Make Homemade Spinach Pasta to Add Color and Nutrients to Your Noodles (2024)

Recipes By Course
Dinner
Pasta Dinner Recipes

Jessica Harlan

Freelance food writer, trained chef, and kitchen equipment expert Jessica Harlan has written eight cookbooks on topics such as quinoa and ramen.

Learn about The Spruce Eats'Editorial Process

Updated on 11/11/21

Tested byTara Omidvar

(44)

Write a Review

44 ratings

Write a Review

Add a comment

Making homemade pasta can be a fun and rewarding project and is so much better than store-bought.This homemade spinach pasta dough is made with four ingredients—spinach, eggs, flour, and salt—and while the recipe uses frozen spinach, fresh can also be used as explained in the tips below.

Making pasta from scratch also allows you to mix in other ingredients, contributing additional flavors. The addition of pureed spinach offers a mild taste and turns the pasta dough a brilliant green. It also gives the pasta a boost of vitamins and minerals.

Spinach pasta dough can be made into spaghetti, lasagna, or ravioli, and once cooked is delicious topped with sauces including chanterelle mushrooms, black olives, and sun-dried tomatoes.

"A great recipe to level up your regular homemade pasta dough. It tastes amazing with any pasta sauce, especially tomato sauce, and this recipe can serve the whole family. I just wouldn’t recommend attempting this recipe without a pasta machine unless you’re experienced with rolling and cutting the dough by hand." —Tara Omidvar

Make Homemade Spinach Pasta to Add Color and Nutrients to Your Noodles (2)

A Note From Our Recipe Tester

Ingredients

1 (10-ounce) package frozen spinach, thawed and chopped
5 large eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional flour as needed
1 teaspoon salt

Steps to Make It

Gather the ingredients.
Squeeze as much water as possible from the chopped spinach with your hands or by pressing with a wooden spoon in a colander.
In a blender or food processor, combine the spinach and eggs.
Puree until the mixture is dark green and smooth, with few or no visible chunks of spinach showing.
In a bowl, combine the flour and salt, stirring with a fork or a whisk to combine.

See Also
Pici pasta, a Tuscan traditional food you must try
On a large, lightly floured work surface (like a countertop covered with a silicone pastry mat), pour the flour mixture into a mound and make a well in the center.
Pour the spinach-egg mixture into the well.
Using a fork, stir the spinach mixture in a circular motion, gradually incorporating more and more flour.
As the mixture turns chunky, begin to knead it, incorporating enough flour to make a stiff dough. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, adding more flour until the dough is smooth and slightly tacky but not sticky.
Set aside, covered with plastic wrap, for about 20 minutes.
Assemble your pasta maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Divide the dough into 4 to 6 equal sections with a knife or a dough cutter.
Cover all of the pieces—except the one you're working with—with a clean dishtowel or plastic wrap.
Form the piece of dough into a flat rectangle with your hands or a rolling pin to prepare it to be fed into the pasta maker.
Beginning with one of the shorter sides of the rectangle, feed the pasta through the pasta maker on the first (widest) setting.
Then fold it in thirds (like a business letter).
Feed it through the pasta rollers again.
Repeat the folding and rolling steps several times on the widest setting, before rolling pasta at increasingly smaller settings until it reaches the desired thinness.
Use the sheets of pasta as-is for lasagna, form into ravioli, or cut into noodles using a pasta machine attachment.

Tips

This recipe calls for frozen spinach, but if you choose to use fresh greens, you need to quickly cook them first. Place 1 pound of fresh spinach in a skillet and cook until it turns bright green, about 30 seconds. Then immediately plunge it into an ice bath to stop the cooking. Squeeze out the liquid as instructed in the recipe.
This dough can be stickier and more fragile than regular flour-based pasta dough, so you might not want to roll it as thin as you would normally roll the pasta dough.
When kneading the dough, you might have to add a bit more flour depending on variables like the weather and how much liquid you squeezed out from the spinach. Go by the feel of the dough—it should be slightly tacky, but not sticky or wet.

How to Use Spinach Pasta Dough

Cook the finished pasta in boiling, salted water, for about 3 minutes, or until al dente.

How to Make Fresh Ravioli From Scratch

Pasta Dinner Recipes
Dinner
Homemade Pasta
Vegetable Recipes

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
379	Calories
5g	Fat
66g	Carbs
16g	Protein

Show Full Nutrition Label

Nutrition Facts
Servings: 4to 6
Amount per serving
Calories	379
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 5g	7%
Saturated Fat 2g	8%
Cholesterol 155mg	52%
Sodium 459mg	20%
Total Carbohydrate 66g	24%
Dietary Fiber 4g	14%
Total Sugars 1g
Protein 16g
Vitamin C 1mg	5%
Calcium 108mg	8%
Iron 6mg	31%
Potassium 289mg	6%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)

Recipe Tags:

pasta
spinach
dinner
italian

Rate This Recipe

I don't like this at all.It's not the worst.Sure, this will do.I'm a fan—would recommend.Amazing! I love it!Thanks for your rating!

Make Homemade Spinach Pasta to Add Color and Nutrients to Your Noodles (2024)

Tips

How to Use Spinach Pasta Dough

References