Dehydrating Frozen Spinach

I absolutely love dehydrating frozen vegetables. They are so easy to do and dehydrating them frees up freezer space. In this article, I will show you the process of dehydrating frozen spinach.

I especially love dehydrating frozen spinach because it’s a great thing to add to smoothies, and other dishes such as lasagna Florentine.

Dehydrating Frozen Spinach

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One of the biggest advantages of dehydrating frozen spinach instead of fresh is that you can get around to it whenever it’s convenient.

I have dehydrated many pounds of fresh spinach. When I dehydrate fresh spinach, I typically get it into the dehydrator as soon as I unpack and put away the rest of the groceries. I do this because fresh spinach doesn’t last too long, and at least for me, it’s easy to have it go bad or at least “less fresh” before I even realize it. With frozen spinach, I just toss it in the freezer until I have time to dehydrate it.

There’s also less prep work when dehydrating frozen spinach compared to fresh. For instance, no need to wash or trim the spinach.

Preparing Frozen Spinach for Dehydrating

When dehydrating frozen spinach, for the most part, you can just dump the frozen spinach on the tray and pop it in the dehydrator. But in some cases, you may notice some frozen clumps of spinach.

As you can see in the photo above, some of the spinach was frozen together in clumps when I dumped it out of the package.

Most of the time, when I dehydrate frozen fruit or vegetables, I can break apart the frozen clumps by hand. But since this was frozen chopped spinach, the clumps didn’t easily break apart. Because of that, I used a knife to cut the clumps into smaller pieces.

Spread the Frozen Spinach on Dehydrator Trays

Next, spread the frozen spinach on your dehydrator trays. When I dehydrate larger pieces of frozen fruit or vegetables, I try to leave some space in between the individual pieces. Since there weren’t individual pieces, I just did my best to evenly distribute the spinach so none of it was piled too thick.

Dehydrate the Frozen Spinach at 145 Degrees for 1 Hour

The ideal temperature for dehydrating most fruit and vegetables is 125 degrees Fahrenheit. However, when starting with frozen food, I like to set the temperature on my dehydrator to 145 degrees Fahrenheit for the first hour only.

The point of using the higher temperature for a short time is to thaw the frozen spinach.

Pro tip: I used the Cosori Premium Stainless Steel dehydrator, which I picked up on Amazon. It has a built-in timer, which makes it easy to make sure that I use the higher temperature for an hour. When I use my Nesco dehydrator (Amazon), I set a timer on my phone to remind me to turn the temperature down.

Frozen Spinach After 1 Hour in the Dehydrator

In the above photo, you can see what the spinach looked like after it had been dehydrating for one hour at 145 degrees Fahrenheit. It was thawed, but not starting to dry at all. With the spinach thawed, it was easier for me to spread apart the larger clumps.

Reduce Dehydrator Temperature to 125 Degrees

After the first hour, reduce the temperature on your dehydrator to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the temperature you’ll use the remainder of the time, when dehydrating most vegetables, including frozen spinach.

After 4 Total Hours in the Dehydrator

After three additional hours, four hours total (one hour at 145 degrees and then three hours at 125 degrees), the spinach was significantly dryer. As you can see in the photo above, rather than the tray being solidly packed with spinach, there is a lot of space in between pieces.

There were a couple of pieces that were larger, as you can see on the left. They were still very, very moist. I tried to break them up but was unable to. So, I just put the spinach back into the dehydrator.

After 6 Total Hours in the Dehydrator

After six total hours in the dehydrator, the previously frozen spinach was completely dehydrated. Even the large clumps were completely dry and crumbled easily.

How Much Frozen Spinach Per Dehydrator Tray

Dehydrator trays vary in size, but as a general rule of thumb, one 12-oz package of frozen spinach fits well on a dehydrator tray. If you have smaller dehydrator trays, you can still plan to purchase one 12-oz package of frozen spinach for each tray.

If you use smaller dehydrator trays, your spinach may take longer to dehydrate, but it should work out well.

Speeding Up the Process of Dehydrating Frozen Spinach

Frozen spinach actually dries quite fast, so in my opinion, there’s not a big need to hurry up the process. However, if you want to speed things up, you can thaw the spinach before putting it in the dehydrator.

If you choose to do this, you can thaw it in the fridge overnight, or you can thaw it in the microwave. Just be sure to drain any liquid off the spinach before putting it into the dehydrator.

Also, if you decide to start with thawed spinach, set the temperature on your dehydrator to 125 degrees Fahrenheit right from the start.

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