these easy spanakopita pockets are delicious, portable and loaded with nutrient-rich spinach. they make a great side, snack or even lunch item for kids!
Being Greek, I basically came out of the womb eating spanakopita. For those of you that are unfamiliar with it, it’s essentially a spinach & cheese pie (we call it “pita” for short).
It’s one of my absolute favorite Greek foods and something that we make every single holiday.
My mom was visiting recently and because Owen loves them, I requested that she and I work together to make a portable version that Owen could easily pick up and eat. We normally make them in a slab pie form, but I figured the triangles would be easier for Owen to manage on his own (plus I’d never done them that way before and wanted to try!)
And you know what? They worked perfectly! Owen loved them, he was able to pick them up and eat them without all the filling falling out as he did and they tasted just as good as they always have!
My mom generally prefers to make the pita dough from scratch, but a quick little shortcut is just to use store-bought phyllo dough. While I think the homemade stuff is a little better, using the store-bought dough was worth the amount of time it saved!
Putting together the components of this dish is super quick but you certainly spend some time with the assembly. That’s easily rectified by parking your chair in front of the TV or putting on your favorite audiobook to occupy you while you roll! Or, just go with the traditional slab pie style.
These freeze and re-heat well. You can keep them in the fridge up to 5 days and in the freezer for up to 2 months. I like to re-heat mine in the oven (425 degrees F for about 5 minutes or just until you see some browning on the crust) but you can also microwave them, they’ll just be a little more loose (you may want to eat them with a fork versus trying to pick them up).
I did get a request for a video on how I make these so next time I whip up a batch I’ll be sure to film it!
Print
easy spanakopita pockets
- Prep Time: 60
- Cook Time: 20
- Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
- Yield: 2 dozen + triangles 1x
- Category: Side
Description
these spanakopita triangles are packed with nutrient-rich spinach and make for a great dinner side, portable snack or part of a kid meal!
Ingredients
- 20 ounces frozen chopped spinach
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 1 1/2 lb cottage cheese (full-fat)
- 1 cup crumbled feta cheese
- 3 oz. cream cheese – softened
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 package of store-bought phyllo dough, defrosted
- 2 sticks of butter, melted
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
- In a sauce pan, add the frozen spinach with water. Cook spinach for about 10 minutes.
- Drain spinach in a wire colander. Press with a spatula or wooden spoon until most of the water is pressed out.
- Place the spinach back into sauce pan and add beaten eggs, cottage cheese and crumbled feta cheese
- Taking your hands, break up the cream cheese and add it throughout the bowl (to ensure it’s evenly dispersed throughout the dish).
- Mix all ingredients with a wooden spoon or spatula until well blended.
- Open package of defrosted phyllo dough and cut entire sheet into 4-5 vertical strips. Cover with plastic wrap then place a dampened paper towel on top of the plastic wrap (this helps keep the dough from drying out).
- Melt two sticks of butter in a glass bowl.
- Remove a single layer from the first set of vertical strips and place on a sheet of parchment. Using a pastry brush, gently brush the strip with butter. Lay another single layer of phyllo on top of the first buttered layer and use a pastry brush to gently brush with butter. Repeat this process until you’ve laid 5 strips on top of each other (note: you can choose to butter every other layer if you’d like to cut down on the amount).
- Once all 5 strips have been buttered and stacked, take a cookie scoop full of the filling and place it in the bottom right corner. From there, fold that corner up to the left side to form a triangle. Take the bottom corner of the triangle you just made and fold that directly upward. Then take the bottom layer of that triangle and fold that to the right. Take the bottom layer and fold directly upward. Then one more back to the left. Fold the remaining dough over to form the triangle and seal. Repeat this entire process until you’ve utilized all the phyllo (you may have a little leftover filling).
- Bake for 20-25 minutes or until top and bottom of the pita triangles is brown.
Notes
- Prefer not to do pockets? You can spread the layers of phyllo out on a large sheet pan (10 layers of phyllo, buttering in between each layer then spreading the filling throughout and layer another 10 layers of phyllo, buttering in between each layer).
- Don’t want to deal with phyllo dough? You can grab some fresh pizza dough and toss the filling with some ricotta cheese for an easy spanakopita calzone!
Keywords: Spanakopita, greek food, side dish, spinach pie, feta cheese
Leave a Reply