How to make THE BEST Greek Spinach Pie / SPANAKOPITA

hi everyone welcome back to the meters dishes so today I'm going to be making a video that's been requested over and over again it's a classic you know Greek dish spanakopita also known as spinach pie it's delicious it's easy this is not the appetizer kind this is the full like entree version and it's delicious it's honestly the best friend of capita that I've ever had and I've had so many it's my mom's recipe it's juicy it's fresh tasting it's delicious and that's all because I do not cook the filling before I bake it everything is just chopped up and put up in One Bowl mixed up together and you'll see what I'm talking about as we go through the video give it a try it's super delicious and fresh tasting let's go over the ingredients and then we're going to get started first we need a lot of spinach this is baby spinach a whole pound of it that I've chopped up a little finer we're going to need some eggs salt olive oil really high-quality ricotta cheese get the whole milk kind not skim or low-fat or anything like that I have a recipe on this and I'll post in the description box because I know it's easy to make anyway you need some really good feta cheese a lot of it this is a pound and then we need some pepper because I'm chopped up and washed scallions dill and a pound of phyllo dough that's all now dill I'm using dried dill because I really couldn't find any good fresh dill in my supermarket dry dill is really flavorful so you can definitely substitute it but if you do have fresh dill growing in your backyard if it's easy to find and it's really fresh from the supermarket go ahead and use that you're gonna need about two bunches of it for this recipe now let me get some stuff out of the way and it's super simple all you have to do when you get I like to buy the spinach that's baby spinach and that's already washed and ready to go and all you do is just you chop it up a little bit it doesn't have to be finely chopped just course is fine just like that now we're just going to put everything in our bowl all right so two your spinach you want to make sure you add your ricotta cheese and crumbled up your crumble up your feta cheese this is a sheep's milk feta which is much milder than a regular feta but you can go ahead if you want to and use the more inexpensive cow feta that's found at the supermarket just don't buy the crumbles crumble it up yourself it's really so simple if you want to get rid of some of that excess salt taste you could rinse this with some warm water before you use it and make sure you dry it afterwards we add the chopped up scallions make sure you wash them properly and you dry them and you chop them up really really finely like this now to this I'm going to add a whole teaspoon of black pepper you can put as much or as little as you like and then I'll use I'll put three heaping teaspoons of dried dill and I'll start off with just a half a teaspoon of salt and I'll taste it and see if it needs any more else it'll all depend on them how salty the feta cheese is and then to this I'm going to add a cup of olive oil and that's going to add more moisture and make it really nice now the best way to mix this is with your hands make sure your hands are nice and clean and don't add the eggs yet at this point because once it's done all like combined and mixed you're going to taste it and see if it needs more salt and it's I don't know if you use really high quality eggs you shouldn't have a problem with Salmonella or anything like that but just to be safe taste it before you add the edge okay once it's like this all well combined and really it just comes together after two-three minutes of mixing with your hands trust me there's no better way to do this I've tried it many different ways okay and then I'm going to give it a little taste to me that's perfect I wouldn't add any more salt but if you want it a little bit saltier they'll be fine give your eggs a little whisk with a fork and then add them to here and give it another wish mixing hands and that's it the filling is ready just like that that simple this is what the filling should look like once it's done I'm going to wash my hands and then we're just going to fill it in the phyllo dough and it'll be ready so you want to make sure that your phyllo dough has come to room temperature and the best way to do that is to leave it in your refrigerator overnight because this is usually sold in the freezer section and then a couple hours before you're ready to make this just take it out and leave it on your kitchen counter and let it stay at room temperature sealed in its packaging don't unpackage it until you're right at this point ready to use it so what you do you want to have a half sheet baking tray okay take some of your olive oil now you're going to need another about 3/4 of a cup to a cup of olive oil and using your hands or a brush if you want to just rub olive oil all over this so that way it is easy to cut it and put in your plate later on so I just put three sheets on the bottom after aisle dit and now you want to take just a couple of sheets at a time you want to take two sheets at a time and just border do the edge of the tray so two sheets all around and while you're doing that you want to keep drizzling olive oil just with your hands all around like that just like that