Freezer Friendly Food – Spinach, Feta and Filo Parcels

What a joy it is to find freezer-friendly food stowed away in the freezer on a Thursday night… I feel like I am winning at parenthood when it happens. The key to freezer-friendly meals is knowing what works. Some things are great fresh but a bit lifeless when they resurface from their frosty depths. I have a few go-to meals that I know freeze well. My Salmon Nuggets are a win in our house but so are these parcels of summer joy. I am so excited to bring you Spanakopita!

Growing up my family ate out a lot. My Dad is from Manchester so it’s where we tended to go and we had a lot of great choice. I would put money on us settling for Arabic, Greek or Turkish food. We love the communal aspect of eating from small plates and sharing a feast of different flavours. I cook a lot of Arabic and Greek food at home and yet I never tried cooking Spanakopita before lockdown 2020.

Then I stumbled on a recipe that made it sound easy. Scrambled Chef is a platform that shares family meal ideas from chefs. I haven’t cooked any of their other recipes but I do rate this one! It’s been adapted by me. I needed something a little less fiddly. I wanted fewer but bigger parcels. And I added more garlic, spinach, feta, and onion.

Freezer friendly meals for the win

Getting back to freezer friendly food – I have frozen these three times and I can confirm they are great baked from frozen! I have used them as a snack, made them in to a main meal with rosemary potatoes and salad and included them in a platter. My children love them with salad and chips and I don’t blame them one bit!

Freezer Friendly Food – Spinach, Feta and Filo Parcels

Gemma

The key to freezer-friendly meals is knowing what works. Some things are great fresh but a bit lifeless when they resurface from their frosty depths. I have a few go-to meals that I know freeze well. My Salmon Nuggets are a win in our house but so are these parcels of summer joy. I am so excited to bring you Spanakopita!

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 30 mins

Cook Time 20 mins

Course Main Course, Side Dish, Snack

Cuisine Greek

Servings 4 people

Equipment

• pastry brush

Ingredients

  

• 400 g fresh spinach
• 2 small onion finely chopped
• 3 clove garlic finely chopped
• 40 g feta cheese
• 250 g pack of filo pastry
• small ramekin filled with extra virgin olive oil – you may need to refill as you go
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

Instructions

 

Making your filling

• If you want to cook some of these straight away, which I sometimes do, preheat the oven 200˚C/392˚F/ gas mark 6.
• Finely chop the onions and garlic and fry on a medium heat with a good drizzle of olive oil.
• Shred the spinach thoroughly. Once the onions and garlic have softened and started to brown add the spinach and the cumin.
• Cook the mix until the water from the spinach has evaporated, keep stirring to ensure the spinach doesn’t stick and burn. Scrambled Chefs say 7-8 minutes but I would always go off your own judgment. This mix should be thick and not watery when it’s ready.
• Remove the spinach, onion and garlic from the pan and spread it out on a big plate. I stick it in the fridge for 15 mins as I don’t have time for it to cool on the side.

Assembling your Spanakpitas

• You must ensure your mix is fully cooled before you start to assemble your Spanakopitas.
• Take your spinach mix out of the fridge and transfer to a mixing bowl.
• Crumble the feta cheese in to the spinach mixture and mix thoroughly.
• On a clear surface cut your filo in half lengthways.
• Lay a filo sheet in front of you horizontally. Brush with olive oil. Then place a second sheet on top of it. The oil will make them stick together.
• Spoon a heaped tablespoon of the spinach mix on to your preferred end of the filo. I use the left-hand side.
• Take the top corner of the filo sheet (above the spinach mix) and fold it over the spinach mix to form a triangle.
• Then use the triangle and continue to fold until you reach the other end of the pastry. This bit is tricky to explain so check out my video above.
• I don’t have time to be a perfectionist over these so you will see my method is a little rough but I like that.
• Brush the finished parcel with olive oil and place on a tray.
• The first one is always a fiddly thing! But you will soon get in the flow and knock them out in seconds.
• If baking fresh sprinkle with ground cumin and pepper to taste and bake at 200˚C/392˚F/ gas mark 6. for 10 minutes.

Freeze now, bake later

• To save some yummy Spanakpitas for another day you can freeze them. I freeze mine individually before they are cooked in take away tubs. I cook for 20 minutes from frozen at 180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4.

Video

Notes

Honestly this is such a great way to get your family eating spinach, I guarantee they will ask for more! They are just as yummy hot or cold and you get a real sense of achievement seeing them all stacked up.

Keyword freezer friendly food