Spinach is a vitamin bomb and a source of protein at the same time. We will show you how to cook spinach properly and what you should pay attention to.
Spinach contains many important vitamins and minerals, including folic acid and vitamin A. You can use it in salads, smoothies or vegetarian dishes, for example. Many use ready-made spinach from the freezer, but you can also easily cook fresh spinach yourself.
The basic rule for fresh spinach is that it should only be stored at room temperature for as short a time as possible. This is because spinach contains nitrate, which turns into nitrite at room temperature – nitrite is toxic in high concentrations. So if you bought spinach, put it in the fridge. You should also keep leftovers in a cool place. Then you can warm up spinach without hesitation.
Blanch, boil or puree spinach
How to cook fresh spinach:
First, you should remove stems that are too large or woody. You can then wash the spinach in a bowl of cold water. You should be thorough here: there is usually a lot of sand from the field in the spinach. Once you have washed the spinach, you can drain it.
Caution: Do not leave the spinach in water for too long when washing, otherwise it will lose too many vitamins.
Then you can briefly boil the spinach in a large pot with salted water. The easiest way is to add the spinach to the pot in batches and cook for a minute at a time.
Keep an eye on the spinach to make sure it doesn’t get too soft. The leaves should still be a little firm to the bite.
To blanch, put the spinach in ice water for a few minutes. This step is optional.
So you can already eat your spinach. You can also add spices like pepper and salt to make it taste better. More about this here: Seasoning spinach: This is how it tastes best.
If you want to puree the spinach, you should let it cook a little longer so that it can be processed more easily. After about five minutes you can shake it off, let it drain and, depending on your taste, refine it with a little (vegetable) cream before crushing it with the hand blender.
