Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 241 kcal | 68 kcal |
| Protein | 30.3 g | 8.6 g |
| Fat | 4.2 g | 1.2 g |
| saturated | 0.6 g | 0.2 g |
| Carbohydrate | 14.7 g | 4.2 g |
| sugars | 4.2 g | 1.2 g |
| Fibre | 23 g | 6.5 g |
| Sodium | 827 mg | 234 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 650 g fresh spinach
Instructions
- Go through the bunch and discard any leaf with a yellowing edge or a slimy stem. Spinach turns from fresh to spoiled in hours, and one bad leaf will taint a whole jar.
- Wash it in a sink of cold water rather than under a tap, lifting the leaves out and leaving the grit at the bottom. Spinach grows low and sandy, and sand does not dehydrate away.
- Spin it dry and then press it between towels. Free water sitting on a leaf is time the machine spends before it has even begun on the spinach.
- Tear the bigger leaves down and cut out the thickest stems. A stem is several times the thickness of the blade next to it and finishes hours later.
- Heap the leaves on in a loose double layer instead of fussing them into a single one. They shrink to almost nothing, and a sparse single layer wastes most of a tray.
- Dehydrate at 52 °C for 4 hours, laying a mesh screen over the top once the leaves have shrunk small enough for the fan to lift them.
- Open the machine partway through and turn the pile over so the buried leaves come up. Anything trapped underneath stays limp while everything above it goes brittle.
- It is finished when a leaf crushes to flakes between finger and thumb and the trays rattle as you tip them. A leaf that folds instead of crumbling is still holding water.
- Crumble it or keep it whole, and store it in a jar out of the light for a year. Whole leaf holds its colour longer; crushed spinach spoons into a pot more easily and turns khaki within a few months.
