Spinach with rice
A kilo of spinach cooks down to a handful, which is why the size of the pan is part of the recipe.
Vegetable dishes · Turkish · Budget · One pot · Seasonal · Vegan
- Preparation
- 20 min
- Cooking
- 30 min
- Resting
- 10 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Cost
- Very cheap
- Season
- Winter, Spring
Spinach is 91% water and cooks down to about a tenth of its volume. It is one of the easiest surprises in a kitchen to calculate and the hardest to believe: four portions want a kilo of spinach, and that kilo does not look as though it will fit in the pan. The rice here is not a filler but what binds the water the spinach releases — that water is not poured away, it goes into the grain.
Method
- Wash the spinach in two changes of water and chop it roughly.
- Rinse the rice.
You will need: A very wide pan with a lid
-
Soften the onion in the oil for eight minutes and fry the paste for one.
Look for The paste should darken and the oil separate at the edges.
Why Paste added without frying leaves its raw acidity, which meets the spinach’s own oxalic acid and sharpens the whole dish.Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Maillard is running Amino acids have met reducing sugars. The crust, the roasted flavour and that smell all come from here. no way back
-
Add the spinach in BATCHES: a handful, wait for it to collapse, then another.
Look for Each batch should collapse and go dark green within a minute or two.
Why A raw kilo of spinach fits in no domestic pan, and cooked it comes down to a tenth. Adding it in batches gets the same quantity in without a bigger pan.Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
If you want a crust, do not stay under 140 °C. Food cooks at this heat but never colours.
-
Add the rinsed rice, hot water and salt, cover and cook twenty minutes on a low flame.
Look for The rice swollen and no free water left in the pan.
Why Little water goes in because the spinach will release its own; 150 ml makes up what the rice still needs. More and the dish turns into soup.If it went wrong
Too much liquid: lid off and five minutes on a high flame. Hard rice: 50 ml of hot water and eight more covered minutes.
Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Salt · 0.49% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.
-
Take it off, rest it covered ten minutes, and squeeze the lemon at the table.
Look for It should stay dark green; olive drab means the lemon went in early or it cooked too long.
Why Boiled in the pan the lemon loses its aroma and leaves only sourness — and the acid turns the spinach grey.Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Salt · 0.48% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.
This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.
peak 150 °C · 45 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low
After the heat goes off
Hot or warm, with garlic yoghurt and lemon, and bread.
Three days in the fridge; the rice keeps drinking and the dish thickens.
Five minutes on a low flame with 50 ml of water.
Two months. Spinach freezes well; the rice softens a little.
The leftovers become a börek filling, go into a pan with eggs, or get mashed onto bread.
Because of its nitrate, more than two portions of spinach a week is not advised for a baby under one; unsalted it suits from eight months. For 12–36 months chop the spinach fine, since long leaf fibre is hard to swallow, and lift their share before the salt.
- Spinach → Swiss chard Chard works, but its stalks take twice as long: stalks with the onion, leaves afterwards.
- Rice → Fine bulgur Fine bulgur cooks in twelve minutes and wants less water: 100 ml is enough.
- Boiling & poaching The method this recipe rests on
- Spinach What it does in heat, water and acid
- Bulb onion What it does in heat, water and acid
- Rice What it does in heat, water and acid
- Spinach and eggs Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
- Leeks in olive oil Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
- Green beans in olive oil Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
- Budget Other recipes that answer the same need
- One pot Other recipes that answer the same need
- Seasonal Other recipes that answer the same need
- Vegan Other recipes that answer the same need
What it tastes like
No axis sits clearly above the average: a balanced recipe.
This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.
Closest in taste
Not hand-picked: ranked by distance across the eight taste axes.
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