Many people know spinach only from the old cartoon, in which a sailor named Papai, having eaten a can of vegetables, became incredibly fast and was endowed with excessive strength for a while. Most of the people living in our country do not really understand how to eat spinach. They just don’t know what kind of vegetable it is, in appearance it looks like a hybrid of lettuce and sorrel. Summer residents, having noticed a pack with the words “spinach” in the seed store, are in no hurry to buy them, believing that it will be difficult to grow a stranger, and besides, what the taste of spinach looks like is also unknown to them.
Mysterious taste
For those who wish to try this early spring green vegetable, but still have doubts, we’ll try to explain what spinach tastes like and how healthy it is. The use of spinach is enclosed inside green leaves. This is explained by the large content of iron, potassium and phosphorus in them. This culture is rich in iodine, which is necessary for almost everyone who lives far from the sea. It has a lot of vitamin P, C, group B. In terms of protein content, the plant is, perhaps, on the same level as legume green crops.
What the taste of spinach looks like is not easy to explain; it has a fairly neutral taste, highlighted by the products added to the recipe. But many compare with a very young nettle, chard or green lettuce (also neutral). Often, when answering the question of how to replace spinach, they advise instead to introduce sorrel, familiar to all of us and beloved from childhood, into the recipe.
Change or not change?
Replace the leaves of spinach with other greens should be done, given what dish you are going to cook. The fact is that it can be consumed raw in fresh green salads. Chard leaves and Beijing cabbage - this is what you can replace spinach in similar salads. But it’s better not to.
How to eat spinach
Juicy leaves of this green vegetable are respected in different countries. However, a stronger love for him is shown, perhaps, by residents of eastern countries. Here it is present in many dishes. And here is how spinach is consumed in the East: soups, pies and salads with its herbs are present on the table in huge quantities and very often. If it is not possible to use fresh spinach, sprinkle with dried chopped leaves. Today, juicy spinach leaves are also used in all European countries. There he also became beloved and popular.
Spinach or sorrel?
And how to replace spinach, for example, in soup? Many housewives do not bother with this issue for long and replace it with an ordinary sorrel. Perhaps one of the reasons for such a substitution of products is the outward similarity of sorrel and spinach leaves. For this reason, many mistakenly assume that spinach and sorrel are one and the same. Moreover, from the ground in early spring, their leaves stretch to the sun at one time. However, it is worth a little closer look at the leaves of these plants on the garden, even belonging to different families. You may notice that spinach has a darker shade, and sorrel looks lighter. Sorrel leaves are spicy, and spinach have a rounded shape. And finally, the taste! He is different. Sorrel leaves, as everyone knows, have a rather sour taste. Its culprit is oxalic acid. A spinach leaves are shaded with a slight bitterness. Therefore, to consider that spinach and sorrel are the same thing would be very wrong.
And now that we have roughly understood what the taste of spinach looks like, it's time to get acquainted with some recipes for cooking delicacies with it, because its use is not limited to adding to a green spring salad. Add it to mashed potatoes, soups, omelets and all kinds of unsweetened casseroles. Due to the neutrality of taste, he is good in a duet with cheese, meat dishes and bean dishes.
Fresh Spinach Salad
Its recipe is quite simple, as is the composition. Products required for the dish:
- four hundred grams of spinach;
- onions - about half the onion;
- boiled eggs - four pieces;
- feta cheese - about a hundred grams (you can increase the norm);
- dill and salt;
- some crackers of neutral taste;
- mayonnaise.
Cooking salad
Rinse the spinach, remove the stalks, scald with boiling water and cut. Peel and rinse the eggs to wash off the small remaining shells. Chop in medium slices. Chop the onion finely in half rings. Beautifully cut the feta cheese into small cubes. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients and add chopped dill and mayonnaise. Salt (if necessary), add crackers and serve.
Soup
Spinach and chicken soup is a delicious first course. We prepare it from these products:
- chicken - four hundred grams;
- water - two and a half liters;
- frozen spinach - four hundred grams;
- two potatoes;
- one carrot;
- one onion;
- a pair of garlic cloves;
- one tomato;
- a tablespoon of lemon juice;
- salt and spices;
- chicken eggs - a pair of pieces (boiled).
