Harvesting spinach for the winter at home
Doctors all over the world recommend spinach. It promotes rejuvenation and improves your health, and harvesting spinach for the winter does not take a lot of effort. This plant is simply overflowing with useful substances. In summer, finding greens is as easy as shelling pears, but in winter it is quite difficult to find fresh leaves, and the question arises: "What to do?" The answer is simple, it should be prepared in the summertime. This will be discussed further.
Winter spinach recipes
There are quite a few recipes for harvesting this most useful plant, but we will consider only a few ways. All recipes are quite simple and take a minimum of time.
Salted spinach
The process of salting greens is the simplest method of harvesting this crop. Before canning, you need to prepare the following:
- Spinach;
- Iodized salt.
The proportions are as follows, one part of the greenery will require at least one tenth of the salt. The process itself of how to prepare spinach for the winter is as follows:
- You need to remove the petioles, because only the leaves are salted. They need to be rinsed well and put on a towel, thereby drying them.
- Next, you need to prepare the containers by sterilizing them, throw greens there and sprinkle with salt on top (abundantly) so that it completely covers them.
- A load is placed on the leaves so that they sink to the bottom.
- Then the load must be removed, new leaves must be put in its place and sprinkled with salt. This is done until the bank is full.
- After that, the container should be closed with a lid and sent to a cool place, wait for winter.
Spinach puree
For cooking you need:
- Green leaves;
- Water;
- Soda.
Regarding proportions, everything is 1 to 1.
Cooking canned spinach is very simple; you need to rinse the greens and then boil them in salted water. You also need to add a little soda there to make the liquid softer. After, it must be rinsed again under the tap, dried and wiped using a sieve. The puree should not be too liquid, so that, for example, it does not spread from a tablespoon.
Next, you need to let it cool, put it in jars and send it to the refrigerator, having previously sealed it with lids.
Of course, in this recipe, soda is by no means the most important ingredient, you can do without it. However, with it, it will remain the same green throughout the winter, but it is up to you to decide whether you need it or not, based on your own preferences.
Unusual cubes
This recipe is much more complicated, but also more effective. In this case, we have to freeze ice cubes with this greens, but do it right. Preparing spinach for the winter at home as follows:
- To begin with, all preparatory procedures are carried out, such as removing excess, wash, dry;
- Next, the leaves of greenery should be cut into small pieces, one might even say medium;
- Then scatter them in ice cube trays and pour, but use boiled water;
- Send the resulting product to the freezer;
- When the water hardens and turns into cubes, you need to transfer them to another container and store in the freezer.
Frozen in this way, it is perfect for stews, soups, sauces.
Sorrel and spinach canning
To prepare this recipe you need:
- Spinach;
- Sorrel;
- Water (one fourth liter).
The ratio of the first two ingredients is one to two. Take spinach and sorrel leaves, rinse them and place them in an enamel bowl. Pour water in the indicated volume there. Next, put it on the stove and wait until it boils.
You should not cook for a long time, literally two or three minutes is enough.
What you get needs to be scattered around the banks, which are necessarily sterilized, and closed. Preservation is sent to storage in a cold place.
Drying spinach
How to store spinach? If you don't feel like messing around with herbs at all, as an option, you can simply dry the spinach. Green leaves should be washed, dried and spread out on sheets of paper at room temperature. The sun should not hit them. It will be much easier if you have a special electric dryer. It is better if the temperature in the room is 30-35 degrees. If you have a question how to store spinach after drying it, then everything is simple, in glass jars, in a dark room.
Cooking greens for the winter for sauces
The recipe is pretty simple:
- As usual, rinse and dry the main ingredient.
- Using a blender, make it smaller until you get something like a puree.
- The resulting must be scattered into special ice molds.
- Take butter and melt it, for example, in the microwave.
- Pour it over the herbs and place in the freezer.
Such cubes can be used, for example, when preparing risotto pasta or various sauces. Sometimes, it is better to use a frozen vegetable in a cooked form.
Conclusion
As you can see, you can preserve greens for cooking any dish in winter, for this you use dried spinach or frozen, or just for consumption. Harvesting spinach for the winter is a simple process and will not take much time, but it will bring many benefits to the body. We recommend this to every housewife who takes care of herself and her loved ones.
