Swap out the spinach: how to adapt any recipe
Silverbeet can replace spinach in nearly anything, and the other way around, if you adjust three things: weight, cooking time, and acid. Here are the rules in both directions.
Most recipes say spinach because spinach is what the shops sell. Your garden says silverbeet. Happily the swap is almost always safe, in both directions, as long as you know the three differences: silverbeet is thicker, shrinks less, and tastes more mineral.
Step by step
- 1
Swap weight for weight, stems excluded
300 grams of spinach in the recipe means 300 grams of silverbeet leaves. The stems come on top and are a bonus, not part of the swap.
- 2
Add one to two minutes
Silverbeet leaves are thicker than spinach and need a little longer to wilt. Swapping the other way, subtract the same: spinach in a silverbeet recipe is done before you've stirred twice.
- 3
Expect less shrinkage
Spinach collapses to almost nothing; silverbeet keeps its body. The same raw weight gives a visibly fuller dish with silverbeet, so a recipe that 'disappears' with spinach becomes more filling with silverbeet.
- 4
Use the stem bonus
Buy a bunch of silverbeet for a spinach recipe and you are left with stems for a whole extra dish: stir-fry, grill, pickle jar, or finely chopped into the next soup. Spinach never gives you that bonus.
- 5
Adjust the seasoning
Silverbeet is more mineral and slightly more bitter than spinach. A squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of butter, cream, or grated cheese rounds it off. Swapping spinach into a silverbeet recipe, the dish may need less acid than stated.
Pro tips
- Frozen silverbeet and frozen spinach swap one for one in any wet dish.
- In dishes with long cooking times silverbeet always wins: spinach dissolves, silverbeet holds.
- Young silverbeet leaves work raw wherever baby spinach goes in a salad. Mature leaves do not.
Troubleshooting
- The dish came out more bitter than with spinach.
- That is expected; silverbeet has a mineral undertone spinach lacks. The counterweight is acid and fat together: lemon at the end, or more dairy in the sauce. After a couple of dishes most people start preferring the extra edge.
- The silverbeet is chewy where the spinach used to melt in.
- It needed those extra minutes. Cut the leaves into narrower ribbons and give them one to two minutes more than the recipe says for spinach.
- The creamed version turned watery.
- Silverbeet releases more liquid than you think. Wilt the leaves in the pan first, pour off the liquid, and then fold them into the cream. Never raw leaves straight into a finished sauce.