The fastest and best way to cook spinach for dinner

It’s easy to get in a rut when you cook the meals for the family.  Chicken and pasta, salad and chicken or salad and meatloaf are all meals that our family has beaten into taste oblivion.  One day I was shopping in Publix and the cook who makes those in-store meals gave me the simplest hint: microwave the spinach.

“Microwave the spinach?” I questioned the in-store chef.

“Yes, microwave a bag of spinach for 5 minutes, then put some garlic butter and salt on it”, he said.

I had tried his spinach before and it was amazing, but something seemed odd about putting spinach in the microwave.   However, I trusted the chef and he was 100% correct.  After 5 minutes we had a bowl of dark green spinach that was arguably better than the main course.

Having spinach this way also meant that it shook up our taste buds from simply having a salad.  We were still getting the iron and nutrients that spinach has, but allowed us to skip the routine from adding dressing.    The downside to microwaving your spinach is that the end product isn’t as much as you think that large bag would produce.

Hint:  Use a cereal bowl, fill it with spinach and microwave it for 3 minutes.  I used a large plastic bowl the first couple of times and then realized that the bowl was melting, oops.  Don’t use a large plastic bowl in the microwave for your spinach.  If you have a large glass bowl that’s microwaveable, then that’ll do too.

Cooking your spinach this way is restaurant quality and world’s better than the frozen stuff you’ll get from the freezer.