In the past I use to boil it in water whether it was Swiss chard or spinach then serve it with either a wedge of lemon or butter. Now I cook it the way you do with bacon fat and butter and served with sauteed onions and bacon bits. Now I am hungry for spinach.

Boiled and drained. Then add some apple cider vinegar. No bacon/fat. We only did that with a wilted leaf salad.

I only like it very lightly sautéed, wilted. Never had it sweet.

After rinsing the spinach well, I just add a boatload of it into my dutch oven, the only liquid being the droplets that cling to the leaves. Pop the lid on and basically steam for just a minute or so and that boatload is now a large handful, LOL. Salt and pepper and vinegar or lemon juice.

My mother-in-law, may she RIP, would cram as much as she could get into her large pot and cook it down until she had room to cram another load in and cook that down, and repeat. By the time the last batch was ready, the first batch was a slimy mess. I just could not eat her spinach.

Marilyn, we eat the smaller leaves raw a lot...in place of lettuce for salad or on a sandwich. I add it a handful at a time to soup. To cook it for a side dish, I usually wash, and while its wet, put it in a hot skillet, add a little finely chopped garlic, drizzle with olive oil when the moisture has steamed away, it cooks so quickly, just a few minutes. Approx the same for young chard, kale. That's the way DH's father always cooked dark greens....sautéed, garlic, olive oil and DH likes it that way. Never sugar, I can't imagine spinach with sugar. Butter, or bacon/bacon fat yes, not sugar.

Sauteed with bacon & onion, then smothered with mozzerella until cheese is melted.

Or instead of the mozzerella, stir in cubed cream cheese for creamed spinach. I've never had it sweet.

I eat mine either in salads or lightly sauteed with a splash of soy sauce or balsamic vinegar - just a teeny tiny splash.

My view is that with many food dishes, unless it's one intended to have a highlighted flavor (like garlic and butter in scampi), if you can taste an individual flavoring or seasoning, that often means there's too much of it.

A pinch of sugar can be added to some veggies or fruits to enhance or produce what might be desired as a subtle natural sweetness, but doing so shouldn't produce a sweet taste. A little is good, a little more can ruin the effect.

Marilyn sue, was this a "better" restaurant or just an average one?

Sauteed in olive oil and a bit of garlic for me. I also love spinach in omelettes and egg scrambles. Plus in Joe's Special. Can't leave out Joe's Special.

I've never added sugar to spinach or any other cooked leafy vegetable, no matter how it was prepared. Very odd; I wouldn't have eaten it either.

In what you might also put into the very odd department, I have toothpaste-size tubes of anchovy paste and tomato paste in my refrigerator. Why? Because some recipes call for adding very small amounts (like, a teaspoon or sometimes less) of either to a preparation. And I don't mean for Caesar salad dressing in the case of anchovy paste.

I don't really care for anchovies, nor would I add the paste to something on my own. Yet I've tried with and without on a few recipes and the difference of adding a small amount is noticeable. Yes, both are dynamite sources of glutimate and so they add umami. Using a few drops of soy sauce in non-Asian dishes similarly can add a blast of (non-soy sauce tasting) flavor, and for the same glutimate reason. South-east Asian fish sauce - same thing.

With sugar and cooked veggies, a little is enough. A very small pinch or less, to brighten the flavor. If you can taste sweetness, you put in too much.

About the only vegetable I can think of that I use a little pinch of sugar is turnips. Some turnips have a bitter twinge and a pinch of sugar can help neutralize the bitter taste but not over power it with sweetness.

Spinach is naturally sweet (a member in Kitchens calls it "candy" or something). Is it possible that it was just remarkably sweet for spinach? Just asking because I so can't imagine adding sugar. Unless it was one of those where it was meant to be the salt? I don't usually salt vegetables, but it makes more sense.

I almost always prefer spinach raw, though wilted, perfectly, is truly excellent. For spinach borekes (like spanakopita), I don't cook it first. I put the filling in and let it cook as the pastries cook. Same with quiche or omelettes. I put it in raw. The exception is green kugel. There's a lot of spinach in it, and it would release way too much water if it weren't cooked first. That's just chopped and steamed, then drained and pressed (the getting rid of the water part), and stirred into the rest of the ingredients.

Okay. There is one way I like cooked spinach as a dish on its own, but only because I grew up with it. Russian style. Chopped and steamed (and drained well) and served with sour cream and chopped boiled eggs. :) A ridiculous thing to do to a vegetable but really delicious. :)

I can only eat spinach raw.

I fry it in olive oil and add a little lemon juice, salt and pepper just before taking it out of the pan.

Sugar? Oh no! :0) Onion, bacon and seasoning salt "or" lemon juice with salt and pepper.

We make all kind of noodle soups in my Asian native country. I often buy frozen spinach to make vermicelli ginger noodle soup (and a few more ingredients such as fish). This noodle soup is traditionally used with either collard, mustard greens or Chinese celery. I substitute these with frozen spinach since I can have them anytime without an extra trip to the grocery.

As for the fresh leaves, I often use it in salad or salad wraps.

By the way, doesn't spinach has a tint of sweet on its own?

Snidely...I consider tubes of anchovy and tomato pastes as staples in my pantry, never odd!

