Spinach is a superfood and is loaded with tons of nutrients. Learn how to dehydrate spinach to preserve a bounty. Use in cooking, soap making and more!
Every few weeks we’ll get into salad mode and bring home a huge tub of organic spinach from Costco.. Their large tubs are a cost effective way to eat healthier for a rather affordable price (especially for a family of 7). It is true, that fresh, organic produce can cost more – sometimes the best way to defray the cost is to buy that produce in large quantities to save the most money.
So Much Spinach
Buying in a large quantity though can mean that it can sometimes start to turn before we can eat it up.
You could always buy your spinach in smaller amounts to save yourself the hassle of dealing with too much. In the end, it’s a much better deal if you buy it in larger quantities, even if you can’t eat it all. Preserve the rest. That, in itself, is a great value.
Thankfully there are so many ways to use it that there is little to no waste. N
How to Dehydrate Spinach
Before you get ready to dehydrate spinach, you’ll want to go through the spinach and remove any leaves that are wilted and starting to turn. Just toss or use in your compost.
Rinse the leaves thoroughly and pat them dry with a clean towel. You want the leaves to be as dry as possible to reduce the time it’ll take them to dehydrate.
Arrange the spinach leaves on your dehydrator trays in a single layer. Spread them out as best as you can, when the dry out they’ll shrink up and leave space.
I threw mine on, and ran out of space, so I ended up putting leaves on top of leaves. Don’t do what I did (although.. in the end, it worked out fine).
Dry at 130 degrees for 4-5 hours. You might have to rotate trays halfway through (depending on your dehydrator). Monitor the spinach – add additional time as needed.
Once the Leaves are Dry
Once you have dehydrated your spinach, use it any of these ways:
- Leave them whole, store them in a canning jar – avoid introducing any moisture (or they will not stay dry!) You can rehydrate them in dishes when cooking.
- Put them in your spice grinder, grind to a powder. Use that powder in smoothies, cooking in dishes, or even cold process soap (they provide a very pale green color), or use as a face mask.
- Grind them and combine with salt 1:1 for a veggie salt (or even 2:1 – spinach to salt). This is probably one of my favorite ways to use spinach!
We’ve done this with rosemary and radishes, even jalapeños. It’s so good!
It takes a lot of spinach to make a significant amount of spinach powder. This powder (above) was used in an Avocado Cold Process Soap and gave the soap a nice, gentle green color.
Have you ever thought to dehydrate spinach? If you haven’t, give it a try. It’s a great way to eliminate excess waste and use up something you would have likely tossed out.
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