How to Dehydrate Spinach and Make Spinach Powder!
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Dehydrate spinach and make spinach powder to extend the life of your garden-grown spinach or the great grocery deals you can get! It is one of the easiest dehydrating projects you can do and is so versatile!
Do I Need to Blanch Spinach?
Spinach, like all greens, contains oxalic acid which can work against your body absorbing the vital nutrients from spinach. We often eat raw spinach in salads, etc., and that’s fine.
But because, in most cases, you’ll be using dried spinach in foods that you cook, you don’t need to blanch as the cooking takes care of it. Even if you use spinach powder in green smoothies, it’s okay as long as you aren’t making it the bulk of your consumption.
Blanching can also help reduce the size of large spinach to make loading onto trays easier, but you’ll need to separate them more so that leaves don’t stick and not dry properly.
Table of contents
How to Dehydrate Spinach
Quick Instructions: Dry at 95°F / 35°C for 4-10 hours until crisp.
Equipment needed:
- Dehydrator
- Grinder
- Mason Jars
- Salad Spinner (this is optional, but I find it helpful.
Instructions:
- Wash fresh spinach leaves.
- Dry off leaves by placing on a towel to air dry for a fe minutes. A salad spinner works great to remove excess surface moisture.
- Place onto dehydrator trays lined with dehydrator mesh, parchment paper, or 100% cotton liners.
- Dry at 95°F / 52°C for 4-10 hours.
- Condition.
- Store in an airtight container such as a canning jar or commercial glass jar.
Oven Directions:
- Follow the instructions above for prep
- Place on cooling racks on cookie sheets.
- Dry in an oven at the very lowest setting it has with the door cracked open to allow airflow and moisture to escape.
- Keep an eye on leave so that they don’t burn.
Get more ideas on dehydrating in the oven here.
When Is Dehydrated Spinach Done?
When your spinach shatters in your fingers it is done. But be sure to check those stems, too. If they are not dry, keep drying!
Dehydrating Frozen Spinach
Frozen spinach can be dried, as well.
Directions:
- Thaw.
- Spread spinach onto your dehydrator trays.
- Dry at 95°F/35°C (The recommended temperature is 125°F/52°C, but a lower temperature keeps more nutrients.)
- Test – should crumble.
- Condition.
- Store.
How to Condition
Conditioning dehydrated foods is a way to test to be sure the moisture has equalized in your container and that there is no excess moisture.
- Place food into a jar with enough room to move.
- Shake once a day for 5-7 days.
- Look for any signs of moisture buildup: Food sticking to the sides or bottom that won’t easily shake off, clumping, moisture beads on food or jar.
- If you find these issues, place food back into the dehydrator to dry more.
- If you see any mold, toss everything out and sanitize your jar.
Want to learn even more about conditioning? Check out this How to Condition Tutorial.
How to Store
After conditioning, dehydrated spinach can be stored in an airtight container for six months to a year.
Dried spinach can take up a lot of room so it’s fine to break it down into smaller flakes to use any way you need to, or you can make powder (directions below). You will get a longer shelf life keeping it as whole as possible.
You may get longer, but the vitamins and minerals will begin to be depleted.
How to use Dehydrated Spinach
- Dehydrated flakes, as we like to call them, make a perfect addition to just about any meal you are going to cook.
- We crush them just enough not to be large leaves, but not so much that they are like crushed herbs. It gives spinach bulk to a meal, without being overwhelming.
- Use to color fresh pasta or bread dough.
- Sprinkle in scrambled eggs.
- Use as an addition to smoothies.
- Use to make green powder supplement capsules.
They will rehydrate naturally in whatever you are making.
- Quiche
- Fritattas
- Casseroles
- Soups
- Meatloaf
- Stews
Yield:
- 10 oz package of bulk spinach=
- 9.5 C of fresh bulk spinach=
- 8 C of dehydrated spinach=
- 1/4 C of spinach powder
How to Make Spinach Powder
Powdering spinach is easy, and you don’t need any special equipment. It’s a great way to ‘sneak’ veggies into your diet, even if you don’t like greens!
Simply placing your spinach in a zip-top bag and crushing it with your hands can be enough for spinach flakes that looks like the typical dried herbs you get at the store.
I use a large blender because of the bulk, but you can use a coffee grinder or bullet blender, too.
