This Julia Child Tip Will Help You Prevent Overcooking Frozen Spinach

There is absolutely no shame in reaching for the convenience of a pack of frozen vegetables — even culinary icon Julia Child, who literally wrote the book on cooking French food — "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking" – included recipes using frosty veg in her masterpiece. But, being the great teacher she was, she also included specific instructions for using them, because fresh and frozen vegetables are significantly different. Freezing tends to release water from foods, so taking that into account is a key to success when cooking them.

Julia explains in her cookbook that when cooking frozen spinach, it's important not to put too much in one pan because, "the liquid will not evaporate quickly enough and the spinach will overcook." If the water in the frozen spinach can't escape the pan as steam, the tender leaves will stew rather than warm through, giving the spinach an unappealing texture, a bitter taste, turning the stuff a dark blackish green. She advises no more than two chunks of spinach in a pan at a time.

Frozen spinach has already been cooked during the packaging process. Like many other frozen vegetables, it's ready to eat after just a quick warming up. Because you'll often find spinach frozen in dense bricks, it's tempting to pop more than a couple in your pan to save time, but in doing so, you're preventing the heat from getting all the way through the mass. It's better to allow space to both break up the spinach as it heats up and let that excess water steam off. Julia Child recommends just defrosting the bricks enough to be able to chop them into smaller pieces to aid a quick heat-up. She either heats the slightly defrosted and separated chunks in a pan without anything else in it, or with melted butter. 

When you prepare a recipe with fresh spinach, like a classic creamed spinach side, you'll often see instructions for wilting the leaves in a pan. This step softens the spinach without adding water, relying on the heat of the pan to quickly cook the tender vegetable. You might also see instructions to blanch fresh spinach — a brief dip in boiling water helps set the color. But of all the tips for working with spinach, the most important is to avoid overcooking, whether it's fresh or frozen.