Spinach pie is a traditional Greek dish that is enjoyed everyday. This authentic spanakopita spiral recipe has been passed down through several generations of a Greek family and is one of their favourite dishes. We hope you enjoy it too.

Summary

Prep: 20 minutes
Cooking: 25 minutes
Ages: Toddlers to Teens
Difficulty: Intermediate
Makes: 1 spinach spiral pie

How to make spanakopita spiral pie?

A spanakopita spiral pie is easier to make than it looks. First need to prepare the spinach and feta cheese filling in a saucepan.

When that is ready you spoon a little of it along an oiled sheet of filo pastry and roll it up tightly into a tube. You then curl that tube around itself into a spiral and place it on a round pie dish.

You continue adding spinach filled filo ‘tubes’ and curling them around the centre until you have filled the dish.

Then you simply brush it with oil and add it to the oven until golden.

Follow our step by step guide which includes images of each stage of making this pie.

Is spinach and feta pie healthy?

As pies go, this spinach and feta cheese pie is very healthy.

Leafy green vegetables are well known for being packed full of nutrients and spinach is a star among them. Containing manganese, folate, magnesium, iron, copper, calcium, potassium and vitamins C, 3, B2 and B6 all in significant quantities, it’s full of all the good stuff. It’s also thought to help prevent disease and to be good for your skin.

This pie has 600 grams of fresh spinach leaves, which together with leeks, dill and egg in its filling, makes it a nutritious and healthy pie.

Feta cheese is also lower in fat and calories than other yellow cheeses and is considered to be a healthier option for that reason. It also has vitamins and minerals including calcium which can help with bone health too.

Ingredients

Spinach and feta filling:

• 3 leeks – white parts diced
• 600 grams fresh spinach leaves – washed
• 150 grams Greek feta cheese
• 60 grams fresh dill
• ½ lemon – juiced
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt

Filo crust:

• 1 x 250 gram packet filo pastry
• 5 tablespoons olive oil (90 mls)
• Sesame seeds to garnish (optional)

Equipment:

• Ceramic round quiche dish about 25 cm/9 inch diameter
• Pastry brush

Instructions

Spinach and feta cheese filling:

This step is optional but it softens the spinach and removes a lot of the water from the leaves: 

• About 30 minutes before starting, wash the spinach leaves and place them in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and make sure the leaves are covered with it. Leave for 30 minutes.
• At the end of the 30 minutes, take the leaves, rinse the salt off and ring them dry with your hands or in a cotton kitchen cloth. Drain the water from the leaves as well as you can and pat them dry at the end.

1. When the spinach is ready, take a large saucepan and add the 2 tablespoons olive oil over a low heat.
2. Add the diced leeks (white parts only) to the saucepan. Sautee for a few minutes until they are soft and yellow.
3. Add in the washed spinach leaves a handful at a time until they collapse into the saucepan, followed by the dill. Simmer for 15 minutes.
4. If you didn’t drain the spinach leaves in the earlier step, there may be a lot of excess water in the mixture at the end of the simmering time. If this is the case, drain some liquid from the saucepan until the mixture is moist but not too wet. You shouldn’t be able to see any pools of water in the mixture, so if you can, spoon those off.
5. After you’ve drained the mixture to the right consistency and removed it from the heat, add in the juice of half a lemon and the egg and stir. You do not need to cook it further in the saucepan.
6. Crumble your feta cheese into a large mixing bowl. You can either do this by mixing it in a blender for a minute, or by mashing the feta cheese with a fork. It should be crumbled into small balls about ½ cm in size without any large chunks in it.
7. Empty your spinach mixture into the bowl of crumbled feta cheese and it stir well until everything is combined. Set it aside. Your spinach and feta filling is ready.

Make the spanakopita spiral:

1. Take a round oven dish and grease it well with butter or oil spray. Ceramic dishes work best as they mean that you can keep the pie in the dish when serving it.
2. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan setting. Clear some space on your worktop and get your filo pastry ready.
3. Remove one sheet of filo pastry at a time and lay it out on a clean worktop with the long end in front of you. Keep the remaining filo sheets rolled up and cover them with a slightly damp kitchen cloth to prevent them drying out. Filo dries out very quickly and if this happens you can’t use them.
4. Place 5 tablespoons of oil in a small bowl next to you with a pastry brush. Brush your first filo sheet with a light layer of olive oil.
5. Take a tablespoon of your spinach and feta cheese mixture and spread it out along the long end of the filo pastry sheet. You want it to be about 2 cm thick so that there is enough to fill the coil, but not so much that it’s packed full and can’t bend. You need to be able to roll it up into a spiral later on. Leave 1-2 cm at each end with no filling.
6. Roll the filo pastry sheet tightly around the filling and continue rolling until you get to the end. You should now have a long round tube of filo pastry filled with spinach.
7. Coil the tube up to make a tight spiral and place it in the middle of your baking dish. This is your first coil which is the start of your spiral. Your other ‘coils’ will move out from that first one.
8. Repeat the process with the remaining sheets of filo pastry and spinach filling, working out from your first coil until the oven dish is full.
9. Brush the top of your spinach pie with olive oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds (optional).
10. Cook the spanakopita spiral on the middle shelf of the oven for 25 minutes or until the top is golden. Remove and enjoy while warm!

Spanakopita spiral with spinach and feta – our step by step guide:

Enjoy this delicious and healthy spanakopita spiral pie!