Spinach Quiche Recipe — Green, Silky, Never Watery

The green quiche done properly, which means one thing above all: dry spinach. A pound of leaves is nine-tenths water, and the distance between silky green custard and a weeping swamp is the half-cup you wring out with your hands. This build wilts, squeezes and re-dries the spinach, folds it through a nutmeg-scented gruyère custard in crisp shortcrust, and comes out sliceable, deeply savoury and entirely vegetarian — with the feta variation one paragraph away.

Ingredients

• plain flour (pâte brisée)1¼ cups / 160 g
• cold butter, cubed (pastry) + 1 tbsp (shallot pan)8 tbsp / 113 g + 1 tbsp
• fine salt (½ tsp pastry + ½ tsp custard + a pinch in the filling)1 tsp + a pinch
• ice water3–4 tbsp
• fresh spinach (or 10 oz / 280 g frozen chopped, thawed)1 lb / 450 g
• olive oil (for wilting)1 tbsp
• shallot, finely chopped1
• garlic cloves, minced2
• large eggs (plus a brushed teaspoon for the crust seal)3
• whole milk + heavy cream¾ cup / 180 ml each
• gruyère, grated (or ¾ cup / 110 g crumbled feta — see the fork)1 cup / 100 g
• black pepper and freshly grated nutmega few grinds + a proper grating
• lemony dressed leaves or a tomato salad, to serve1 bowl

Method

1. Make, chill and blind bake the shell. Run the standard pâte brisée: 1¼ cups (160 g) flour, 8 tbsp (113 g) cold butter, ½ tsp salt, 3–4 tbsp ice water; rest 30 minutes, roll to 12 inches (30 cm), line a 9-inch (23 cm) tart tin, freeze 15 minutes, then blind bake at 375°F (190°C) with the tin on a baking sheet — 20 minutes weighted, 5–8 naked, until the floor is dry and golden — and varnish the hot floor with a teaspoon of beaten egg. The sheet stays in the oven with the tin from here on. The full pastry doctrine lives on the master quiche page; the spinach version simply cannot afford a weak floor, given what the filling almost was.
2. Wilt the spinach in waves. Take 1 lb (450 g) of fresh spinach — yes, the whole absurd mountain; it is mostly air and water and both are leaving. Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in your widest pan over medium-high and add spinach by the double-handful, turning with tongs and adding more as each wave collapses, 3–4 minutes total until every leaf is wilted and glossy dark. (Set aside a small handful of raw leaves first if you want the whole-leaf mosaic on the tart's surface later.) Tip the lot into a colander and press with the tongs while its steam escapes. (Frozen shortcut: 10 oz / 280 g of frozen chopped spinach, fully thawed, skips this step and joins at the wring.)
3. The wring — this is the entire recipe. When the spinach is cool enough to handle, pile it into the centre of a clean kitchen towel, gather the corners, and twist over the sink like you are wringing a stubborn mop: you will extract close to ½ cup (120 ml) of green water, and every drop of it was headed for your custard. Twist, rest, re-grip, twist again — done means a compact fist-sized ball that leaves no wet print on the board. Chop the ball roughly. However dry you think it is, one more twist.
4. Build the flavour base. In the emptied pan, soften 1 finely-chopped shallot in 1 tbsp of butter over medium heat, 2–3 minutes; add 2 minced garlic cloves for 30 seconds more, then the chopped spinach, and stir 1–2 minutes — partly for flavour, mostly as a final drying pass on live heat. Season with a pinch of salt, black pepper, and the classic: a proper grating of nutmeg, spinach's oldest ally in French cooking. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool; hot filling scrambles custard on contact.
5. Whisk the custard. The master ratio, standard tune: 3 large eggs whisked with 1½ cups (360 ml) of dairy — half whole milk, half heavy cream — plus ½ tsp fine salt (the gruyère carries the rest) and more pepper. Combine without frothing; beaten-in air bakes into pocks instead of silk. If the feta road is calling (the sections make the case), the custard stays identical — only the cheese and its saltiness change.
6. Assemble in layers that make every slice equal. Scatter the cooled spinach mixture evenly across the crust floor, breaking up any clumps — a fistful of spinach in one slice and none in the next is the amateur tell. Follow with 1 cup (100 g) of grated gruyère, then set the tin on its baking sheet — kept hot in the oven since the blind bake, for bottom heat — on the rack pulled halfway out, pour the custard over to a couple of millimetres below the rim, and slide the rack gently home; never reach into the hot cavity with a full jug. A few whole baby leaves pressed gently onto the surface bake into a pretty green mosaic, if the tart is having its photo taken.
7. Bake to the wobble. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35–40 minutes: edges set and slightly puffed, centre swaying as one piece when nudged, 160°F (71°C) on a thermometer in the middle — the food-safe mark for egg dishes and the exact border between silk and curds. The spinach makes the surface mottle green-gold rather than brown evenly; judge by the sway, not the tan. Overbaking squeezes water out of eggs AND spinach at once — this quiche punishes it double.
8. Rest, slice, serve at the right temperature. Rest on a rack 20–30 minutes. The spinach quiche is at its best barely warm or at room temperature, when the custard has fully set and the nutmeg-spinach-gruyère chord rings clearest; refrigerator-cold mutes it, oven-hot blurs it. Slice with a thin knife wiped between cuts, and serve with something bright — lemony leaves, a tomato salad in summer. Leftovers reheat at 325°F (163°C) for 12–15 minutes and honestly might be better the second day.

