I use a vinegary hot sauce......pepper sauce is what we call it down south. it's basically hot peppers and vinegar...

so my answer is vinegar.

Gotta freshly squeezed lemon

If it's cooked... I like both real butter and a tiny bit of Salad Vinegar and fresh ground pepper..

If it's uncooked, then a nice warm strawberry or raspberry vinaigrette.

Carolyn

cold spinach gets vinegar. Usually flavored.

Fried bacon with vinegar.

Sue

I've never heard of vinegar or hot pepper sauce on cooked spinach. Always have hot pepper sauce on collards and turnip greens.

I didn't eat spinach as a youngster.

Don't know what influenced me to use fresh lemon, but I like it.

sour cream. :)

I use flavored vinegar, also. I grew up in the South but did not eat spinach. We put hot pepper sauce on the collard greens, but not on the turnips, most of the time.

I'm a lemon juice on spinach, gal.

Butter, cracked pepper and basalmic vinegar on hot spinach. Blue cheese dressing if it's in my salad, and a sweet sour dressing on a loaded spinach salad.

How do ya'll cook your spinach?

Butter....real butter, salt and freshly ground pepper.
I steam my spinach just a tiny bit.

best when it's RAW!

but if you HAVE to cook it, and it's NOT another
ingredient in a dish, then I say
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter SPRAY
maybe put a dry cheese.. just a little, like paremsan

Vinegar or lemon juice. I don't like butter on green veggies.

Butter...
Vinegar is good for you but I hate sour...

Vinegar

Neither. I use olive oil and garlic to saute spinach. I eat it raw in smoothies and salads but I don't use anything else when I do that.

I buy fresh spinach and rinse it off. I put some extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan, then add the spinach. I toss in a dash of garlic powder then toss it until it wilts. Then I sprinkle lemon juice to taste. No butter. No vinegar.

Ina Garten has the best sauteed spinach

Thank you for the responses. Unfortunately, DH won. He likes vinegar on spinach, whereas I like butter. Our preferences are based on what our mothers fixed when we were little. My mother cooked greens all the time--all kinds of greens, including beet tops, radish tops, dandelion leaves, etc. She grew up on a farm, and that's the way they ate. She put vinegar on all greens, except spinach. So that's what I do.

He says he has been "deprived of vinegar for 20 years". Poor guy...guess he hasn't figured out that there is vinegar cruet sitting on the kitchen counter!

Anyway, thanks for the responses--and I think I'm going to try lemon juice. That sounds good!

Growing up, it was vinegar. I never really cared for it.

Now...butter, salt and pepper.

Gonna try Debby AB's way now!

A squeeze of lemon juice.

I add as much apple cider vinegar as possible to my daily diet so I would opt for butter and ACV! That is how we eat green beans as well.

Another vote for vinegar.

Ina Garten uses LEMON in hers :o)

Sauteed spinach

1 1/2 pounds baby spinach leaves
2 tablespoons good olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped garlic (6 cloves)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Lemon
Sea or kosher salt, optional
Directions
Rinse the spinach well in cold water to make sure it's very clean. Spin it dry in a salad spinner, leaving just a little water clinging to the leaves.

In a very large pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and saute the garlic over medium heat for about 1 minute, but not until it's browned. Add all the spinach, the salt, and pepper to the pot, toss it with the garlic and oil, cover the pot, and cook it for 2 minutes. Uncover the pot, turn the heat on high, and cook the spinach for another minute, stirring with a wooden spoon, until all the spinach is wilted. Using a slotted spoon, lift the spinach to a serving bowl and top with the butter, a squeeze of lemon, and a sprinkling of sea or kosher salt. Serve hot.

Vinegar - preferably Balsamic

Glenda, I think that's the orginal recipe I began using, then switched it up a little over the years. It's so good. I don't eat canned spinach anymore.

