- You know those cute little triangles, spinach cheese pies
you find in the freezer aisle at the grocery store?
They're called Spanakopita.
And I'm going to show you how to make a homemade version
because it's better.
Hey, everyone, it's Yumna from Feel Good Foodie.
And if you're like me, you probably love
that irresistible crunch of biting into crispy phyllo dough.
That's why I love Spanakopita, but I usually
can't just have one or two, but I also can't deal
with all the unnecessary ingredients in the packaged ones.
So I'm going to share with you
my super flavorful recipe made
with simply spinach, herbs and feta cheese.
And I'm also going to teach you how to roll them up.
It's super simple and super fun.
So let's get started.
We're going to start by making the filling.
So in the pan with some olive oil go some red onions
we want to cook the onions for a few minutes
until they soften just a bit.
Now we're going to add five cloves of garlic.
You can mince them or press them like I did.
And I'm also going to add two teaspoons
of dried dill and about half a teaspoon of black pepper.
And we're going to give that a good stir
until it's nice and fragrant just about two minutes.
And now we're going to add some spinach.
So what I did here was I started
with two ten ounces of frozen spinach.
I defrosted it, I drained it.
And now what we want to do is we want to grab
about one cup of packed spinach to the mixture.
And if you wanted to start
with fresh spinach, that's totally fine.
What you want to do then is just wilt it down
and try to remove as much moisture
as possible in the pan before adding the feta.
So we'll mix the spinach with the onion mixture now
until it's all well incorporated.
And now at this point we want to remove it from the heat
and stir in the rest of the ingredients.
And it's important to remove it from the heat
because we're going to add some feta cheese to it.
And we don't want the feta cheese to melt
when we add it to this part.
So I'm going to remove it from my hot plate.
We're going to continue to build onto that flavor.
So I'm going to add some fresh parsley
some green onions, some lemon zest, and some feta cheese
and give that all a good stir and that you guys
is the filling, you can have a lot of fun with it.
Substitute some ingredients.
The two most important ingredients are spinach
and feta cheese
but everything else you can totally play around with.
And now we're going to take this filling
and make the Spanakopita.
We're going to use some phyllo dough to make the recipe.
I like this brand.
It's called Athens and it's a Greek brand.
So I feel like you can really trust it.
So you can defrost this overnight in the fridge
or you can leave it out at room temperature
for three hours before using it.
And then when it's time to use it
just roll it out very carefully.
You're going to notice it's super delicate
and it's the same stuff we use to make baklava.
So to start we're going to cut this into thin strips
so that we can roll it into the Spanakopita.
I usually like to cut it into
three equal strips and I use the pizza cutter
because it just makes it's super easy to do so.
So just go ahead and just gently cut through.
And you may want to divide the stack in half.
If you find it easier to cut through.
And I'm just using a whole lot of power
to cut through, I think forty, forty, or twenty sheets.
This is about the size that you're looking for.
So kind of like two and a half
to three inches wide of strips
and it can be even longer if you want it to.
This size is actually, works really well.
It's about twelve inches long
and you'll notice right away that some
of these are starting to break and that's totally fine
because we're going to add a whole lot of butter.
That's going to glue it all together
but while you're not working
it's important to keep the phyllo dough pretty damp.
So I like to just use it a damp kitchen towel
and to cover this up while I'm not working.
So I'm going to create a working surface now
and then a non-working surface where I keep the rest
of the phyllo dough pretty damp.
So I find it easiest to work as an assembly line.
And instead of just doing one from start to finish
I like to do with three at once
or even sometimes six at once.
So this is like a really good time to like
grab your kids, grab your husband, grab a friend
and just do this on an assembly line
and do it with a group of people.
So what we're going to do first is we're going to
butter one layer of the phyllo
and it doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be even.
we're going to add a ton of butter to this.
And if you notice some of the phyllo breaking,
don't worry about it. It's totally fine.
So just try to gently and evenly apply the butter onto it.
What we're going to do now is add a second layer
of phyllo on top of the first layer.
And we'll add a second layer of butter
right on top of the second layer of filo.
Now we'll take some of this mixture
and add it to the bottom of each one.
So just a little filling like this
and don't overfill them too much.
We want to try to keep it about a tablespoon
to two tablespoon of filling for each one.
And what you want to do now is you want to just
try to pinch it into kind of a rough shape of a triangle.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Take a corner and tuck it up once you have that.
You'll tuck it one more time.
And then again
and then again and again, and again, and again.
Until you have a cute little triangle just like this
and now you can take it and place it on a baking dish.
We can also keep the assembled ones covered
with a damp kitchen towel.
Here's the first batch on a half sheet
and I'm just going to add a little bit of butter on top.
So they get nice and golden
and then we're going to bake them
in the preheated oven at 375
for twenty to twenty five minutes
until they get nice and crispy.
All right, you guys, they are done.
This is half the batch of the Spanakopita
out of the oven and they look so good.
So we're going to go ahead and plate them now
and then go ahead and do a taste test and to serve it.
I love adding some fresh parsley on top
and this makes such a great appetizer for the holidays
for anytime of the year, when you have friends
over it's much healthier than the packaged version
and it has truly authentic Greek taste to it.
And the best part you guys is that crunch.
So we got to have video Matt
try one of these and see what he thinks.
Awesome. He likes it.
And I'm going to try one of these as well.
You guys, because the smell
of them in the oven has been tantalizing.
It's like buttery and the smell
of that spinach and the feta.
So let's see what they taste like.
(Crunching sound).
Hmm. I think, you know what I'm about to say, but so good.
I just love it.
Oh