serves 8
This recipe is from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties! I have to confess that I am not a huge spinach fan, though in recent years I have stumbled on a few (3) ways of preparing spinach that I actually love. This is one, and then I have 3 others that I will get on this site at some point. One doozy is cooking it in my warming drawer, but that’s a story for another day.
This recipe is one of my fallbacks for Thanksgiving. You could call it a cheater since it calls for frozen spinach and not fresh, but the fresh is tons more work and you can’t tell the difference.
Ingredients
- 4 T unsalted butter
- 4 cups chopped yellow onions (2 large)
- ¼ cup all purpose flour
- ¼ tsp grated nutmeg
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 2 cups milk
- ~3 pounds frozen chopped spinach, defrosted (5 10-ounce packages)
- 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 T Kosher salt
- ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup grated Gruyère cheese
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees
- Melt butter in heavy sauce pan over medium heat
- Add the onions and sauté until translucent, about 15 minutes.
- Add the flour and nutmeg and cook, stirring, for 2 more minutes
- Add the cream and milk and cook until thickened
- Squeeze as much liquid as possible from the spinach and add the spinach to the sauce
- Add ½ cup of the Parmesan cheese and mix well
- Season to taste with salt and pepper
- Transfer the spinach to a baking dish and sprinkle the remaining ½ cup of the Parmesan and Gruyère on top
- Bake for 20 minutes, or until hot and bubbly.