Spanakopita Recipe (Greek Spinach Pie Recipe!)

Let's make classic Greek spanakopita with a major shortcut. It's gonna cut your work in half. Okay, so we've thawed out our phyllo sheets overnight in the fridge, or you can take them out two to three hours ahead of time. This is one pound of phyllo dough. And then we've got like a clean towel to keep it from drying out as we work. I'm using thawed spinach from a previously frozen package. We have to make sure we get all the water out. We cannot skip this one. Add your thawed spinach, and then grab the sides of this cloth and twist. See how much liquid? You don't want that in your spanakopita filling. Ah. We're gonna dry our bowl and add our spinach in. Spanakopita filling is very easy. Spinach is the first part of it. Feta cheese. Don't skimp on this good stuff. We're using a nice block of feta. I like to buy it in blocks in the brine because that's a lot more creamy. We're just gonna break this up. Spinach, feta cheese, loads of fresh herbs. I'm using a lot of parsley here. You can do two tablespoons of dry dill wheat if that's what you have, but I have fresh dill today, so I'm going for that. If you're using fresh, you're gonna go three times the amount of dried. All right, garlic. Chopped up onions. Some people saute their onions and such before using it in the filling. That's actually not necessary, so you can take a shortcut here. It will cook very well in the oven because it has a whole hour. Four eggs. Boom. I'm so good at this. A pinch of pepper. I'm gonna skip the salt because I have a lot of feta cheese, which gives a lot of saltiness. I'm going yaya style. Everything goes in one bowl and you just mix it up. Just make sure you break everything up and mix well. And then at this point, I like to drizzle a couple tablespoons of some good Greek extra virgin olive oil. I'm using the Mediterranean dish Organic Koraniki Greek extra virgin olive oil, and it is so good. And the shortcut is coming for you. I mean, imagine this is the hardest part of this recipe. Grab yourself a nice, oh, this is a nine by 13. One thing you have to do when it comes to filo is when you roll it out, first of all, thaw it overnight in the fridge or three hours before, take it out and leave it on your counter. Then when you roll it out, you're gonna wanna put it in between two towels if you're going sheet by sheet. But here's the big shortcut. Are you with me? We're gonna go ahead and go in here. Tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil. Making sure that you are coating the entire pan. You're gonna warm up one cup of some good extra virgin olive oil. This is a major shortcut that will save you so much time. We're gonna warm this oil. We're not gonna get it boiling, but we're gonna warm it nice enough. Typically you would lay a couple sheets of filo at a time and then proceed to lovingly brush with extra virgin olive oil. But in this case, we're actually going in with half the filo. Not brushing every single sheet or two. If you've got extras here, you can fold it down. You can leave it up to encase the filling. Now you're going in with the spanakopita filling. That's right. We all need shortcuts in our lives. So we're gonna spread this evenly. Second half, another half pound of filo dough. Here it is. All of the sheets. That's right. Going right in here. Oh yes. You can fold in the edges, that's okay. In the end, it's gonna look gorgeous. Now we cut this party up with a nice sharp knife. We're gonna cut into squares. Here we go. Wait until this is finished. You guys are going to be so surprised. Watch the magic. It needs to sizzle. Give it a second. It will absorb the oil. We use the same amount of oil if you were actually doing every two sheets. It looks like a lot, but you need this oil for the spanakopita to cook perfectly. It'll be crispy. It'll be golden. It'll be absolutely delicious. And you cut your work in half. I learned this from my aunt Maha. Shout out. We're going in the oven, 325, for one hour. Ooh. Wow, so good. And hear this crunch. Ooh, yeah. Give it five minutes or so. You don't want to serve it immediately. How easy was that? I mean, no layering, no brushing, none of that. It's all so easy. I mean, I am so thankful my aunt showed me this trick because it makes such a difference. Mm, oh my God, mm. With this recipe, you get all the classic flavors. And if you want to go ahead and do each layer, that's great. If you want to just do my shortcut trick, both work perfectly. You have got to try this Greek spanakopita. It's absolutely delicious. Mm-hmm.