Freezing Spinach: The Best Tips and Tricks

Spinach is very easy to freeze. There are just a few things you need to keep in mind to ensure leafy greens retain their color and important nutrients. So you can enjoy spinach all year round.

Freeze spinach – the preparation

If you’ve harvested too much spinach in your garden and haven’t used up the leafy greens, you can freeze them. You will need a freezer bag or a suitable plastic container for this.

1. First, the spinach leaves must be sorted out. Discard leaves that are beginning to rot or wilt, as well as the stems.
2. Before you freeze the spinach leaves, you should blanch the spinach to remove some of the nitrates and bitter substances from the leaves.
3. Bring water to a boil in a saucepan. Put the spinach leaves in a colander and hang them in the pot.
4. The leaves should stay in the boiling water for about two minutes.
5. Then hang the sieve in ice water for ten minutes.

Drain the spinach well before freezing

After blanching, it is important to drain the spinach leaves well. If you skip this step, the water will freeze with the spinach and you will end up with iced spinach in the freezer.

• First, let the leaves drain very well. Then dab the spinach with a kitchen towel. Either a paper kitchen towel or an ordinary cloth kitchen towel is suitable for this.
• You can either put the spinach leaves whole in a container or freezer bag or chop them up. You can also freeze the spinach without the plastic.
• You can also divide the spinach leaves into portions so that you can defrost a suitable amount later.
• If you want to freeze spinach that has already been cooked, you should make sure that the leaves cool down quickly and go into the freezer.
• The longer cooked spinach is left at room temperature, the more of the nitrate can be converted into toxic nitrite. Bacteria can then multiply more quickly in the spinach.