I'm a Registered Dietitian and This Frozen Vegetable Is My Weeknight Flotation Device

While frozen vegetables have gotten a bad rap as not being as delicious, nutritious, or high-quality as their fresh counterparts, I truly couldn’t live without them. They serve as meal-time insurance, guaranteeing that I can make a robust and healthy meal (with the help of a stocked pantry) regardless of whether or not I’ve recently been to the grocery store.

However, not all frozen veggies are created equal in my eyes … some don’t offer a desirable texture, others taste off, or maybe worse, nothing at all, and some are not as good of a financial value as fresh. None of these concerns apply to my favorite frozen vegetable: spinach.

Frozen spinach brings a healthy dose of nutrition to my recipes. As a Registered Dietitian, I love that this accessible frozen staple is rich in nutrients like fiber, iron, potassium, folate, magnesium, plant compounds, and vitamins A, C, and K. These combine to promote gut, heart, immune, and metabolic health, making me feel even better about adding this convenience item to meals for myself and loved ones.

Read on to learn why frozen spinach is my weeknight (and anytime) culinary floatation device.

My Go-To Frozen Vegetable

Frozen spinach offers the best of all worlds when it comes to frozen produce. It’s affordable, offers mild, subtly sweet flavor that works in almost any cuisine, and is a smart choice nutritionally.

If you’ve ever cooked with spinach, then you know that a large volume of fresh leaves quickly cooks down to almost nothing. So, when you do the math of how much fresh spinach you’d need to purchase to equal what’s found in a bag of frozen spinach, it’s hard to deny that you’re getting an excellent value.

On the culinary side of things, the options for frozen spinach are nearly endless. I often add it to pasta, casseroles, soups, curries, dips, stir-fries, quiche, and even creamed spinach.

The flavor of this frozen treasure is so similar to that of fresh that I’ll even sauté it with lemon and garlic for a satisfying side dish. I also commonly reach for frozen spinach in the morning for egg or tofu scrambles, frittatas, loaded toasts, and baked eggs. Honestly, any dish that could use some extra bulk will likely benefit from this frozen green.

My Pro Tips for Using Frozen Spinach

The most important step when cooking with frozen spinach is wringing the water out of it (once it’s been thawed) with a kitchen towel. Otherwise, its high water content can alter the texture of your final dish—though this step is optional when adding it to soups or other recipes that could benefit from added moisture.

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