While spinach is a healthful ingredient full of antioxidants and essential nutrients, it tends not to be the most flavorful food around. Typically, spinach is tossed into eggs, pasta, dips, and casseroles, and when it’s in a salad, it’s garnished with a delicious dressing. To make a healthy and simple side dish like sautéed spinach stand out, we use roasted garlic to provide robust flavor.
Roasted garlic not only provides pungent garlic flavor, but it also provides complexity to the dish because of the flavors that are brought out through the roasting process. This includes the delicious, natural sweetness that roasted garlic offers.
Roasting garlic is very easy to do. You simply take a bulb of garlic, remove the paper-like layer on the outside of the garlic, wrap it in foil and bake it at a high temperature. After about 40 to 45 minutes, you’ll notice the garlic has become tender and darker in appearance.
The garlic cloves can simply be slipped out of their peel and stirred into the spinach over the stove. The roasted garlic adds a depth of flavor that raw garlic cannot. The sweet caramelized flavor of the garlic pairs beautifully with the spinach and turns this simple sautéed spinach recipe into a real treat.
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Cook time: 45 minutes
Prep time: 10 minutes
Idle time:
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Ingredients
- 1 (6 oz.) bag of spinach washed and dried
- 1 head garlic
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- sea salt to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F. Chop off 1/4 from the top of the garlic head then wrap it in foil.
- Roast the garlic until it is dark brown and soft (about 45-50 minutes). Allow the garlic to cool slightly so you're able to hold and handle it.
- Warm olive oil in a large pan over medium heat, then add spinach. Add a pinch of sea salt and the roasted garlic cloves by squeezing out cloves from the bottom of the bulb up.
- Stir until combined, then sauté spinach just until it's wilted.
Additional information
Updated by Beeta Hashempour on 5/31/2018
