Make Easy Spanakopita with Puff Pastry
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The decision to make these Easy Spanakopita Triangles with Puff Pastry was completely based on two facts:
- I tried Spanakopita once and loved it
- and I needed to bring something to a fifth grader’s Greek Pentathlon Feast.
What’s better than saying you’ll bring a dish you’ve never made before to a potluck for 100 plus people?
Why Use Puff Pastry to Make Spanakopita?
Promising to bring a dish and realizing you despise working with an integral part of the recipe, that’s what! Whoops. That’s never slowed me down before, sometimes you win in those situations and sometimes you lose.
The decision to use puff pastry INSTEAD of Phyllo one was ALL win. All win because I used an easy to work with frozen dough instead of Phyllo/Fillo/Filo dough. Everything tastes better wrapped in Puff Pastry, amiright?
BUT if you’re a stickler for Phyllo and you want to make an easier version than a full-on spanakopita try these AMAZING Spanakopita Rolls from Cook What You Love!
- filo dough is SO hard to work with
- it dries out the second you open the package and crumbles
- yes, even IF you keep it damp and covered it’s always just a second away from being crumbled mess
- all you have to do with puff pastry is thaw it, roll it out a bit, stuff it and bake it
- puff pastry is more forgiving, pinch it funny and puffs up anyway
- you don’t have to keep it damp, but you do need to keep it chilled, so don’t let it sit on the counter for hours before baking
Puff Pastry takes all the dried-out layers away from your dish. You simply thaw, roll it out, fill, and fold. And you still get a lot of flaky layers because it IS puff pastry.
So basically I perused a bunch of recipes and quickly discovered that other people used Puff Pastry instead of Phyllo/Fillo/Filo and they’d lived to tell the tale of making what I’ve come to call (in my head) a cheater’s Spanakopita.
Of course, if you have a lot of people to feed triple the recipe like I did or even quadruple it. They’re good served chilled so even if you have any leftover, highly doubtful, they’ll still be good the next day.
Or make this Spanakopita from the GBBO
Yes, the Homemade Spanakopita is a lot more work! But wow it’s got something special about it. And because you’re making the Filo from scratch it’s SO much to easier to work with than store-bought filo.
Easy Spanakopita Triangles
Ingredients
- 1 pound frozen chopped spinach thawed
- 3 TBSP butter
- 1/2 medium onion chopped
- 1 cup feta crumbles
- 3 eggs divided-2 yolks for the filling, save the remaining for brushing on as a glaze
- 2 sheets puff pastry dough thawed
Instructions
- break up the frozen spinach, rinse with cool water and squeeze out the water, leave to drain while you cook the onions
- in a skillet over medium heat melt the butter and cook the onions until soft and translucent
- while the onions cook mix the feta and the egg yolks in a mixing bowl
- mix the remaining egg and egg whites together to make an egg wash and set aside
- when the onions are done mix them with the cold spinach to cool them off
- then mix them into feta and eggs
- roll out one Puff Pastry sheet to roughly 12 inches square, score the sheet into 16 squares approximately 3×3 inches
- divide the filling in half in the bowl and then split one of those halves between the 16 squares
- fold each square over to form a triangle and then use a folk to crimp the edge
- transfer the hand pies to a baking sheet, brush lightly with the egg wash and bake in a 350˚ oven for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned and cooked through
- repeat with the remaining puff pastry and filling
- makes 32
Yum! Sounds like a simple and delicious recipe! Bet my husband would absolutely love these.