Make our sautéed spinach recipe in less than 10 minutes! We cook fresh spinach with garlic until perfectly cooked, bright green, and tender. Easy and delicious!
Watch the Video
This sautéed spinach with garlic is one of my favorite spinach recipes on the blog. It’s quick and easy and goes with almost any main dish.
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.
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 sauteing 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!
How to Make Sautéed Spinach
Spinach is a nutrient powerhouse. It’s good for you with high levels of vitamin K, C, iron and potassium. Not to mention, when cooked properly, it tastes fantastic.
We cook most dark, leafy greens this way. Check out our lemon garlic sautéed kale and if you love quick cooked vegetables on the stove, our sautéed cabbage and easy sautéed Brussels sprouts are fan favorites.
Unlike other heartier greens (like kale), you do not need to remove spinach leaves from the stems. We cook both the stems and the leaves in this recipe!
Making this spinach recipe could not be simpler. Heat some fat in a skillet and then add garlic and lemon zest. When they are warmed and starting to smell aromatic, add spinach leaves and cook, tossing the leaves around the pan until bright green, wilted, and tender. It takes less than 10 minutes!
More Easy Spinach Recipes
Perfect Sauteed Spinach
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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
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 to 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Zest of half a lemon
10 ounces spinach leaves (8 to 10 cups)
Pinch sea salt
Pinch crushed red pepper flakes, optional
Directions
1Add olive oil, garlic and the lemon zest to a wide skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until the oil is bubbling around the garlic, about 30 seconds. Pile the spinach leaves into the pan and add a generous pinch of salt. Wait about 30 seconds or until the bottom layer of leaves have started to wilt, and then toss the leaves around the pan. As the spinach cooks, keep tossing so that all the leaves have a chance to hit the bottom of the skillet.
2When 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
- 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).
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
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
