Is it possible to freeze spinach for the winter? How to keep frozen for a long time

Today I will tell and show you, my dears, how to freeze spinach for the winter at home. Everything seems simple and clear, but among us there are also young housewives who will definitely need this recipe for homemade preparations for the winter.

IN step by step photos You'll see how to freeze spinach in two ways: pureed and whole leaves. The fact is that sometimes all kinds of recipes for frozen spinach dishes involve the use of just such preparations. Well, fresh can be used in almost any recipe.

It must be said that you can write about the benefits of spinach for a long, long time - some literary sources they even refer to him as the king of vegetables. And in fact, spinach holds the record for the content of vitamins and minerals that are necessary for the proper formation and development of children's bones. That is why, from a young age, teach your kids to healthy homemade food, but remember that spinach is not recommended for people with impaired water-salt metabolism, as well as liver and kidney diseases.

Ingredients:

Cooking the dish step by step with photos:

To properly freeze spinach for the winter, we need fresh green leaves of this plant. As a rule, spinach is harvested before the plant produces flower stalk buds - at this time it begins to accumulate a large number of oxalic acid. Mass fresh spinach I indicate how much I had, and you use the amount that you have.

The longest and, one might say, grueling stage is preparing the spinach. You need to wash each leaf thoroughly, because there is a lot of sand on them and there are aphids. To freeze spinach with whole leaves, tear off the stems - you don’t have to throw them away, but use them for spinach puree. But rinsing everything is very, very important - do not neglect this step.

Place the clean leaves in a large saucepan and pour boiling water over them for a couple of minutes. The leaves will become soft and significantly decrease in volume.

Then we put the leaves on a sieve and let the liquid drain. When the spinach has cooled a little, we dry it out with our hands - we don’t need extra moisture.

Now we will make spinach puree to freeze it in the form of small portions. Just put some of the leaves in a blender and puree everything until relatively smooth.

How to freeze spinach, ways to preserve spinach for the winter

Spinach is a storehouse of nutrients and health benefits. human body substances. This plant contains microelements such as saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, fiber, B vitamins, beta-carotene and many others. It improves metabolism, thereby helping to reduce body weight. For many housewives, this garden crop is an indispensable ingredient in countless dishes: sauces, soups, flour products. In addition, spinach has an interesting and nice feature: during cooking it becomes very rich and pleasant taste, when compared with fresh leaves. If it is necessary to preserve the beneficial properties, it is recommended to freeze a certain amount of the plant, which will allow you to use it at any time of the year if desired. This way it can be stored for a long time, and the freezing process itself is quite easy.

Freezing spinach for the winter: the easiest way

1. Sort through, separate low-quality leaves, wash and dry them. To dry, you can use thick napkins or waffle towels.
2. Cut the leaves into thin long strips, then place them in plastic trays or bags in portions for easy defrosting in the future.
3. Send the spinach sorted into containers to freezer. If possible, set the fast freezing mode.

Water filling method

Repeat the previous steps with one difference: before freezing, pour the product located in the trays with cold boiled water to the top of the product. Freezes according to the shape of the tray. When defrosting, boil in melted water.

Freezing spinach pureed in a blender

1. Drain unnecessary water from the steamed or boiled plant, grind in a blender or rub through a sieve.
2. Place the resulting puree into trays, plastic cups or bags and let it cool until room temperature, cover with lids or wrap in a thin layer cling film, to freeze. If the result is not necessarily a dense puree, the boiled product does not need to be filtered.

The result is frozen leaf spinach or portioned puree, the volume of which is quite enough for any culinary delights. A frozen product stores most of its beneficial properties, and does not spoil for quite a long time.

Method for freezing boiled spinach

1. Pour chopped spinach with water (10-15% of the weight of the leaves themselves), cook for 5-7 minutes.
2. Allow to cool to room temperature. If the output is required thick product— it should be strained, packaged and frozen. The remaining broth can be used at your discretion (for example, cook vegetable soup). Decanting the decoction is an optional procedure; after cooling, the vegetable can be frozen with the decoction. Instead of boiling, you can process it with boiling water for 4-5 minutes, while lowering the leaves into boiling water using a net or colander.

