How to Cook Sautéed Spinach with Onion and Tomato

A simple and delicious side dish, learn how to cook sautéed spinach with onion and tomato. Serve with white beans, toasted sourdough bread or over rice for a complete meal. Ready in under 20 minutes, this vegan, plant-based, oil-free recipe is great for a weeknight meal.

This is one of my easy weeknight dinner meals, especially if I have a lot of spinach leaves in the refrigerator that needs to be used. It has great flavors for a delicious side dish or can be made into a full meal easily.

🧄 Ingredient notes

• Baby spinach - use tender, pre-washed baby spinach to make sautéed spinach quick, convenient and easy. You need more spinach than you think, since it reduces so much when it's cooked.
• Stewed tomatoes - Canned stewed tomatoes, like the Happy Harvest brand here from Aldi, are delicious cooked with spinach, onion and garlic. Stewed tomatoes are peeled, sliced roma tomatoes that have been stewed with a little green bell pepper, onion, spices and a touch of sugar. They are not spicy.
• Onion - We love using diced sweet yellow onion for this dish.
• Garlic - For a mild garlic flavor, we're using fresh peeled garlic cloves that have been sliced for this dish. For a more intense garlic flavor, mince or crush the garlic.

📋 Substitutions and variations

Here are some suitable substitutions for the ingredients in this sauteed spinach recipe:

• Baby spinach - You can use standard spinach for this recipe. Be sure to clean it well, if it's not pre-washed and chop it up into large pieces. You can also use frozen spinach! For a quicker cooking time, you'll want to thaw the spinach first by placing it in the refrigerator overnight. You can make this dish with other green leafy vegetables instead of the spinach. Try curly kale, dinosaur, tuscan or lacinato kale, swiss chard, collard greens or a combination of all of them! Hardier greens will take longer to cook than baby spinach, so increase the simmer time to 10-15 minutes.
• Stewed tomatoes - instead of canned stewed tomatoes, you can use fresh chopped roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes or even heirloom tomatoes for this recipe. You can also use canned diced tomatoes or canned whole peeled tomatoes (you'll want to break these up with your hands or the tongs). You could even use tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes, but I prefer the chunkier version with diced tomatoes.
• Yellow onion - instead of diced sweet yellow onion, you can use diced purple/red onion or sweet onions. If you're feeling low on energy or time, use pre-chopped fresh or frozen onion.
• Fresh garlic - instead of sliced fresh cloves of garlic, you can use minced garlic from a jar, but use less since it has a much stronger flavor. In a pinch, you could also use garlic powder or granulated garlic, but the fresh garlic is better here.
• WFPBNO - make this whole food plant based no oil by using tomatoes that contain no sugar and serving with whole grain bread or brown rice
• SOS-free - make this SOS-free by omitting the salt and using tomatoes that contain no sugar

Switch things up with these variation ideas!

• Spicy - add red pepper flakes to the finished dish to infuse a little heat to this sautéed spinach.
• White Beans - add drained, canned white beans (butter beans are my favorite with this) when you add the tomatoes to make this a heartier meal. Serve over rice or toasted sourdough (see photos below)

🔪 Instructions

Step-by-step tutorial of how to cook spinach with onion and tomato.

🍳 Equipment

• Large skillet - cooking greens like spinach works best in a large, wide skillet so the excess moisture can evaporate more easily while it cooks. This skillet does not have to be non-stick for this recipe. It could be stainless steel, enameled cast iron, ceramic, cast iron or non-stick.
• Tongs - for tossing the spinach, so it will cook evenly in the pan.

🥡 Make ahead and storage tips

This recipe can be made ahead 1-2 days before serving.

Any leftovers should be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. It should be good for up to 5 days from when it was cooked.

These ingredients don't stand up well to freezing.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Serving suggestions

Since this dish of stewed tomatoes, spinach, garlic and onion is inspired by Greek spanakorizo, brown rice or white rice (pictured below) is the perfect starch to go with it. Gives it even more of a Mediterranean flavor.

But, since it's so versatile, you'll certainly enjoy it with other starches, too. It would be delicious with:

• couscous
• toasted sourdough bread (pictured below)
• pita bread
• potatoes
• quinoa
• pasta

For added protein, try combining this spinach dish with:

• chickpeas
• cannellini beans
• butter beans (pictured)
• baked tofu squares
• lentils

❓ FAQ

🗺 Cultural influences

This dish was created one day when I was making Greek spanakorizo, which is a Greek rice dish with lots of spinach, tomato, onion, garlic, dill and lemon.

I was hungry while I was cooking it and starting "sampling" the sauteéd vegetables before adding the rice. It was amazing. Hence, this dish.

So, if you like this vegetable side, you might want to experiment with cooking Greek spanakorizo!

That being said, the ingredients are common in many food cultures. So, you could adjust the flavor by adding different spices and serving it with different starches. For example:

• Mexican: Add ground cumin, cilantro and jalapeño.
• Italian: Add oregano and basil. Serve with pasta.
• Indian: Add curry powder and garam masala. Serve with basmati rice, naan or roti.
• Middle Eastern: Add chickpeas. Serve with pita bread or couscous.

See About for more information on my cultural influences and how I attribute recipes.

💜 More recipes you'll love

If you loved this easy recipe tutorial on how to cook spinach with onion and tomato, then check out these other Mediterranean plant-based recipes:

📖 Recipe