Creamed Spinach

Amid all of the cookie-baking and cocktail-making lies a hidden conundrum: how to make Christmas dinner feel different from the feast your family ate a few weeks ago. Sure, you may not serve turkey this time around, but sitting around your roast be the same suspects: greens, potatoes, roasted vegetables, rolls … you know the drill.

Rather than offer you a respite from all of that, I’m just going to offer the best version of a side dish possible. It’s pretty good with turkey, but it’s ideal with rich, meaty roasts, the kind with a beautiful crust on the outside and meltingly tender meat on the inside. I had it with my favorite weeknight steak, but it’d be equally delicious with lamb or beef tenderloin.

The recipe, from The Shutterbean, uses frozen spinach rather than fresh, which a) saves you the trouble of buying armloads of fresh spinach, and b) skips that whole blanching step (since your greens are already cooked). A quick saute with onions and garlic imbues the spinach with tons of flavor.

The best part is there’s no fussing around with a bechamel or a roux or anything complicated. The spinach gets all of its body from cream cheese, which also adds a nice tang. It gets a further kick from Parmesan, and from a hefty pinch of nutmeg, which is a must when you’re cooking greens. Oh, and then Tracy goes the extra step and tops the creamed spinach with Parmesan and finishes it in the oven, creating a gorgeous crispy crunchy crust that I will fight you for.

Plus, the spinach-to-cream ratio is pretty high, creating a bright green side dish rather than a gloopy, all-cream mess. Trust me: you’ll definitely win Christmas dinner when this baby shows up at the dinner table.

Creamed Spinach

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Ingredients

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• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
• 2 pounds (32 ounces) frozen chopped spinach
• a hefty pinch of ground nutmeg
• salt and fresh cracked pepper
• 1 8-ounce package cream cheese, cut into six pieces
• 1 cup freshly grated parmesan

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until they’re translucent, 4-5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for another minute.
3. Add one package of frozen spinach at a time to the skillet and cook until the spinach is completely thawed, about 15 minutes. Stir in the nutmeg, and season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat.
4. Drop the pieces of cream cheese into the spinach mixture and let it sit for 5 minutes, until it has softened. Then stir the cream cheese into the spinach until well-incorporated. Stir in 3/4 cup of the parmesan cheese.
5. Transfer the creamed spinach to a 7-x-11-inch baking dish and top with the remaining Parmesan cheese. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until mixture is bubbling and the edges are golden. Serve warm.

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 4