Other ways to preserve food for the winter

Freezing is not the only way to store this plant. There are several other methods.

Pickling

Pickling: Wash and chop the spinach leaves, place them tightly in sterilized jars, while salting them and packing them tightly. Required amount salt - 10% by weight of leaves. In addition to spinach, you can also pickle other products in this way: parsley, sorrel, dill. Each of these ingredients is perfect for making soups and borscht. In a separate tray, you can prepare them together, in the ratio: spinach and sorrel - 50:50, dill and parsley - up to 20% of the total mass. You need to store them in the freezer of a refrigerator or a cold cellar, and not for very long, trying to control their condition. If mold appears on the surface, the food cannot be eaten, especially without reliable heat treatment.

Canning

Wash the spinach, or a mixture of it with herbs, chop it, pour a small amount of boiling water in a separate pan (25-30% of the weight of the products, or to their top point). Spinach contains oxalic acid, which can easily replace salt. Boil vegetables and herbs for 8-10 minutes, pack in clean sterilized jars, close, wrap and let cool. This is a fairly reliable and long-term storage method.

Spinach is a product whose taste is appreciated by few. But having understood and loved it, it is no longer possible to refuse this vegetable, so preparing spinach for the winter (freezing and other recipes for cooking at home) becomes a particularly pressing issue.

Unlike European countries, spinach (as well as spinach) entered our diet relatively recently, but quickly gained trust among culinary specialists. Spinach wilted in butter in a frying pan over low heat, good as a side dish, base for soup, additional ingredient for omelettes and indispensable in cooking various sauces to fish and meat. In addition, having a bright green color, spinach is great for achieving unusual color schemes. variety of dishes– from mashed potatoes to pancakes.

Spinach is very useful culture, and when proper preparation- also very tasty

Beneficial properties of spinach

This leafy vegetable is rich in protein, fiber, and contains minerals(zinc, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, selenium, manganese), vitamins (B, C, A, E). It should be noted that vitamins A and C are particularly stable in spinach: during heat treatment they are destroyed much less than in other vegetables.

Spinach is used as additional product in various diets, including medicinal ones. Low calorie, high content carotene, lutein, iodine make this green leafy vegetable attractive to baby food. In addition, scientific research shows that spinach helps cleanse the body and remove toxins.

Spinach is very good at cleansing the intestines of toxins.

Attention! It should be remembered: spinach contains oxalic acid, the use of which large quantities may cause harm.

There is only one thing that upsets us – the rather short shelf life of fresh spinach at home. Therefore, lovers of green vegetables should stock up on them in the summer. There are a few simple recipes spinach preparations.

Freezing spinach

This method of preserving vegetables and berries, such as freezing, is becoming increasingly popular. Fast, easy, and the products are almost fresh. To freeze spinach for the winter you need:

• Wash the spinach leaves thoroughly;
• trim the petioles;
• dry the leaves on a towel;
• roll the spinach leaves into a tube and wrap in cling film;
• send to the freezer (to the quick freezing compartment).

Freezing spinach in portions will speed up the process of preparing dishes in winter

It is quite convenient to cut spinach from frozen this way. small pieces for cooking. The cut will also need to be wrapped in cling film for further storage.

Preparing spinach: unusual cubes

A slightly more labor-intensive, but at the same time more effective way to freeze leafy vegetables is to freeze ice cubes with herbs. To do this you need:

• carry out standard procedures: rinse, dry, trim off excess;
• cut spinach leaves into medium-sized pieces;
• put the greens in ice trays and pour boiled water over them;
• put in the freezer;
• After initial freezing, transfer to containers for long-term storage in the freezer.

Cubes prepared in this way can be used for soups, sauces, and stews. For pasta and risotto, spinach can also be frozen, but use melted and cooled butter instead of water.

Recipe for preparing spinach for the winter for sauces

• Grind the washed and drained spinach in a blender or food processor until pureed;
• place the greens in ice trays;
• Melt the butter in a water bath or in the microwave, cool;
• Pour the puree into the molds with oil and place in the freezer.

When preparing pasta, risotto and sauces, such cubes can be added to the dish a couple of minutes before the end of cooking.