It’s a good idea to place your powder back onto trays in order to dry it as heat from grinding can create moisture. Here’s how I do it with trays I made from fruit leather sheets.
You can also mix your spinach powder with greens of every sort to create a master mix of Green Powder.
Darcy’s Tips:
- If you have a machine with low clearance between shelves (i.e., Excalibur Dehydrator), put your greens on the dehydrator trays, add a piece of mesh on top, then slide the tray into your machine. You can compact the leaves a bit, and the mesh helps the tray slide easily and keeps the leaves in place.
- You can make a slurry if you have a lot of greens to do, dry the slurry on fruit leather sheets, and then dry it for powder.
- When doing leaves, make sure not to turn your machine on until it’s closed, and don’t open the door until the fan blades have stopped. Otherwise, you may get a cascade of leaves blown at you!
- It is okay to mound your leaves a little because they will shrink quickly. You don’t have to worry about a single layer of leaves.
- Large stems can be done separately. Simply chop them up some, and dry them as well!
Uses for Spinach Powder
- Use to color fresh pasta;
- Sprinkle in scrambled eggs;
- Use to make green powder supplement capsules;
- Add to any savory dish to add a boost of nutrition.
Want to try More Powders?
Frequently asked questions:
Yes, you can dehydrate canned spinach. Simply open the can and rinse, place on dehydrating mesh, and dry at 125°F/35°C until dry (roughly 8-12 hours). You are not trying to save those volatile nutrients as they’ve already been canned, so dry a little higher for faster results.
How to Dehydrate Spinach and Make Spinach Powder
Ingredients
Instructions
- Wash Spinach
- Separate spinach leaf from any large woody stems if desired
- Place on deydrator trays.
- Dry at 95°F / 35°C for 4-10 hours until cripsy when cool
- Store leaves in an airtight container -or-
- Place dried spinach leaves in a coffee grinder or bullet blender and powder.
Video
Darcy’s Tips
Nutrition
Nutritional information is an estimation only. Nutrient information for dehydrated foods is based on fresh. Use 1/4 of the servicing size for the same nutrient information. Thus 1 Cup of fresh fruit has the same sugars as 1/4 dried.
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This post was originally published August 10, 2020.
I use fresh spinach in smoothies every morning. I’m wanting to dehydrate spinach from my garden to use in the smoothies (or maybe green powder which would be lettuce and spinach). Do I need to blanche the spinach for smoothies? What about the lettuce?
As mentioned in the post, it isn’t necessary. Unless you were making a full diet on spinanch centric smoothies and never used anything else, you might want to.
Hi Darcy, love your page! I am dehydrating frozen greens and squeezed out the liquid. What can I do with the liquid? Can I dehydrate it separately? Sorry if that’s a dumb question, but it’s my first time. Thank you!
You can use it as part of your soup base. I wouldn’t bother dehydrating it if it were me.
Can you dehydrate frozen chopped spinach?
Yes, the information is in the post.
I don’t see where it says how long to dehydrate frozen spinach; 8 hrs (for fresh) seems like way too much, and I saw somewhere else that said 1 hr, but that doesn’t sound like enough?
NEVER go by the time. Go by how when it’s dry. Times are only rough estimations – it’s dry when it’s dry.
how much powder would you recommend to add to a 2 lb meatloaf? Thanks
Considering a 1 TB is approximately 1 Cup of fresh – and you have to deal with moisture – I wouldn’t add more than 2 TB as you learn how it works for you.
Hi! Should I add more liquid to my recipe when I replace this for fresh spinach? Like making homemade tortillas that call for fresh spinach? Thank you
Is spinach an ingredient of the tortilla itself, no extra water needed if you’re using powder or flakes unless you find the mixture dry when you finish mixing it. Just like with other baking, look to see what it looks like mixed and go from there!
Is the drying temp 95 degrees or 125 degrees?
Take your pick 🙂 Temps don’t matter except if you are doing proteins or you are trying to keep a raw food diet. The lower the temp, the more nutrients you keep. The recommended is 125F, but I do it at 95F to keep as much as possible on my greens.
Emptying my Nesco dehydrator’s round trays into a round roasting pan helps keep the mess down. It’s much easier to empty dried leaves from the roaster into a container without them flying everywhere.
Thank you@ for taking the time out to post this article and information.