I’ve talked in the past about how I add fresh spinach to several different foods for added nourishment. Read more details about this here, but below is a list of foods I’ve added spinach to successfully:
- Scrambled Eggs
- Salads (obviously)
- Smoothies
- Alfredo Sauce with Pasta
- Beefy Vegetable Soup
- Cheeseburger Soup
- Chicken Noodle Soup
- Chicken Patty Sandwiches
- Chicken Salad (I didn’t stir it in, just ate it with the chicken salad)
- Easy Noodle Stir Fry
- Lasagna
- Pizza Boats
- Pizza Soup
- Potato Soup
- Salmon Patties
- On top of Homemade Pizza
- Cheesy Cauliflower Cakes
- Runza/Bierock Filling
Most recently, I tore up a bunch of spinach leaves and added them to our Salsa Chicken for our Build a Burrito Bar. Here’s the thing about adding spinach to Salsa Chicken: No one can even tell.
I mean, I tear and I tear and I tear. (I make it sound like it’s hard work. Tearing spinach is a two-second job, and mostly I just tear spinach leaves in half by the handful.) I probably put four ounces of fresh spinach into a big pot of Salsa Chicken. (Four ounces of spinach is a lot of spinach.)
Then I let the spinach cook in with the meat and salsa before I shredded it all together. The spinach adds nourishment, but doesn’t change the flavor or even the look of the chicken. I think the spinach just looks like part of the salsa once it’s all cooked down. See how pretty?
I really don’t try to hide nutritious ingredients in my recipes, but neither do I always announce what all I’ve put into the food while I cooked it. I’ve done this “add spinach to Salsa Chicken” twice now, and when it was all said and done – my kids are none the wiser. To them, it just looks like I’ve made Salsa Chicken. Therefore, they proceeded to put more fresh spinach on their burrito as they build it. Nutrients on top of nutrients. How great is this?
As an aside, I’ve taken to snacking on fresh spinach while I’m cooking with it. It barely tastes like anything and it’s refreshing. Plus if I’m super hungry while I’m cooking it helps me feel like I can wait until meal time to eat with the family.
Do you ever add spinach to recipes? What have you found success with in adding spinach?
Just last night I added some spinach to sloppy joes. Actually it was a mix of spinach, kale, and chard, but I’m sure plain spinach would be the same. It cooked right down into the dish, and the sauce was so flavorful you couldn’t even taste it. I only roughly chopped it, so it was still visible, but a finer chop would probably have made it less noticeable.
I don’t usually add spinach because I don’t always have it on hand. but I do add both swiss chard and kale to a million dishes because I have those in the garden most of the year. I don’t add a ton, but enough, and the kids don’t mind at all. I add it to soups, stews, taco meat, macaroni and cheese, pasta dishes, a lot of things.
They used to hate greens, but then I made collard greens once the old fashioned way with ham and long, long cooking. I cannot even begin to tell you how much they hated those collard greens. Both kids promised that if I never made collard greens again, they would eat kale and chard without complaint. WIN for me!!
Zucchini works nicely in ground beef tacos as well. I chop it pretty finely, and add it to the meat after it’s been browned. The zucchini cooks down for the most part and you don’t notice it unless you really look for it.
I love to add spinach or kale to just about anything! I can’t taste it and gives me some extra greens!
I add shredded zucchini and yellow squash to lots of recipes because I have an abundance from the garden. No one even notices(well my picky grandson noticed a little clump in an egg bake left that but are the rest).