Do not refreeze spinach - it will lose its taste.

To save time when preparing spinach-based soups, some recipes suggest freezing the already cooked vegetable.

Spinach: Freezing Soup Base

Want to save time on making green soup? Recipe for practical housewives:

• wash the leaves, trim the petioles, cut the spinach into noodles;
• Boil the leafy vegetable in a small amount of water, cool;
• freeze the broth along with the herbs in portioned plastic containers.

To prepare green spinach soup in winter, you only need to boil potatoes and other vegetables to taste and add frozen spinach broth along with the greens.

You can freeze both fresh and cooked spinach.

Spinach preparation

If space in the refrigerator allows, you can prepare pureed boiled spinach and then add it to various dishes. To do this you need:

• wash the spinach, trim and cut into small pieces;
• boil for about 5-6 minutes in lightly salted water;
• Drain the spinach in a colander and allow excess liquid to drain;
• grind the leaves to a puree;
• boil the spinach puree;
• Determine the readiness of the product by its thickness (if a drop does not flow from the spoon, it’s ready);
• Divide into jars and store in the refrigerator.

Pickling spinach

Spinach, like other leafy vegetables, can be pickled and canned. The pickling recipe is simple:

• wash the leaves, dry, trim the petioles;
• tear the leaves into small pieces;
• Place spinach leaves in jars in layers, sprinkling each layer with salt.

For pickling, cut fresh spinach into pieces

Important: layers of spinach must be made of medium thickness, compacting each one tightly. The total amount of salt will be up to 10% of the weight of the harvested spinach.

Store pickled spinach in the refrigerator. The condition of the workpiece should be monitored and the appearance of green mold on the surface should be avoided. To prepare green borscht, you can pickle spinach and sorrel in equal parts, adding a little parsley and dill.

Canning spinach

Spinach prepared according to this recipe can be stored for a long time in cool place. To preserve leafy vegetables you need:

• spinach – 1 kg;
• water – 1 l;
• salt – 1.5-2 tablespoons.

Preparation:

• wash the leaves, cut them, dry them;
• blanch in fairly hot (but not boiling) water for about 5 minutes;
• Place the leaves in a colander or on a wire rack and allow excess liquid to drain;
• put the greens into jars (pre-sterilize them);
• compact the green mass;
• pour out the released liquid from the jars;
• prepare the brine: add salt (about 2 tablespoons) to boiling water and bring the solution to a boil;
• pour brine over the leafy vegetable;
• seal the jars.

Blanch spinach for no more than 5 minutes.

All the greens in one jar: canning spinach with onions and parsley

Do you want to prepare a universal one for the winter? green dressing for soup? Use the following recipe.
Required ingredients:

• spinach – 1.5 kg;
• water – 0.6 l;
• green onion – 0.3 kg;
• salt – 20 g;
• dill, parsley - 20 g each.

If you like different greens, prepare them along with spinach

Preparation:

• rinse all greens thoroughly;
• finely chop parsley, onion, dill;
• cut spinach leaves into noodles;
• put the chopped greens into a saucepan, add water, add salt;
• boil everything for about 10 minutes;
• pour the resulting mixture into jars;
• Sterilize half-liter jars of spinach for 20-25 minutes, then seal and send to cool.

Drying spinach

If you don’t have space in the refrigerator or are too lazy to bother with canning, you can prepare spinach for the winter by simply drying the leaves. To do this, it is washed, dried and laid out on clean sheets of paper in a warm room, trying to avoid direct exposure to sunlight. The best option for drying greens at home is to use an electric dryer. Spinach is dried for several hours at a temperature of 30-35°C and stored in glass jars under a lid in a dark place.

Dried spinach is great for soups

The processes for harvesting spinach are quite simple and not labor-intensive, and take very little time. Prepare this amazing leafy vegetable and brighten up your winter diet with the bright colors of summer.

How to prepare spinach leaves for freezing: video

Spinach preparations for the winter: photo

Spinach is called the king of vegetables because... it is the record holder among leafy greens in terms of content folic acid and antioxidants, including vitamins C, E and A. It contains calcium, magnesium and iron. Since this plant brings great benefits to the body, it should be present in the diet as often as possible.

