Fresh Spinach Flavor As a sign of approval nowadays, people talk about a book, movie, or song as being “off the charts.” Well, the flavor of our farm-fresh spinach has natural sugar content that’s totally off the charts with Brix readings literally as high as an apple. Spinach is one of our signature crops, which is why we offer multiple flavorful varieties to our chefs. Our in-demand spinach varieties include the following:
Traditional spinach: Sweet and buttery, our traditional spinach leaves offer up a mild spinach flavor with a tender texture.
Stemless spinach: As the name suggests, your order will contain just the incredibly delicious spinach leaves with no stems
Tropical spinach: Imagine a mildly bitter spinach taste where diners will experience an earthy flavor progression. Texture is succulent, creamy, and crunchy.
Ice spinach: Initially grown in the open air, as the temperatures drop, we cover spinach plants with cold frames—causing the crop to repeatedly experience cooler temps. The result? More nutrients are drawn up through the roots and into the leaves, causing flavor to continue to improve throughout winter: buttery, sweet, nutty. This is the process used with grapes to create fine wine.
Next up: a quick memory. Farmer Lee remembers standing in the cafeteria lunch line in school when spinach was one of the least desired vegetables. With our fresh spinach, you can count on the opposite: people standing in line to enjoy its flavor, flavor, flavor. Delicious Spinach Recipes When brainstorming and experimenting with new dishes and menus, you may enjoy looking at what other chefs are creating. If so, here are some of our spinach recipes:
Spinach Salad with Warm Beet Vinaigrette and Shaved Watermelon Radishes
Spinach Artichoke Dip
Old School Creamed Spinach
Paleo Warm Spinach Fall Harvest Salad
Baked Rigatoni with Garlic Artichoke and Wilted Greens
Please contact your product specialist to get the quality ingredients you need for your own unique dishes. Health Benefits of Spinach Spinach provides us with healthful calcium, magnesium, iron, and more. Chockfull of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, spinach may help to prevent cancer as it flushes out free radicals. Its high potassium content can help people with high blood pressure while its calcium and vitamin K can play a key role in bone health. Antioxidants found in spinach can assist in in eye health while its vitamin C can help you to manage high blood pressure. Anti-inflammatory benefits? Check! Immunity strengthening benefits? Check!! Brain health benefits? Check!!! Regenerative Farming Health benefits of spinach are significant but, because of how farming has evolved into one where crops are typically grown for yield, nutritional deficiencies are all-too significant. A landmark study, when comparing 1940 nutritional data with that from 1991, shows the following:
Boiled broccoli has 75 percent less calcium.
Carrots have 75 percent less magnesium, 48 percent less calcium, 46 percent less iron, and 75 percent less copper.
Potatoes have 30 percent less magnesium, 35 percent less calcium, 45 percent less iron, and 47 percent less copper.
Scallions have 74 percent less calcium.
Boiled spinach has 60 percent less iron and 96 percent less copper.
Watercress has 93 percent less copper.
To add to the problem, the 1991 data is now more than 30 years old, and we strongly suspect that nutritional deficiencies are even more of a concern. Now, here’s the good news. Independent sources have verified what we’ve discovered at our agricultural research lab: our vegetables have up to 500% more in mineral content than the USDA baseline. We credit this to our regenerative farming practices where we treat our soil as its own cherished crop, focusing on leaving it in even better shape than we’d originally found it. At a high level:
Healthy soil contains “good” microbes.
We focus on building up what healthy soil needs while culturing these microbes so that can continue to find new ways to improve the flavor, nutrition, color, and aroma of our crops.
Our positively microbe-active soil protects our plants from bacteria that could cause problems for them.
As our crops grow in healthy soil, they develop strong immune systems, less susceptible to disease or damage by insects.
In other words, healthy soil leads to healthy crops
As our section on the health benefits of spinach indicates, eating healthy crops helps to support healthy people.
Because The Chef’s Garden uses organic rather than synthetic ways to enrich the ground, this builds up healthy soil without harmful runoff.
So, this protects our water system, as well, contributing to a healthy planet.
We’re growing our spinach plants—make that all our crops—in ways that our grandparents and great-grandparents would recognize while leveraging the technology of today. People have been enjoying spinach for much longer than that, of course, although we don’t know how far back. History of Spinach According to Science Direct, the spinach plant was native to Southeast Asia. By the 11th century, Arabs had taken this leafy vegetable to Spain—and then it spread throughout Europe. Stories are told about how, when Catherine de Medici was sent from Italy in 1533 to marry Henry—who would become King Henry II of France—she took spinach seeds with her. Various versions of this story exist, but perhaps there is truth in the tale. Not surprisingly, Europeans brought spinach to the American Colonies and stories are also shared about how injured World War I soldiers were given spinach juice in wine to build up their strength. National Spinach Day Although Farmer Lee believes that every day should be used to celebrate spinach, the official date is March 26. In 2022, this date falls on a Saturday, making this a perfect date for people to enjoy outstanding spinach dishes at their favorite restaurants. Ordering Your Fresh Spinach We invite you to contact your product specialist to discuss which fresh spinach varieties are at the peak of freshness and flavor.