Spinach is a nutritious leafy green vegetable that can be enjoyed in a variety of dishes, from salads to smoothies. However, when it comes to recipes, the amount of spinach needed can vary widely. That’s why it’s important to know how to measure spinach accurately.
Below, we’ll explore different methods for measuring spinach, including measuring by weight, volume, and the number of leaves. With these tips, you’ll be able to ensure that your spinach dishes are consistently delicious and nutritious.
How To Measure Spinach
There are three methods on how to measure a cup of spinach. Depending on your cooking experience, you can follow one of these ways to get the correct measurement of spinach.
Method 1: Follow The Recipe
If you have a recipe that calls for spinach, then the best way to measure spinach is to follow the recipe’s instructions to know the cups of spinach in a pound.
For those who purchase canned spinach, follow the measurement tool on the box to calculate the spinach amount. You can also pour canned spinach into a separate measuring cup and stop when you see the limit reached.
On the other hand, if you buy fresh spinach, then you can ask the seller to sell you the exact amount of spinach you need according to your recipe.
That’s the fastest and most correct way on how to measure cups of spinach. Or, you can measure spinach at home using a measuring cup.
Unlike red pepper – a substitute for green pepper weighed down when cooked compared to fresh ones, fresh and cooked spinach have approximately the same volume. That’s why you won’t have to worry about spinach loss during cooking.
However, some recipes do call for cooked spinach, and some ask for raw spinach. You should sort the requirement out first before handling your spinach.
And remember to cut out the spinach’ stem if you find this part unappetizing.
Method 2: Purchase Spinach in a Known-weight Bag
If you are lucky, you can purchase spinach in bags that include weights. They also included the presumable weight when the spinach is cooked as well.
These bags will support you a lot if you have difficulty measuring spinach on your own. Of course, you will need to put them on the scale to know their exact weight when you get home, but these bags will help you answer how many cups in a pound of spinach.
So, how much does 1 cup of spinach weigh? According to the US measurement system, an ideal spinach bag weighs 30 grams of spinach in a cup.
If the market’s scale shows 60-70 grams, you will probably have two bags of spinach in your hands.
Another way is to purchase a weight-known bag, for example, 100 grams, 200 grams, etc. Then you need to stuff spinach into these bags and repeat to get the amount of spinach you want.
There are scales in the food market for you to measure the amount of spinach you want.
That’s for fresh spinach. When you want to make things fast by purchasing canned spinach, it is perfectly fine to do so if this change does not affect your recipe.
Canned spinach is packed with salt and vinegar. Therefore, its weights contain more content than fresh spinach, making 200g of canned spinach weigh more than 200g of fresh spinach.
Another kind of spinach you can buy in the market is frozen spinach. Like canned spinach, frozen spinach has a more considerable weight than fresh spinach, since it contains water in ice form.
However, when you thaw it out, the weight between these two kinds of spinach is not different at all.
That’s the reason many families substitute frozen spinach for fresh spinach.
Method 3: Measure With Tools
With a simple measuring cup, you can measure spinach in your kitchen without any outside help. When you measure uncooked spinach, you need a spoon to press down the veggie so as its volume fully contains the cup.
If you just let spinach flow freely in the container, the weight won’t be measured exactly.
For cooked spinach, it is easy to measure since it has absorbed enough moisture to be heavy. All you’ll need is to put spinach in a cup of spinach in grams until full, and you can read the measurements to know its weight.
For frozen spinach, you need to thaw them before measuring them by blanching or squeezing water out. Since frozen spinach is heavier because of the excess water, water needs to be removed beforehand to measure the spinach correctly.
You can use a kitchen scale for more correct results while measuring rather than a measuring cup.
You can apply the thumb rule to measure spinach if you don’t have a measuring cup or a kitchen scale. One cup of cooked spinach will be equal to one pound of fresh spinach.
If you have had a measurement in mind, you can easily calculate the amount of spinach you are having.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do You Measure Fresh Vegetables?
Measure fresh vegetables besides spinach is easy as well, as long as you follow these simple guides below:
Measure vegetables by the size of your fist
Fist-measuring is the fastest way to measure vegetable amounts when you are in a hurry or don’t have any measuring tools. If you wonder, “How much is a cup of spinach?”, let us give you an answer.
Your fist’s size will equal one measuring cup, so you can identify how many veggies you need for each kind, depending on your fist’s size.
The great thing is that this method applies to all kinds of vegetables, whether they are cooked or uncooked, frozen or thawed.
The only thing to remember when using this technique is to cut long vegetables into pieces first. You can see that we cannot compare a fist to a carrot, right?
Measure vegetables using a measuring cup
If you have a measuring cup, then things are much simpler. Follow the measuring numbers, and you can find out how much spinach weighs.
Make sure to chop the vegetables into reasonable pieces so that they easily fit your cup. As you add more veggie in, give the cup a light shake to make up the spare space underneath the cup.
How To Store Spinach?
How to store spinach is quite similar to how to store summer squash as they are both winter vegetables.
You can give it a wash and remove the debris or ill leaf for fresh spinach to make sure your spinach is completely free from dirt. If you are not comfortable eating spinach stem, it’s time to remove it before storing it for a long time.
Place all spinach leaves inside an airtight container or a sealed plastic bag and put them into the fridge. You can store spinach at room temperature if you intend to use it in the next few days.
But spinach is a vegetable veggie; it is advised to store it at a cool temperature to last for a month.
For long-term storage for up to 3 months, you can blanch spinach first, seal it in a sealed bag, and convert fresh spinach to frozen.
