Spinach has long been considered the ultimate way to incorporate iron into your diet, but it is also looked at as a bit of a gross vegetable.
Usually wet, soggy, and seemingly always cold, most people don’t really think of spinach as particularly appetizing.
However, spinach is not only an incredibly healthy vegetable side dish that is perfect for any meal, but it can also be super delicious, so long as you cook it properly!
How Can I Use My Homemade Spinach?
Homemade spinach that has been cooked properly can be used in basically any kind of recipe that you like!
It is perfect on its own as a rich and delicious vegetable light lunch, but it also works as a side dish for basically any kind of protein or carb. It should be rich, salty, and surprisingly tender, and pair with basically anything savory!
What Kind Of Special Equipment Do I Need To Make?
The only two pieces of special equipment you need to prepare spinach are a colander to soak and drain the spinach and a wide enough frying pan to handle all of the spinach leaves!
Ingredients
1 cup of Spinach
1 tbsp of Butter
1 tsp of Salt
How To Cook Spinach
Step 1 – Wash all of your spinach really well in cold, running water.
Step 2 – Transfer the still partially wet spinach into a wide frying pan, add your butter and salt, and start sweating the spinach over medium heat.
Step 3 – As the spinach cooks, it will wilt and release water – keep stirring to prevent sticking, and ensure that the spinach cooks evenly.
Step 4 – Once the spinach has completely wilted and shrunk down to 10% of its total size, continue cooking until the spinach starts to just start turning brown around the edges, but not enough for anything to burn.
Step 5 – Serve your spinach immediately and enjoy!
Troubleshooting Tips
• If you find that, when it comes to serving your spinach, it is just too overwhelmingly soggy, you probably didn’t give your spinach leaves enough time to evaporate off in the pan. The best way to avoid this is to constantly stir your spinach while it’s in the pan, giving it the chance to wilt and give up its moisture before you can even begin to consider it done.
• If when you bite into your spinach it feels like it tastes bland and uninteresting, you might just not have salted it enough! Feel free to just add a sprinkle of salt to your spinach now, but in the future make sure that you salt your food at every stage of cooking!
• One thing you might notice is that your spinach doesn’t seem to want to fit in your frying pan! If this happens, you just need to try and make enough room for it by either using a bigger pan or adding your spinach to the pan only a little bit at a time, giving time to each bit of spinach to wilt.
Nutritional Facts
For the health-conscious out there, here are the nutritional details for 1/4 cup of cooked spinach.
Calories: 185
Total Fat: 20.4 grams
Saturated Fat: 12.9 grams
Cholesterol: 54 milligrams
Sodium: 9.8 grams
Total Carbohydrates: 0.9 grams
Dietary Fiber: 0.6 grams
Sugars: 0.1 grams
Protein: 0.9 gram
Potassium: 148 milligrams
FAQs
When it comes to simply cooking spinach, there is no real difference between one type of spinach and another – though the larger, tougher spinach might be better when cooking it with no other ingredients except for fat and salt, baby spinach or some of the more interesting varieties of spinach out there work perfectly fine as well.
While this recipe is designed to utilize the richness and intense flavor of butter to help enrich the spinach, you can absolutely use any other kind of cooking oil or fat that you want!
Spinach and butter just has a bit of a long-honored tradition as a flavor combination, but absolutely do experiment and play around with different flavorings to find something that you like best!
While this spinach guide is definitely geared towards using the spinach as a side dish in its own right.
However, there is nothing to stop you from incorporating your cooked spinach into any recipe you like, such as spanakopita. Just make sure not to oversalt your spinach if you are planning on adding it to another recipe that might be salted on its own.
How to Cook Spinach
Ingredients
1 cup of Spinach
1 tbsp of Butter
1 tsp of Salt
Instructions
Step 1 – Wash all of your spinach really well in cold, running water.
Step 2 – Transfer the still partially wet spinach into a wide frying pan, add your butter and salt, and start sweating the spinach over medium heat.
Step 3 – As the spinach cooks, it will wilt and release water – keep stirring to prevent sticking, and ensure that the spinach cooks evenly.
Step 4 – Once the spinach has completely wilted and shrunk down to 10% of its total size, continue cooking until the spinach starts to just start turning brown around the edges, but not enough for anything to burn.
Step 5 – Serve your spinach immediately and enjoy!
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