If you think your family will turn their nose up at this leafy green, you might be surprised. Despite its reputation for being out and out bland, spinach is the kind of ingredient you can sneak into a long list of dishes.
National Spinach Day is the perfect excuse to add a richer flavour to sauces, soups and stews while also giving your meals a major boost of iron and vitamins. In fact, you might find your family loves the taste of spinach, even when served fresh as an addition to your favourite salads!

The thing with spinach is it can be hard to persuade your family to dip their fork into a pile of dark green mystery substance on their plate. However, spinach is perfectly disguised in many dishes without altering, and usually improving the flavour. As mentioned above, when you try adding some fresh or frozen spinach to your favourite pasta sauce, stew or soup chances are you’ll find it is tasty, colourful and a surprising hit with your family.

Flavour-Packed Ways for Getting Your Greens

Our HelloFresh chefs love spinach and use it both as a star for their recipes, while also adding levels of flavour as a delicious ingredient. For example, in our heartwarming One Pot Italian Sausage Soup, baby spinach adds an earthy, hearty flavour in the background while our Italian Steak Sandwiches are flanked with a classic spinach salad as the perfect balance to the sandwiches boldness. We give classic tabbouleh salad a boost with fresh spinach ideal as a side dish for salmon and also use spinach in our mouthwatering Spinach, Mushroom and Bacon Puff with Seared Tomatoes. Yum, yum and yum.

Here’s the top searched spinach dishes being served up in home kitchens across Canada:

• Spinach salad: 12,160
• Spinach Artichoke Dip: 4,480
• Creamed Spinach: 3,700
• Strawberry spinach salad: 3,600
• Spinach smoothie: 2,450
• Spinach Lasagna: 1,310
• Spinach stuffed chicken breast: 1,300
• Spinach pizza: 1,340
• Tuscan Chicken Pasta: 1,010
• Chicken Gnocchi Soup: 880
• Spinach ricotta lasagna: 720
• Spinach Frittata: 590
• Creamy Spinach Soup: 480
• Cream cheese spinach dip: 480
• Cream of spinach soup: 490
• Hot spinach and artichoke dip: 390
• Greek Spanakopita: 270
• Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese: 260
• Spinach and Mushroom Quiche: 260
• Vegetarian lasagna spinach: 220

Leafy veggies like spinach need love too because they taste fabulous and are packed with healthy vitamins and minerals. You can’t go wrong whether you eat spinach raw or cooked and buy it fresh or frozen.

#Nutrition

Now about the healthy side of spinach. A half-cup of frozen, cooked spinach is just 32 calories and contains no fats, cholesterol or sugar. It does however contain 4 grams of protein, provides 14% of your daily fibre and is just 2% of your total carb intake. But where it really shows its power is when you look at your daily vitamins and minerals:

• 15% calcium
• 229% Vitamin A
• 4% vitamin C
• 10% iron
• 642% vitamin K
• 29% folate
• 20% magnesium
• 10% riboflavin
• 8% potassium
• 6% vitamin B6
• 5% Thiamin You also get tons of fibre to help your digestive system and it is also a powerful antioxidant for healthy skin and improved immune function. Spinach has been linked to reduced risk for cancer, can help regulate blood pressure and even helps with eye health. Ready to add a little more greens to your diet? You can find tons of fresh, scrumptious spinach ideas in our impressive collection of recipes.