Canned Spinach

part of: Spinach

Canned spinach is pre-cooked and very soft — a different product entirely from fresh spinach. It has a concentrated, slightly mineral flavour and a dense, dark-green appearance. While it won’t work in a salad, it’s useful in cooked dishes where spinach is meant to melt into the background: dips, spanakopita fillings, creamed spinach, curries, and pasta sauces.

It’s a convenient option when you need a large volume of cooked spinach without the hassle of wilting down several bags of fresh leaves. A whole tin of canned spinach is roughly what you’d get from cooking a very large bunch of fresh.

Farmed
photograph to come — from twenty years of markets, farms and kitchens

How it's made

Fresh spinach leaves are harvested, thoroughly washed to remove grit, and blanched briefly. The wilted leaves are packed into cans along with their cooking liquid, sealed, and retorted at high temperature. The heat processing fully cooks the spinach and sterilises the can, resulting in very soft, tender leaves in a dark green liquid.

Nutrition (per 100g)

Energy 19kcal
Protein 2.1g
Carbs 1.3g
Fat 0.4g
Fibre 1.6g Sugar 0.3g
Mass Distribution

1 cup is about 234 g — roughly 40 kcal of this.

What it costs the planet (per kilo)

Carbon ≈0.75kg
Freshwater ≈118.48L
Land ≈0.66m²

≈ Estimated — worked out from a category-typical value further up its supply chain. Where this comes from →

Where it comes from

In the kitchen

Used as

cooked vegetable ingredient

Goes well with
garlic cream nutmeg cheese onion
Classic dishes
  • Creamed spinach
  • Spinach dip
  • Spanakopita

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Where this data comes from

Nutrition data from

USDA

How it was calculated

SR Legacy

Full credits, licences, and methods: the sources page →

Where to next

made fromSpinach, leaves goes well withgarlic goes well withnutmeg goes well withcheese goes well withonion shares a sourceBaby Spinach shares a sourceFrozen Spinach shares a sourceSpinach (Mature) shares a sourceSpinach Products & Prepared Dishes
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