Natural form

Fresh spinach leaves showing the characteristic oval shape, deep green color, and prominent midrib.

Shows the reader exactly what raw spinach looks like — leaf shape, color, and texture — so they can identify it confidently.

Produce

Spinach

Tender greens for wilting, salads, and green smoothies

Mild and quick to wilt, spinach folds into pastas and curries or stays raw in a salad. It cooks down to a fraction of its volume, so grab plenty. Keep it dry and cold.

Spinach is a tender, mild leafy green that cooks down to a fraction of its raw volume in seconds, melting into pastas, curries, and eggs or staying bright and soft in a salad. Its gentle, slightly mineral flavor takes well to garlic, cream, lemon, and warm spices. Quick-cooking and endlessly versatile, it's one of the easiest ways to fold greens into almost any dish — just buy far more than you think you need.

Measured in: g
Storage: Refrigerate
Shelf life: 5 days

Find it in

Produce

Types & varieties

Baby spinach

Tender, mild, no stems; great raw and quick-cooked

Savoy (curly)

Crinkled, robust leaves; stands up to cooking

Flat-leaf

Smooth, easy to clean; the common bunched mature spinach

How to choose

Look for crisp, deep-green leaves with no yellowing, dark slimy patches, or sour smell. Bunched mature spinach should have firm stems; bagged baby spinach should be dry and lively, never wet and matted in the bag.

How to store and wash

Keep spinach dry and cold in the crisper — moisture turns it to slime fast. Don't wash until you're ready to use it. Mature bunched spinach can hide grit, so swish it in a big bowl of cold water, let sand sink, lift it out, and dry it well.

Store dry; wash just before use
Swish bunched spinach to release grit
Use within a few days

How to cook it down

Spinach wilts almost instantly, so add it at the very end — a quick sauté in oil and garlic, or stirred into a hot dish off the heat. It releases a lot of water, so cook in batches and, for dishes like spanakopita, squeeze the cooked spinach hard to remove moisture. A note: the oxalic acid that gives raw spinach its faint chalkiness is reduced by cooking.