little bit of its vitamin C. On the flip side,
cooking spinach makes its iron and calcium easier to absorb – so you win some, you lose some.
If you remember only one thing about cooking spinach, it should be this…
"Don't overcook it. You overcook it, it's no good."
If you're making spinach by itself, the key is to cook it high and fast as opposed to low and slow.
If you're sautéing it, turn up the heat and cook the spinach in a little bit of
hot oil for only about 3 minutes, until it's barely wilted. Leave the lid off
and stir frequently so the water the spinach releases as it cooks can evaporate. Otherwise,
you run the risk of letting the spinach stew in too much liquid. This can be good in its
own right, but dilutes the bright, fresh taste you're often looking for with sautéed spinach.
You can also cook your spinach quickly by blanching it before mixing it into recipes
like creamed spinach or quiche. Just boil some water, add the spinach leaves,
and let them cook for about 30-40 seconds. Then transfer the spinach to a bowl of ice
water to halt the cooking process. You can also blanch spinach before
you freeze it to help it hold up to the cold. This is a great way to prevent
having to throw away any fresh spinach you don't think you'll use before it goes bad.
The internet is a treasure trove of food hacks, and one of our favorites is the perfect solution
to overcooked spinach — let's call it the colander trick. The best way to avoid exposing
your spinach to too much heat is to avoid letting it touch the stove at all. Instead of submerging
your spinach in boiling water on the stove or exposing it to the direct heat of a hot pan,
put it all into a colander and slowly, carefully pour boiling water over the top.
Since the water drains through the colander, the spinach is only exposed to heat for a
short amount of time. It wilts quickly instead of overcooking or becoming waterlogged. The spinach
you get is bright and perfectly tender every time. If you don't already have a colander,
this is just one of many reasons to invest in one. They're good to
have on hand for everything from washing veggies to steaming them.
By now, you know that all it takes to cook spinach is basically a little steam. So you can imagine
what might happen if you cool it in a big pile — it keeps cooking. The steam from the spinach
on the bottom will travel up through the spinach above and continue cooking it. This will ruin the
perfectly tender leaves you tried so carefully to time during your sautéing, steaming, or blanching.
That's why we recommend spreading cooked spinach out on a baking pan or plate to let it cool in
a single layer. This will help prevent it from overcooking. You can also use a silicone baking
sheet, or use a sheet of parchment paper. Putting down parchment paper first — even on top of your
baking pans — will allow you to easily slide the spinach off onto your plate when it's ready to go.
One of the major complaints about spinach is this…
"Ugh, god! It's all watery."
Nobody wants extra water with their spinach! Even if you do everything you can to minimize
the wateriness of your spinach while it cooks, there's still going to be some water left.
If you're planning to incorporate it into another recipe like lasagna,
spanakopita, or quiche, you'll want to give it a squeeze.
Now, there are several ways to remove water from your spinach — and several ways not to. Let's
start with the latter. Don't use a dish towel unless you want it tie-dyed green and white.
And skip the paper towel to avoid spending several aggravating minutes picking tiny pieces out when
you're done. The easiest way to do it correctly is to throw it in a colander and gently depress
it with your hand until most of the water has drained away. If you happen to have a sushi mat
or potato ricer, it's even easier and you don't need to touch the spinach much at all. Place your
sushi mat on a rimmed baking sheet to catch the water as it drains, lay the spinach across it,
and roll it up. You can also put the spinach in your potato ricer and squeeze it over a bowl.
If you turn up your nose at spinach, it could be because the spinach you've eaten has lacked
sufficient flavor. Spinach can be a little bland on its own, but it's the perfect canvas for adding
flavor, so don't be too stingy with the salt and pepper! Garlic goes very well with spinach, too.
We recommend you try sautéing spinach with a few whole garlic cloves to give it a subtle kick of
flavor throughout. And we love Rachael Ray's recipe for wilting spinach in garlic and oil.
The possibilities don't stop at sautéed spinach,
either. While that's definitely a common and easy way to make it,
spinach is also the star ingredient in many recipes. Some that seem a bit more complex,
from creamed spinach with caramelized onions and garlic in a thick, butter-based roux. Or there are
a plethora of pasta dishes that include a heaping helping of spinach. Give them a try, and you might
be surprised by how easy they actually are to make, especially compared to how fancy they taste.
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