Uber-expert Julie Sahni says to use Chard (Swiss chard) rather than spinach in any Indian recipe calling for "spinach", because Indian spinach (Palak) is closely related to chard and quite different from our spinach. She says if you have to use regular spinach, chop in one small green bell pepper per pound of spinach to improve the flavor.

Spinach is often badly abused both in handling and in cooking. It is very tender so it breaks up easily and becomes mush if overcooked. Some people don't use fresh spinach because they can't get all the sand out. The instructions below should solve that problem.

Canned spinach is an abomination. Frozen spinach is better but still not competitive to fresh. Frozen spinach is blanched in the freezing process so should be cooked the absolute minimum time needed to bring it to temperature.

Buying Spinach

• It's better not to shop for spinach, but to grab it when you see good bunches for sale at a fair price. Much of the time the price is high and the bunches are small, mangled and picked before maturity. Just keep recipes in mind for when it's good.
• Spinach bunches should be large and most of the leaves should be arrow shaped and crisp. The first leaves the plant puts out are flavorless and oval. The next batch are thick, leathery, flavorless, break up easily and spoil quickly. What you want is bunches of mature leaves which are thin and always distinctly arrow shaped.

Washing and Storing Spinach

1. As soon as you can, fill a sink with cold water, nice and deep. While it's filling, cut off the root ends of the bundles as close to the root as will separate all the leaves (real close).
2. Untie the bundles and float the leaves in the sink full of water. slosh them around real good to wash off the mud and sand (which will sink to the bottom). This is the only way to get all the sand out, rinsing under running water won't do it.
3. Take the leaves out of the water a few at a time and break off the stems. Carefully select out yellow, mangled or leathery leaves and discard them. Toss the good leaves directly into your salad spinner and set the stems aside separately. Don't discard the stems, they're the sweetest part of the spinach. You want to keep them separate though, so you can start them cooking ahead of the leaves so they're done before the leaves are overcooked.
4. Spin the leaves in the salad spinner and immediately bag loosely in (preferably clear) plastic. The spinner leaves just the right amount of water on the leaves to keep them fresh.
5. Spin the stems and package them separately
6. Store in the refrigerator. Prepared this way good bunches will be usable for a week, but try to use them sooner as they steadily lose flavor.

Cooking Spinach
The key to good spinach is to cook it the very minimum that'll do the job. The moment its all wilted and the raw color is gone it's done.

Of course if the spinach is just one ingredient in a recipe, such as a soup, go by the recipe's instruction.