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Our easy sautéed spinach recipe makes spinach that is perfectly cooked, bright green, tender, and comes together in less than 10 minutes!
If you have never sautéed spinach before, you need to start. As fresh spinach leaves cook in the pan, they wilt, turn tender and become sweet.
This sautéed spinach recipe is one of my favorite spinach recipes on the blog. It’s quick and easy and goes with almost any main dish.
Key Ingredients
- Spinach: I use fresh spinach leaves. Baby spinach is fine, or use larger bunches of spinach leaves often sold at farmer’s markets or grown at home. I keep frozen spinach for other recipes, like spinach and sausage stuffed shells.
- Olive oil: I love sautéing the spinach in olive oil. It has the best flavor!
- Garlic: Before tossing in my fresh spinach, I cook fresh sliced garlic in the olive oil, which gives the olive oil a lovely garlicky flavor.
- Lemon: It is optional but adds fresh flavor!
Find the full recipe with measurements below.
How to Make Sautéed Spinach
Tip 1: Sauté with garlic and olive oil. Spinach is incredible when cooked with olive and lots of garlic. This is how we prepare most dark leafy greens, like kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage.
Tip 2: Cook both the stems and leaves. There’s no need to remove the spinach leaves from their stems. The stems are tender enough to cook along with the leaves, and they add a wonderful texture.
Tip 3: Finish with lemon and red pepper flakes. Warm olive oil in a skillet with garlic and, if you like fresh lemon, lemon zest. Add your spinach leaves and cook, tossing often until bright green, wilted, and tender. It takes less than 10 minutes! Season with salt and, if you like a little heat, a pinch of red pepper flakes.
Serving Suggestions
The recipe is a quick side for many main dishes. I especially love it with turkey meatballs, baked salmon, baked tofu (so good!), shrimp scampi, and a perfectly cooked steak.
It also goes well with other sides. Try it with something creamy, like macaroni and cheese or mashed sweet potatoes. I love adding it to rice or quinoa bowls, and it’s excellent piled onto a slice of this roasted garlic bread. We also add it to this cheese manicotti!
More Easy Spinach Recipes
Perfect Sautéed Spinach
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This sautéed spinach is a tasty, fast and nutritious dish. It’s made in under 10 minutes and so simple! For extra flavor, we cook the spinach with sliced garlic and lemon zest. As the spinach quickly cooks in the pan, it wilts, turns bright green, and becomes tender.
Makes 4 side portions
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
10 ounces spinach leaves (about 10 cups)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 to 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Zest of half a lemon, optional
Pinch sea salt
Pinch crushed red pepper flakes, optional
Directions
1Add olive oil, garlic, and the lemon zest (optional) to a wide skillet over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring often, until the oil bubbles around the garlic, about 30 seconds. Do not brown.
2Pile the spinach leaves into the pan and add a generous pinch of salt. Wait about 30 seconds or until the bottom layer of leaves has started to wilt, and then toss the leaves around the pan. As the spinach cooks, keep tossing so all the leaves hit the bottom of the skillet.
3When the spinach looks bright green and is mostly wilted, remove the pan from the heat and serve with a pinch of extra salt on top. For a little heat, add a light sprinkle of red pepper flakes (optional).
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Storing: Cooked spinach lasts in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. You can also freeze it for up to 6 months. Thaw the frozen spinach in the fridge overnight before reheating. When reheating leftover spinach, you might notice a bit of extra moisture; no worries, either squeeze it out before reheating or add it all to a skillet and simmer it to reduce slightly.
- A microplane works nicely to remove lemon zest or you can use a sharp vegetable peeler to peel away the outer yellow skin of the lemon, and then thinly slice the peel (we do this in our video).
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates.
Nutrition Per Serving
Serving Size
1/4 of the skillet
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Calories
80
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Total Fat
7.4g
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Saturated Fat
1.1g
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Cholesterol
0mg
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Sodium
201.8mg
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Carbohydrate
3.4g
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Dietary Fiber
1.8g
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Total Sugars
0.4g
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Protein
2.2g
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