Vegan Creamed Spinach

🥗 Why We Love This Recipe

• Super creamy with none of the dairy: We used vegan cheese and milk products to recreate the creamy texture of a normal creamed spinach. It has all of the same delicious flavor and works for those with allergies!
• One pot preparation: This recipe comes together almost entirely in one pot, which helps cut down on dishes and prep time during the stressful holiday season.
• Classic holiday side dish: just because you're vegan doesn't mean you can't serve up a traditional holiday spread. This vegan creamed spinach is great alongside other holiday classics like mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, glazed carrots and more.

🥬 Ingredients

Here are the key ingredients you'll need to make our vegan creamed spinach:

📋 Ingredient Notes

• Spinach: We used frozen spinach since it keeps much longer and reduces in volume much less than fresh spinach. We think it's a lot less of a hassle to work with and makes stressful holiday prep much easier.
• Vegan cheese: two of our favorite brands for vegan cheeses that actually melt (and taste great!) include Miyokos and Violife. We also love using Miyokos butter in this recipe.
• Nondairy milk: we prefer oat milk in this vegan creamed spinach for its creamy texture and neutral flavor. You can also use another plain, unsweetened/unflavored nondairy milk of choice, including almond, cashew or soy.
• Shallots: you can also sub with an equal amount of yellow onion.
• Flour: feel free to use gluten free all purpose flour if needed.
• Seasonings: salt and pepper are essential, but a small pinch of nutmeg and cayenne really take this vegan creamed spinach to the next level. Nutmeg is a common ingredient in creamy sauces (like bechamel) to add a note of sweetness, warmth and complexity.
• Lemon juice: freshly squeezed is always best!

🔪 Step-by-step Instructions

(1) Melt butter in a large skillet or dutch oven over medium low heat. 

(2) Add shallots and garlic and sauté for 5-6 minutes over medium heat, then add spinach and stir well to combine. Continue cooking spinach for another 5 minutes.

(3) While spinach is cooking, in a separate bowl, whisk together 1 cup of milk with ¼ cup of flour until there are no lumps left. 

(4) Add in remaining milk, milk/flour mixture from the previous step, lemon juice, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne to the spinach and stir to combine.

(5) Increase heat to medium high. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. 

(6) Add in the mozzarella and half of the parmesan and continue cooking until the cheese is melted and well incorporated.

(7) Remove from the stovetop and top with remaining parmesan.

💭 Expert Tips and FAQs

• We like to partially thaw the frozen spinach in a colander before cooking. This helps to remove a bit of excess moisture from chunks of ice that may cling to the spinach. It helps to prevent the final dish from ending up too watery.
• Vegan cheese can take a bit longer to melt than regular cheese. If you'd like to speed up this process, you can chop up your nondairy mozzarella into smaller pieces. Otherwise, just be patient! It may take a little while, but we promise it'll melt just fine.
• Whisk the flour and milk well before adding to the pot: if you don't mix them well enough, you may end up with big clumps of flour.
• Gluten free? Simply use gluten free all purpose in place of regular AP flour.
• Variation: try this vegan creamed spinach recipe with another leafy green like kale or swiss chard. (I honestly prefer it with kale – I think the texture is much better!)
• Storage: store leftovers in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Reheat on the stovetop or in microwave.