Spinach Nameul Banchan Mini Lesson ( 시금치나물 Korean Spinach Side Dish)

I tried unsuccessfully, a few weeks back, to teach some techniques to make a better spinach side dish. All I did, it seems, was write a bunch of words that only made sense to me. I'm attempting to do it again, with photographs, in the hopes that it will be better and more clear. Please don't let the poor photography distract you from the technique - which is what is important here.

Spinach Side Dish (시금치나물)
Ingredients
2 bunches of spinach, washed VERY VERY well. (no one likes to eat grit - rinse at least 4 times.)
1 teaspoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon ground toasted sesame seeds
2 scallions. finely chopped (optional)
1 clove of garlic crushed (optional - it does tend to leave a VERY strong taste in the mouth so I lean towards not using it.)


Prepare a large pot of boiling water - do NOT be tempted to use a smaller pot as the bigger the pot, the quicker and more efficiently you can blanch evenly - otherwise you can have some bits which are MORE soggy - YUCK. Bring the water to a rolling boil - and then remove from heat. Do NOT leave it boiling as it will overly wilt your spinach.

Dump the all the spinach into the just boiled water and immerse and stir. This part is the tricky part - you don't' want to over cook it, but how long actually depends on your spinach - smaller, more tender leaves require less time, while the bigger larger leaves, require more - I generally try and err on the side of less cooking. 30 seconds to 1 minute of dunking is usually enough.


Quickly drain the spinach in a colander. Now - this may sound weird, but once your spinach is drained, arrange your spinach in the colander into a donut shape - this is to provide the greatest surface area for cooling - if you leave it in a pile in the middle you will actually not cool it and you'll end up with soggy spinach in the center...you want to try and cool it as much as possible.

Alternatively you could spread it out on a tray or a cookie sheet, but I do find the donut technique quite efficient and effective. Let your spinach COOL - I like to wait at least 30 minutes, but depending on what I'm doing, sometimes I don't get to it until an hour later.

Now - grab a handful of your spinach and squeeze out the excess water over the sink. You don't want to over-squeeze but you don't want soggy spinach. You'll have to play around with it to figure out how much to squeeze. Squeeze water out of the entire pile.


Then roughly chop all your squeezed out spinach - so you don't' have some huge obnoxious long stringy thing that could potentially choke your husband or your child. I basically pile the spinach up and go down the chopping board at about 1.5 inch intervals.


Put it in a bowl and let cool some more. I usually stick it in the fridge at this point, and I will get to it right before I serve. This is something that you can do in the morning, leave in the fridge and then just mix the seasonings in right before dinner.


On your cold, squeezed, chopped spinach - add soy sauce, salt and mix. Taste - make sure it is seasoned to your liking...if it meets your salt flavor requirement, then add some sesame oil to seal in the flavor. Also grind some freshly grated sesame seeds on top. Now you have your beautiful spinach.