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Recipes for Health: Bagged Spinach
Not every leafy green winter vegetable has to be from the Brassica family.ÂÂ
Spinach is available year-round, and those ubiquitous bags of baby spinach have transformed this nutrient-dense vegetable into a convenience food. I used to spend hours stemming and washing spinach, and after all that work, it was so disheartening to get so little cooked spinach out of a 12-ounce bunch. Recently I bought both a bunch and a bag, and after stemming all of the spinach in an 11-ounce bunch I weighed it: 6 ounces, exactly what you get in a bag of baby spinach, which requires no stemming and just a quick rinse.
There are, to be sure, environmental and economical concerns with baby spinach in a bag. If you are reluctant to use bagged spinach, know that you can substitute an 11- or 12-ounce bunch for the 6-ounce bags called for in this week's recipes. Make sure you stem and wash the bunch thoroughly in at least two changes of water.
However you buy spinach, it's one of the most nutritious vegetables you can eat and considerably more delicate than other leafy greens. Because of this, it's easy to overcook, which makes it drab and unappealing. Spinach is filled with flavonoids, which may have antioxidant properties, and its plentiful vitamin K (1,000 percent of the daily recommended value in 1 cup of cooked spinach) contributes to bone health. The list of nutrients that come in large quantities in a serving of spinach is a long one, including iron, vitamins A and C, manganese, folate, magnesium, calcium, potassium, vitamins B2 and B6, tryptophan and dietary fiber. All this, with no prep time and 10 to 20 seconds of cooking, is hard to beat.--Martha Rose Shulman