The most efficient way to squeeze water out of cooked spinach

spinach

I'm cooking a bunch of spinach for making a spinach and ricotta filling. I need to get as much water as possible out of the spinach, and I'd prefer not to make a big mess in the process. In the past, I've wrapped a few handfuls at a time in a towel and squeezed out the liquid. This leaves me with a messy, green stained towel and requires a lot of twisting that doesn't seem maximally effective.

Best Answer

Use a potato ricer. Just fill it up with a big handful of spinach, and give it a good squeeze in the sink, or over a bowl if you like to drink spinach water. It extracts a ton of liquid quickly, and is a breeze to clean up when you are done.

Related Solutions

Nutrient impact of squeezing water out of frozen chopped spinach

One way of looking at it is that nutrient density is increased due to the removal of water. Minerals will not have been drained away at any rate.

Example from nutritiondata.self.com:

                            water content, g per 100g  Iron     vitamin A
Unprepared thawed spinach   90.2                       1.9       11725 
cooked drained              88.9                       2.0       12061

I assume more nutrients are cooked away rather than squeezed but that was the data available.

Nonsoggy spinich pie with frozen spinach

Letting the spinach drain thoroughly will help; you should also increase the amount of egg in proportion to bind the additional ingredients. That will keep the ratio of binder to water in balance.

You could probably also place your filling into the bottom of a casserole dish and layer with filo/phyllo, with a layer of dough to top the whole thing, assuming your goal is minimal effort.