save the rest for the top of it now we're going to put the filling in the center just spread it out evenly just like that and now just cover this dear filo dough put some more olive oil and now you're going to take two sheets at a time I'm just going to cover the top and tuck it under and do the same thing again with olive oil kind of like you're making a pretty package and now here's a nice trick that I've learned so you can create a nice Airy top you're just going to take one sheet at a time and just going to roughly fold it up on top sprinkle in oil over each layer it doesn't matter if they tear up because they're just crumbling up crumbling them up like this and just forming a nice crisp top you can have two three sheets left I'm going to finish this up and fill in all the gaps now you're going to see when this is ready you're going to see why I did this once we're done baking it at this point I want to take the rest of this olive oil and just drizzle it all over the top and the sides and this is going to make this bake up to be golden and crispy and beautiful now what you want to do is take a really sharp knife and cut this into the squares so you're going to squares or triangles I'm going to cut the top portion into four pieces four long sections all the way down you can take out a ruler if you want to but really that's totally unnecessary this is a nice rustic beautiful dish to try to make it as even as possible and you want to go all the way down you have four sections I'm on the long side and then you're going to cut this more shorter side into three sections that's going to give you 12 beautiful big pieces if you wanted to cut this into smaller pieces go right ahead cut it into as big or a small of a serving size as you want but once this is baked these are going to be your serving sizes so keep that in mind and we're going all the way through so that way this cooks beautifully and evenly and then it's going to be very easy to take this out of the pan later on that's it that's what it looks like all right that's it this is ready to go in the oven it's important that you pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and then right when it's ready to go in you reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and let this cook for an hour after the hour is done it's going to be completely golden and brown and crispy on the top once you take it out of the oven after an hour let it cool for at least 20 minutes it's best to let this cool so that way all the juice is set and the filling also sets a little bit and then I'm going to show you what it looks like as soon as it's ready I'm gonna go put this in my oven right now all right so the spanakopita was cooking for exactly an hour and then I took it out and I allowed it to sit at room temperature for 25 minutes and look at how beautiful it is it's golden brown you see all these ripples of the phyllo it's they're going it's going to be nice and light and airy and crispy and exactly the way it's supposed to taste super super good like this now you want to take your knife and go down and just cut through all the areas that you stores before and see doing this ahead of time to make this so much easier to cut if you do if you don't do this before you bake the pie all the field will just crumble and fall apart you'll have a big huge mess to make sure you don't skip that step before baking now let me take out a piece and show you what it looks like the first piece is always for the chef so let me take mine out look at that look at how beautiful how juicy it is on the inside it's not at all dried or black or whatever from overcooking spinach it cooked perfectly I'm going to put in my plate see how moist it is just perfect let's cut into it and let me show you what it looks like you hear that crisp perfecto this my friend is the best friend of go pizza that I have ever tasted make sure that you make it so you can experience the goodness look at that its moist it's it's just so so good I'm gonna have this piece this is perfect you can again cut it to smaller pieces if you want to fit feed a bigger crowd or maybe serve it as an appetizer but this is filling it's really healthy it's delicious to eat as a main entree with maybe like a nice salad or something like that have a nice vegetarian meal perfect it's really good also if you wanted to make put this all together before you bake it wrap it up airtight and plastic and make an extra tray and freeze it for whenever maybe you didn't have whenever you don't have time to cook or something like that it stays fresh in the freezer for up to a month maybe even more I'm going to post the recipe for this and the link in the description box down below make it share pictures with me please let me know how you like it it's I know you're going to love it and I'll see you guys next time bye everyone

Channel: Dimitra's Dishes

Views: 1,295,312

Rating: 4.8765497 out of 5

Keywords: spanakopita, spinach pie, phyllo pie, greek spanakopita, greek recipes, cooking show, greek cooking show, vegetarian foods, dimitra khan, euro bakery and cafe

Id: eUTVesSFows

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/frankieandjonnie]

I made this spinach pie. It was very easy and delicious. If you like green vegetables, herbs and fresh cheeses all baked up in a super simple pastry, this is the recipe for you.