In summer, greens can be grown in the garden and cooked from it every day different dishes. Many people are interested in how to preserve spinach for the winter, because being cheerful and healthy person I want to all year round. Experienced housewives This plant is canned, salted, frozen and dried, and in the cold months it is added to salads, pies, soups and sauces.

In winter, leafy greens in processed form can be purchased in the supermarket, but if a person has a garden, he will prefer to grow it on his own plot and, knowing how to store spinach correctly, he will prepare it for the winter with his own hands.

By processing the leaves of the plant at home, the housewife will be confident in the quality and natural composition product (in the store, the terms and conditions for storing frozen greens may be violated, and in canned food, in addition to salt, there are dyes, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers and other chemicals).

You can also prepare leafy vegetables at home different ways, and this will not require large material costs from a person.

Drying and salting spinach

Before you prepare spinach for the winter at home, you need to properly collect it from the garden. This is done in July or August, when the plant has not yet produced flower shoots. Leaves picked during the flowering period of the vegetable will taste bitter. Young, strong leaves without cuttings are suitable for long-term storage. After collection, they are carefully sorted, and specimens that are flaccid, yellowed or damaged are removed.

Then the spinach needs to be washed several times with clean liquid in a deep bowl, sorting through each leaf and inspecting it from all sides. Afterwards, you need to rinse the greens under running water so that there are no particles of earth or other debris left on them.

Clean leaves should be dried. To do this, they are laid out in 1 layer on a paper or waffle towel and left for 15-25 minutes so that no drops of water remain on them.

If the housewife plans to prepare spinach the next day, she should place it in a bowl, cover it with a plate or lid and put it in the refrigerator. But it is better to recycle the plant as soon as possible.

The maximum minerals and vitamins are preserved in raw vegetables, so they prefer not to heat them, but to dry them or pickle them.

If a person lives in his own home, he can dry the spinach outside. To do this, the washed greens need to be spread out in one layer in a dry, dark place. In warm weather it dries in 24 hours.

Living in an apartment or wanting to save harvesting time, people prefer to dry the leaves of the plant in the oven. To do this, place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and dried at a temperature of +30...+40°C for 3 hours.

Washed and dried greens can be cut into strips with a ceramic knife and then placed in the oven. With this drying method, the crushed leaves need to be turned from side to side more often.

Spinach is stored in a dry and dark place, placed in tightly closed bags or glass jars. In winter, when preparing first or second courses, the greens are ground in a coffee grinder and the powder is used as a seasoning.

Achieve conservation useful substances as part of a leafy vegetable, you can use it by salting it. For the preparation you will need salt with added iodine. Prepared spinach leaves (washed and dried) are cut into strips 1 cm wide or used whole. To the bottom glass jar pour 0.5 cm of salt, then put a layer of greens, sprinkle it with salt.

Alternating leaves with salt, fill the jar to the top, periodically compacting the layers with a masher. There should not be too much salt, it is better if it is 1/10 of the spinach. Then the container is closed with a lid and placed in a cool place. The leaves are washed before use.

Canning spinach

With this method of storing leafy vegetables, such as canning, part nutrients is lost, but the vegetable retains its saturated color and acquires a more noticeable taste. The greens can be prepared whole or in the form of a puree, and the leaves of other healthy plants can be added to it.

For preservation, the whole prepared vegetable is blanched in hot water(its temperature should not exceed +95°C) for 5 minutes. Then drain the greens in a colander and dry. To make the product tastier, add sorrel leaves cut into pieces at the blanching stage (there should be 2 times more spinach).

To prepare the brine, take 2 liters of liquid and 50 g of salt and bring the mixture to a boil. Jars with a capacity of 0.5-1 liters are sterilized and greens are placed in them, filled with hot brine and rolled up.

A good product for making omelettes, pies and pancakes is green puree. To prepare it, you need to take 1 kg of leaves and 10 g of salt. Place clean greens in a bowl of boiling water and cook for low heat 5 minutes. Then drain the product in a colander. After the liquid has drained, the leaves are rubbed through a sieve. Add salt to the resulting mass, mix and boil for another 2-3 minutes. The finished puree is cooled, laid out clean banks and close with lids. The product must be stored at a temperature not exceeding +7°C.

