Lemon Garlic Sautéed Spinach

3.54 from 13 votes

This savory and satisfying Lemon Garlic Sautéed Spinach is easy, quick, and low ingredient. It's also a tasty way to use up some spinach that is a little wilted and not as fresh as you'd want in a salad.

Course Sides

Cuisine American, Italian

Keyword delicious, Easy, fast, garlic, healthy-ish, Lemon, quick, Simple

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 7 minutes

Total Time 12 minutes

Servings

Calories 65kcal

Author Plant Test Kitchen

Equipment

large sauté pan

Ingredients

1 pound fresh baby spinach or regular fresh spinach
1 TBSP oil for sautéing i.e. non-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, or Earth Balance
5 cloves garlic thinly sliced + roughly chopped or minced
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes optional; more to taste
2 TBSPs lemon juice about half a lemon's worth
1/4 teaspoon salt kosher or fine; more to taste
1/8 teaspoon black pepper more to taste

Instructions

Heat the oil over medium-low to medium heat. Add garlic and red chili flakes. Sauté for 2 – 3 minutes until fragrant. If the garlic browns you've gone too far and your spinach will likely have unpleasant bitter and burnt flavors. Occasionally, I've had to start over on the garlic. Go easy.
Add a third to half of the spinach, lemon juice, salt & pepper to the pan. Toss & sauté the spinach over medium to medium-high heat and add more spinach as it shrinks while you sauté. Continue sautéing until uniformly cooked and dark green, about 5 minutes.
Taste and add more salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, or lemon juice if desired and enjoy.

Notes

Nutrition Information is approximate.

A little lemon juice & salt goes a long way

Recently, I made myself some very zesty, lemon-forward spinach. Much like salt, you can always add more, but you can't subtract. If you find you've overdone it, you can add more spinach—if you are the type of person who has loads of spinach around, count me impressed.

Whatever you like for salt will work nicely in this recipe. Please taste before adding more salt. The acid from the lemon juice amplifies the salt. This time I used kosher salt

Fragrant garlic

We want the garlic to be fragrant, but not browning. If the garlic browns before you've added spinach, you've gone too far and your spinach will likely have unpleasant bitter and burnt flavors. For this recipe, I like to slice the garlic and give it a rough chop.

www.planttestkitchen.com

Nutrition