Technological process
- Put the spinach in a bowl so that it melts slightly while preparing other products.
- Make a regular chicken stock with your favorite spices. Stuff the meat with boiled chicken carcass and cut into pieces. Strain the broth and return to the pan.
- Peel the carrots and onions. Turn carrots into straws using a coarse grater or knife. Chop the onion in half rings. Chop the garlic either with a knife or with a press.
- Pass the vegetables until transparent in a skillet with vegetable oil.
- While the vegetables are fried, the pan with the broth is also returned to the stove and brought to a boil. Introduce chopped potatoes into boiling chicken broth. Cook the potatoes for about ten to fifteen minutes, using medium heat, until half cooked.
- Now put the spinach in the soup and, bringing to a boil, boil it very briefly - about a minute.
- Cut the tomato into large pieces and put it in a saucepan with soup. There also send fried onions and carrots. Grind the eggs not very small cubes and also enter into the soup. Now bring the contents of the pan to a boil again.
- After you try the soup for salt, you need to add the entire rate of lemon juice and finely chopped dill to the pan.
- Cover the spinach soup with a lid and let it brew for ten minutes. The soup is ready. You can serve it with sour cream or mayonnaise.
A simple recipe for fried eggs
This dish is prepared even by an inexperienced culinary specialist. Products needed for cooking:
- one large tomato;
- a bunch of green spinach;
- three to four eggs;
- mayonnaise or sour cream - three to four spoons;
- one medium onion.
Cooking fried eggs with spinach
Pour a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil without aroma into the pan and fry finely chopped onion until transparent.
Peel the tomato and cut it not very finely, send it to the onion for about a minute. After this time, add chopped spinach to the pan and mix with vegetables.
We combine the eggs with mayonnaise or sour cream, add salt and pepper and pour to the vegetables. Further technology is no different from conventional fried eggs. When the eggs are cooked, you can serve the dish, sprinkled with dill.
Spinach and Cheese Pancake Filling
Add ready-made savory pancakes topped with grated cheese and spinach leaves. This is done as follows: two or three sheets are placed in the middle of the pancake and sprinkled with a tablespoon of cheese on top. After that, the pancakes are wrapped in the form of envelopes or rolls. Then they are placed in a mold previously coated with vegetable oil, and baked in the oven for about ten minutes - until golden.
You can use thin pita bread instead of pancakes. Before putting pita bread with the filling into the oven, grease not only the baking dish, but also the rolls themselves, stuffed with spinach-cheese filling.
Yeast cake
We will make this dish from the finished dough. Essential Ingredients:
- spinach puree - about half a kilogram;
- four hundred grams of feta cheese;
- two raw eggs;
- yeast dough - 500 g.
Making a pie
Rub the cheese through a coarse grater and mix with two raw eggs. Now we roll out the yeast dough thinner and place it in a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil. On top of the dough, spread the mixed spinach puree and the cheese-egg mixture. Close the pie with a second layer of thinly rolled dough. Carefully pinch the edges of the product. Baking time - half an hour at a temperature of one hundred eighty degrees. The yeast dough in this recipe can be successfully replaced with puff pastry.
Spinach Cucumber Appetizer
We offer you to cook a wonderful summer dish. We collect products:
- a pound of spinach;
- three to four fresh cucumbers;
- onion;
- one tablespoon of lemon juice;
- refined vegetable oil - 30 milliliters;
- half a bunch of fresh green dill;
- sugar - a little (to taste).
Cooking
Sort the spinach leaves, rinse and chop finely. Mix chopped onions in a bowl with lemon juice. Finely chop the dill and add to the spinach greens, pour the onion with lemon juice here and mix all the ingredients. Pour some sugar (approximately a teaspoon without top). And pour into the salad mass the entire rate of vegetable oil. After five to seven minutes of insisting the salad, you can proceed with the continuation of the preparation of snacks. Each cucumber is divided into two parts across. Scrape up the pulp with the seeds. Place the salad mixture in the resulting void, thoroughly compacting it.
If you prefer salads with sour cream, then in this embodiment, snacks can be used instead of butter.
How to replace spinach so that the duplicate product could fully convey the taste and useful properties of green leaves? Now you know that a full replacement is impossible and without special work you can "start" a small garden with this leafy vegetable in your area.