Freezing spinach for the winter

Quickly freezing fresh spinach preserves all its vitamins and minerals. The plant is frozen dry or wet.

To prepare using the dry method, clean and dried leaves are folded into a small bunch, which is enough to prepare 1 dish, and wrapped in several layers of cling film. The bundles are quickly frozen and then transferred to a storage compartment. After defrosting, the greens will need to be cut, but they will retain more nutrients.

You can prepare spinach by chopping it. To freeze, you will need to place the greens in bags or containers. The disadvantage of the dry method is the loss of color by the vegetable.

At wet method the leaves remain green due to their presence in water. First, they are finely cut with a knife, then laid out in ice trays and, filled with cooled boiled liquid, sent to a chamber for quick freezing. Then take the cubes out of the molds, put them in bags and store them in the freezer. This spinach ice is convenient to add to soups and porridges.

I decided to prepare frozen spinach for the winter after an unsuccessful purchase of this greenery in the supermarket. The bag contained a frozen green layer covered with an ice shell. The freezer was thrown away, and I began to look for information on how to freeze spinach for the winter at home. I chose several recipes, collected them into one and added something of my own from my previous experience. The result is a collection of tips on how to freeze spinach in three ways - whole leaves, chopped and pureed. To make the process interesting and understandable, I made a recipe with step-by-step photos.

How to Freeze Spinach

Ingredients:

• Young spinach - several large bunches;
• freezer bags;
• ice molds or silicone molds for muffins;
• sharp kitchen knife.

Freezing spinach for the winter

I try to use only young greens with tender leaves for preparations. It contains more vitamins, it is juicy and aromatic. Large leaves become coarse and may taste slightly bitter, so it is recommended to freeze spinach in early summer. We untie the bunches, cut off the roots, the stems can be removed later.

Place the leaves in a kitchen sink filled with cold water. Leave for a few minutes, then rinse three or four times, finally rinse with running tap water and place in a sieve or colander.

Shake and let the water drain. Then pour it onto a towel, cover it, and leave it to dry.

After the water droplets have evaporated, we begin sorting. To freeze whole, select small leaves, tear off the stems, but do not throw them away. We fold 12-15 pieces, twist them into a tube, and squeeze them tightly. We transfer the resulting sausages into a bag and put them in the freezer. Spinach frozen in this way is convenient because you can cut the pieces into the size you need. If you don’t want to prepare fresh spinach, you can freeze spinach after cooking. Pour boiling water over the leaves, drain the water after a minute, squeeze out the greens. Place in small portions into bags and freeze.

To freeze chopped spinach, collect the leaves in a bunch and cut off the stems. Shred into strips 1-2 cm wide.

Pour into a bag, release the air, and roll it into a tight roll. We freeze it, making sure to include a piece of paper indicating what was frozen and when.

For puree we use spinach bunches and stems. Grind everything until smooth with an immersion blender.

Place the puree in small silicone molds or fill a container for edible ice(it is in every refrigerator). Place in the freezer. Freezing time is several hours.

Remove the hardened cubes of spinach puree from the molds, put them in a bag and put them back in the freezer for storage.

Well, I showed three ways to freeze spinach fresh for the winter. They will help preserve healthy greens for many months, and you will have the opportunity to cook tasty and varied food in winter.

What to cook with frozen spinach

Baking: open and closed pies with cottage cheese, cheese, eggs, vegetables, fish and rice, chicken, snack muffins and cupcakes.

First courses: cream soup, cream soup, green cabbage soup and borscht with sorrel and spinach; you can add frozen greens to any soup at the end of cooking.

Main courses: omelettes, scrambled eggs, casseroles, stuffed meat and potatoes, stuffing in potato, chicken and meat zrazy, for pancakes and pancakes, green pilaf, risotto, pasta.

Sauces: with horseradish, creamy, sour cream, for fish, meat, pasta.

Drinks: all kinds of vegetable and fruit smoothies, lassi, vegetable cocktails.