OK, everyone off the pile up on me. Haha.

I didn't suggest adding sugar to spinach, nor did I mention spinach at all. I just said over the course of a few posts that very slight amounts of unusual ingredients (including sometimes sugar) can add unexpected punch to flavors. And that the amount added shouldn't be so much as to be discernable in the taste profile, as was the sweetness described in the original post.

rhizo, my experience is that few people use anchovy paste or understand what it does. That makes doing so "odd" to those who don't use it. And for some with limited flavor preferences, probably distasteful.

Never enjoyed spinach growing up, but I love now spinach, any which way.

Mother always served spinach with chopped eggs.

Creamed spinach, enjoy a dash of nutmeg.

I enjoy Ina Garten's fresh spinach with olive oil and sauteed garlic, then toss in the spinach just till wilted.

Spinach salad is my favorite!

Collards and turnip greens, a dash of sugar with a pod of okra, WHY? Just cause my former MIL did :o)

Former teacher, that I was, our lunchroom staff always added sugar to their spaghetti and chili, belch.

I only eat it raw or very slightly cooked, sauteed. I never liked it when I was a kid...my mother tried to get me to eat that stuff out of a can. I don't think she ever cooked fresh spinach and I don't remember her ever cooking broccoli. She may have though. I was a very picky eater and I didn't eat much of anything.

Glenda....some people put sugar in potato salad. I can't stand it made that way.

Snidely, I use anchovy paste when making Green Goddess salad dressing. A little dab will do ya.

Exactly, and rarely more than a little dab.

Green Goddess was popular in SoCal in the 60s and 70s and a favorite of mine as a kid. I don't think I've heard of it since then. Do you have a recipe you would share?

I eat a lot of spinach. I rinse it, shake out the water and put it in a large frying pan with a dab of butter or olive oil, sprinkle with salt and cook until just wilted. Sprinkle with lemon juice and enjoy. I love it. I have never heard of adding sugar to spinach

My mom used to cook it with butter, then top it with breadcrumbs that she toasted in a pan with butter, and then chopped boiled eggs. Very good. I used to cover it with gravy from whatever meat she had cooked. Yummy. I don't eat it often now,but I used to love it.

I've never had sweet spinach. How odd. I was born in the north but came to the deep south when I was only 6 months old. While I love it here and I love most of the food,I never understood why so much of the food is so sweet! Potato salad, bbq sauce,coleslaw, etc. Always full of sugar or something. Ick. There is a local wings place that covers their wings in a honey and brown sugar sauce with a little ketchup mixed in and people go nuts for it. Yuck. I wonder what they put in spinach to make it sweet and why they thought it was a good idea.

Sweet???? Whoa. No way. I steam mine. I might add a bit of butter at the end and pepper.

No, I would not say this was a high end place to eat. Just a family place. I don't even think the spinach was fresh, most likely canned. I do like canned but not fixed that way. I also like a bit of sugar in some other things but never in spinach.

Sue

Spinach? Why didn't you say so, Sue? I thought you were asking about fixing your toilet. :-)

I love raw fresh spinach but don't like the way it 'squeaks' on my teeth in omelets. I wonder what causes that sensation? Anyone know what I mean?

Butter, salt and pepper

Microwave, then add 2 tbsp dried onion soup (the kind you use to make onion dip) and 2 tbsp cream cheese.

The only way I cook spinach is to make my version of the Indian dish Palak Paneer which has spinach and curry powder and butter and curry powder and feta cheese cubes and a little more curry powder.

Over New Years I made a batch as a side dish that started with 6 pounds of frozen spinach, and one of the co-cooks stared aghast as I upended the entire bottle of curry powder into the pot.

Just wondering. Is there some reason why the word "spinach" couldn't have been put in the subject line?

Lindsey, I in no way mean to speak for Sue, whose reasons might be very different, but I've found lately that threads with really specific titles often get dive bombed by people who don't bother to read even the OP, let alone the other posts, and just answer what's in the title. It's very disconcerting!

SnidelyWhiplash, your post caught my eye as my favorite memory was eating GG dressing for the first time at the Velvet Turtle. Here's the recipe (perfect for your anchovy tube)

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-09-23/food/fo-37972_1_green-goddess-dressing

Never heard of putting in sugar, or sweetening spinach. As many before said, wilting in a hot pan with butter, olive oil, s&p, fresh chopped garlic (or the minced stuff in a jar if I am being lazy), but I ALWAYS use rice wine vinegar vs regular vinegar or lemon juice, love that stuff, try it!!

I do mine Italian style sauteed in olive oil and garlic but I also add a few cut up boiled potatoes and toss them in with the spinach. They taste just wonderful.

Plllog wrote, "Lindsey, I in no way mean to speak for Sue, whose reasons might be very different, but I've found lately that threads with really specific titles often get dive bombed by people who don't bother to read even the OP, let alone the other posts, and just answer what's in the title. It's very disconcerting!"

But in this case, it doesn't matter if no one read anyone else's answers, and just wrote their own answer to the question "How do you fix your spinach." How you fix your spinach has nothing whatsoever to do with how I fix spinach, or how Alisande fixes spinach, etc. Anyone writing about how they fix their spinach doesn't build upon how anyone else fixes their spinach.