Are you cooking spinach correctly? Top 5 spinach-cooking mistakes that destroy nutrients

Spinach is considered one of the healthiest greens available. The leafy vegetable is a nutrient powerhouse, packed with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that help regulate and maintain human health. A daily serving of 1 to 2 cups of spinach is recommended for intake. The healthy veggie is proven to have various benefits such as reducing oxidative stress, improving eye health and blood pressure, cancer prevention and more. However, did you know that the way you cook spinach makes a huge difference in whether it retains all its nutrients and they are absorbed by the body properly? Some unknown mistakes made while cooking spinach destroy its nutrients. Get to know them below!

It is better to add salt to spinach leaves after they have been cooked and taken out in a bowl. This is because when you add salt at the beginning of the cooking process, the leaves let go of their water content, thus taking longer to cook, becoming more soggy and losing their healthy components.

When stir-frying or sauteing the spinach leaves, it is advised to cook them in batches rather than adding them all together in the pan. This causes the leaves to steam making them limp and soggy. To have fresh cooked spinach, cook the leaves in batches with even heat, allowing them to wilt evenly.

Spinach is packed with water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C, vitamin B, folate and more. When you over-boil the leaves or use too much water, these nutrients leach out into it and you lose the benefit of eating the vegetable. It is better to use minimal water or head for steaming, sauteing or microwaving with less water.

If you think cooking vegetables for as long as you want cooks them properly, then it might be the worst mistake you are making when it comes to healthy cooking and eating. Overcooking vegetables is the easiest way to make them lose their nutrients. Vitamin C, folate and many antioxidants are lost when you overcook spinach. A quick sign to catch that you have overcooked the leaves is when their appearance becomes dull, mushy and loses colour. It is better to cook them for 1-3 minutes until tender.

As mentioned above, some nutrients of the leaves leach out into the water while cooking. Thus, it is better to wash the leaves and cook them properly so that you can make use of the nutrient-rich water in stews, soups or purees to be able to absorb as much of its benefits as possible.