Nowadays, for unknown reasons, spinach, like greens, is pushed into the background. Although his lovers claim that, despite the specific taste of green leaves, it is difficult to find a better seasoning for soups and a pleasant side dish than spinach. Of course, this is a matter of habit. But the unusual taste is completely blocked by the usefulness of spinach. Due to its healing properties, it rightly belongs to the category of dietary products, since it contains a lot of iron, calcium salts of phosphorus and vitamins. The high content of spinach in folic acid allows recommending it to patients with blood diseases.
Cooking spinach is easy. The problem is different: greens are boiled so much that before they cook the spinach, they need to stock up decently.
What can I cook with spinach? This is, first of all, a variety of salads with the addition of other herbs, vegetables; green soups, borscht; juices and just boiled spinach as a side dish. You can also stock up on them for the future: freeze, preserve.
So, salads. For example, how to cook spinach with cucumbers? Rinse 500 grams of spinach, remove coarse petioles and finely chop it. Add to it 2 chopped onions of medium size, 4 tablespoons of chopped dill, 40 grams of lemon juice, sugar to taste. You can fill the salad with vegetable oil or sour cream. The cooked mass must be put in halves of cucumbers, from which the core should be removed first.
Spinach with nuts is made from boiled spinach. Rinse the spinach leaves (500 g) thoroughly, pour a glass of water, add a few twigs of parsley or cilantro, and boil for 20 minutes over high heat under a lid. Strain the prepared spinach along with herbs, squeeze and chop finely. At this time, grind half a glass of nuts, 2 cloves of garlic, a couple of sprigs of cilantro, salt and chilli pepper, dilute with vinegar and add finely chopped onions (200 g). Serving to the table, sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley. The amount of salt, wine vinegar and pepper depends on taste preferences. It is good to add pomegranate seeds to this salad, carefully mixing, and replace vinegar with pomegranate juice.
Unfortunately, spinach greens are not stored for long, so many housewives would like to stock up on them for the future, but do not know how. You can prepare spinach for long-term storage in different ways: freeze, preserve, and even ... include noodles.
Frozen spinach, which retains nutrients for six months after freezing, will serve as an excellent source of vitamins for the whole family in the winter and spring. To freeze spinach leaves, you need to rinse them with cold water, put in a colander and blanch one minute. Then strain the spinach, cool, put in prepared containers and put in the freezer. And only already frozen greens can be laid out in bags and left in the freezer again.
Spinach can be preserved in its natural form. Spinach leaves need to be sorted, washed, pour boiling water and boil for another 5 minutes. Then you need to decant water and pass them through a meat grinder. Salt the resulting mashed potatoes to taste, bring to a boil, put in hot cans and immediately roll up, without sterilization. It is advisable to use jars of small volume so that you do not have to keep puree open, but not fully used in the refrigerator for a long time.
How to cook spinach for the winter in an original way, the next tip will tell. Boiled and rubbed spinach through a sieve can be added to homemade noodles during the kneading process. The dough will turn green. It needs to be rolled thinly, cut into strips and dried. Thus, all year round you can eat unusual noodles enriched with vitamins.