Greek Spanakopita Recipe (Crisp Spinach and Feta Pie)

Pies are the heart of Greek home baking, and spanakopita is the one that travelled. The principle is simple: a lot of greens, a lot of cheese, very little else, wrapped in pastry so thin you can read through it.

The failure mode is equally simple. Spinach is mostly water, and any water left in the filling turns to steam in the oven and lands on the underside of the pastry. A soggy bottom on a spanakopita is not bad luck, it is unsqueezed spinach.

The other thing worth knowing is that the fat between the layers is not optional or a matter of restraint. Every sheet needs to be brushed. Dry phyllo layers fuse into a papery slab instead of separating into leaves, and the whole appeal of the pie is those leaves.

Key preparation steps

1. Wilt the spinach, cool it, then squeeze it dry with real force.
2. Cook the onions and spring onions down properly so they release their own water in the pan, not in the pie.
3. Season the filling firmly, remembering the feta is already salty.
4. Brush every single phyllo sheet, top and bottom.
5. Score the top into portions before baking, and bake until deep gold.

Fresh spinach or frozen?

Frozen is genuinely fine here and many Greek cooks use it. It is already blanched, which means it collapses to the right texture, and it is far cheaper by weight. Thaw it completely and squeeze it as hard as you can, in batches, in a clean tea towel.

Fresh gives a slightly brighter flavour and a better texture if you have the patience. You need a great deal of it, roughly a kilo of fresh leaves to end up with the same volume as 500 g of frozen. Wilt it in a dry pan in batches, cool it enough to handle, then squeeze.

Either way, the squeeze is the same and it is not gentle. You want the spinach in a tight, almost dry ball. Then pull it apart with your fingers before mixing, or it will stay in clumps.

Butter or olive oil for the phyllo?

Both are traditional and they give genuinely different pies. Olive oil is the older, more rustic and more common choice in Greek homes, particularly during fasting periods, and it gives a crisper, drier, slightly savoury result. Butter gives a richer, more golden, flakier pastry and is closer to what you find in bakeries.

A half-and-half mixture is a good compromise and is what I use most often: melt the butter, then stir in an equal amount of olive oil. It browns like butter and crisps like oil.

Whichever you pick, use more than feels reasonable and brush right to the edges. The corners are where phyllo dries out and cracks.

Working with phyllo without it drying out

Phyllo dries in minutes and once it is brittle it is unusable. Unroll the whole stack, cover it with a sheet of baking paper and then a slightly damp tea towel, and take one sheet at a time.

Do not put a wet towel directly onto the pastry: it will glue the sheets together into a paste. The baking paper in between prevents that.

Thaw frozen phyllo overnight in the fridge rather than at room temperature or in the microwave. Rapid thawing produces condensation, and condensation makes the sheets stick to each other and tear.

Tears are not a disaster. This is a layered pie, and a torn sheet laid down and brushed over disappears entirely once baked.

Getting the filling right

The classic combination is spinach, spring onions, dill and feta, and it does not need much else. Some households add a beaten egg to bind, some add rice or a little semolina to absorb residual moisture, and some add leeks or chard alongside the spinach.

Feta should be crumbled by hand into rough pieces rather than grated, so you get pockets of cheese. Between 250 g and 300 g for a kilo of raw spinach is about right. Add a handful of grated hard cheese, kefalotyri or pecorino, for savoury depth.

Season with plenty of black pepper and a little nutmeg, then taste before you add any salt. Between the feta and the cheese there may already be enough.

Why you score spanakopita before baking

Cutting baked phyllo shatters it and you lose half the top in crumbs. Scoring through the upper layers only, before it goes into the oven, gives you clean portions afterwards and lets steam escape during the bake.

Use a very sharp knife, cut down through the top sheets to the level of the filling but not through the base, and mark out your squares or diamonds. After baking, the knife follows those lines cleanly.

Serving and storing

Spanakopita is served warm or at room temperature, almost never hot from the oven, and it is as much a lunch or a snack in Greece as it is a dinner. A wedge eaten standing up outside a bakery is a normal Greek breakfast.

It keeps for three days and reheats well in an oven, never a microwave, which will destroy the pastry within seconds.

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