Steamed spinach gets butter and vinegar.
Cold spinach salad gets warm sweet and sour bacon dressing. I need to make some more of that up pretty soon.

Came across this today as I was curious why vinegar is used (apparently only by some). I always have used vinegar on cooked spinach but butter on any other green veggies (e.g. beans, peas, brussell sprouts, etc.) as that is what my parents did. With raw spinach I like a honey mustard salad dressing or a raspberry or poppy seed vinaigrette.

Vinaigrette for raw, butter for cooked.

I've never had butter with spinach. I grew up eating cooked spinach with cider vinegar. We put that on chard, too. My parents always planted those two greens in our garden. Never ate raw spinach until after college, but fell in love with the salad of hard boiled eggs, sliced mushrooms and a hot bacon vinegarette at a friend's potluck a long time ago.

Sometimes I sauté spinach with some sesame oil and dress it with soy and rice wine vinegar. Some toasted sesame seeds for crunch.

Another nice combo is a diced apple (Jonagold, Gala) raisins and pine nuts. Sauté those in some olive oil until the apple is partially cooked, then throw spinach in the pan to cook with everything. Salt/pepper to taste. A little drizzle of balsamic.

I use butter or olive oil if sauteing.

I make a wilted spinach salad with zesty Italian salad dressing that is heated in the microwave with a few pieces of bacon that is chopped into small pieces. Mix in some Parmesan cheese and it's quite tasty.

Lemon juice or rice vinegar

I like acid on heartier greens like kale and collards. but I'll try it with cooked spinach ;-)

Cold, lemon juice, olive oil, salt/pepper. Sauteed, garlic & olive oil or butter, salt and pepper. No vinegar ever.

Sauteed in garlic and olive oil.

If it's not sauteed in olive oil and garlic til JUST done, then it's steamed, with a dab of margarine and a shake of salt and ground pepper for me. Husband has lemon and butter or cider vinegar.

Raw, in a salad? Raspberry vinaigrette or a lemon poppy seed dressing with strawberries, mushrooms and raw, sweet white onion rings of all things! We normally serve this with tandoori/Indian chicken. Yum :)

lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper.

Butter and salt.

If I cook it, it's just barely wilted in olive oil and garlic. I like vinegar on just about every thing. I like flavored vinegars especially pomegranate or raspberry or balsamic. I also like it with a little butter. The other way is raw in a salad. My husband likes it any way he can get it. He likes the Trappey's pepper sauce too.

Balsamic vinegar

Steamed with bacon bits, onion and butter. Or....just seasoning salt.

Along with what colleenoz mentioned about the iron in your spinach and dressing it with vinegar/lemon juice, steam it or cook it quickly in the microwave - DON'T BOIL IT. After 10-minutes of boiling, 3/4 of its phytonutrient content will have leached into the cooking water. The greener the color of the cooking water, the more nutrients you have lost. You'd be better off drinking the water than eating the spinach.

It's also been shown that we cannot absorb some of the most important nutrients in salad greens unless the dressing, or the meal it's eaten with, contains some type of fat. "Olive oil, according to a 2012 Purdue University study, does the best job of making those compounds more bioavailable. It takes almost seven times more soybean oil, by contrast, to get the same results. Soybean oil is the most common oil in commercial salad dressings." So make your own dressing with unfiltered extra virgin olive oil. "Clarifying extra virgin olive oil filters out half its bionutrients, including a beneficial compound squalene, which has been shown to help fight cancer and protect the skin from UV damage."

The traditional Greek salad dressing: Drizzle your greens with extra virgin olive oil and finish with a few squirts of lemon juice and a grind or two of salt and pepper. I also like to substitute black pepper with nigella seeds (freshly ground) for a new and interesting flavor, and a new favorite - dried papaya seeds (freshly ground) which has a peppery flavor and lots of health benefits.

I like it with a little olive oil and vinegar

My mom and sister, lemon juice. Me? Pat of butter.

Like my parents did, I use vinegar.