Puréed Creamed Spinach

You can take the easy route and buy frozen Creamed Spinach (I like Seabrook Farms the best) and purée it, or you can take the route of making it yourself–not all that much more work!

This site has a no-nonsense set of steps for making your own puréed Creamed Spinach: Northwest Edible Life, Creamy Spinach Purée.  She starts with two pounds of spinach. It may sound like a lot, but spinach wilts down in a big way.  I’ve been using one pound to make a slight variation on this recipe, just because my mom’s stock pot isn’t all that big.

Ingredients

  • One pound of baby leaf spinach. [Be sure to wash it well and spin it dry in a salad spinner if you haven’t bought pre-washed.]
  • One Tablespoon of butter.
  • One small yellow onion, diced.
  • 1/4 cup Half and Half.
  • 1/8 Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper.
  • 1/4 Teaspoon salt (and you’ll add more to taste later).
  • A pinch of nutmeg.

Melt the butter in the bottom of a large pot (a stock pot or spaghetti pot works for me).  When the butter starts foaming, add the onions, pepper, and salt. Cook the onions over low heat until they start becoming transparent. Bring the heat up to medium, add the Half and Half and a pinch of nutmeg, and bring it to a boil. Add the spinach, pushing it down a bit, and cover the pot. Let the spinach wilt in the steam from the simmering Half and Half, pushing the spinach down from time to time.

When the spinach is well wilted, push it to one side of the pot and let the accumulated Half and Half and spinach juices boil down until the liquid reached the consistency of heavy cream. Let it all cool down a bit.

Purée the Creamed Spinach in a food processor!  I have found that this gives a better consistency in the end than the blender. If it is too soupy, add Bechamel as needed to stiffen it up.

Note: you can thin the purée with milk or chicken stock to make a soup of it. A little Parmesan Cheese might taste good in the purée too!

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