Safety & hygiene Important

• Wash loose spinach; do NOT rewash the triple-washed bag. Leafy greens sit at the top of the outbreak tables (E. coli, Salmonella, norovirus), so the washing rules are worth stating exactly. Loose and bunched spinach: submerge in cold water, agitate, lift OUT of the water (grit sinks), repeat until the bowl stays clean, then finish under running water — and never soap or produce wash, which leaves absorb. But bagged greens labelled triple-washed or ready-to-eat get used straight from the bag — the FDA's position is that home rewashing adds contamination risk from your sink and hands rather than removing any. Wash your hands before handling either kind; your fingers touch more surfaces than the leaves do.
• Frozen spinach is an ingredient, not a ready-to-eat food. Frozen vegetables have driven Listeria recalls, and freezing kills almost nothing — it only pauses bacteria, and Listeria is the one that even keeps growing at fridge temperatures — so frozen spinach is for cooking, never for thaw-and-eat shortcuts like dips or smoothies. In this recipe it bakes 35+ minutes to 160°F (71°C), which settles the matter completely. Thaw it in the fridge or microwave, not on the counter overnight, and wring it just as hard as fresh — it carries even more water and the same rules.
• The custard's number is 160°F (71°C). Egg dishes are food-safe at 160°F (71°C), and this one is harder to read by eye than any in the family: the green-flecked surface mottles instead of browning evenly, so colour tells you nothing and the puff can lie. The nudge test (centre sways as one set piece) plus a three-second thermometer check through the middle is the whole protocol. Under the number, tent with foil and give it minutes more — gently raw spinach custard is nobody's lunch. The raw side follows the usual rules too: eggs cracked against the counter (not the bowl rim), dairy back in the fridge between steps, hands washed before the pastry gets touched.
• Quiche hours: two on the table, four days in the fridge. Eggs, dairy and cooked greens are a hospitable trio: room-temperature service lives inside the 2-hour window (1 hour above 90°F / 32°C), then leftovers go covered into the fridge for 3–4 days. Reheat slices to steaming — 165°F (74°C) — in a 325°F (163°C) oven; the microwave rubberises custard and steams crust. Wrapped tight, baked slices also freeze for 2 months, and thaw overnight in the fridge, not on the counter.

3 ways to plate it

Questions, answered