Low Carb Spinach and Ricotta Bake: keto-friendly, healthy, mouth watering and easy to make. 2.5g net carbs.
Spinach and ricotta are a match made in heaven. Individually, these two ingredients are totally versatile and you can use them to make all sorts of healthy dishes, both savoury and sweet. Packaged ricotta usually has a long eat-before-date and frozen spinach is just as good as the fresh version. So I tend to have both lingering around as a backup for I-don’t-know-what-to-cook days or I-can’t-be-bothered-to-go-to-the-shops days.
Yesterday was one of those days. I looked in my fridge for inspiration and a tub of ricotta jumped at me. Immediately thinking of its perfect partner, I opened the freezer and there it was: an unopened bag of frozen spinach ready to be used. Then I went back to the fridge. Eggs? Check. Mozzarella? Check. Parmesan? Check. Cream? Check. Garlic and spices? Check. No shopping list or trip to the shops. Hurray!
You can find the spinach and ricotta pairing in every recipe book and internet blogs everywhere, usually as a filling for cannelloni or as a sauce that accompanies pasta for a quick turn-around meal. In case you want to check out a delicious keto recipe for cannelloni, here is my yummy Low Carb Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni. If you fancy having a go at making pasta, here is a Low Carb Pasta with Creamed Mushrooms version. However, for this Low Carb Spinach and Ricotta Bake you need neither pasta nor replacement pasta.
After a bit of improvisation, and in no time at all, I assembled the keto dish and I was baking away. The kitchen was filling with a lovely and inviting smell that stirred my senses….mmmmhhhh…..I hoped the taste would match that wonderful aroma.
40 minutes later my bake was ready to come out and rest.
A quick Italian dressing of some mixed salad leaves, cherry tomatoes, cucumber and avocado, and dinner was ready to serve. It didn’t disappoint…
The Low Carb Spinach and Ricotta Bake turned out so good that my plan to have leftovers for today went out the window. Ketohusband and I had second servings and ate the whole lot.
I hope you will enjoy it as much as we do!
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Low Carb Spinach and Ricotta Bake
Ingredients
- 600 g frozen spinach
- 1 garlic clove minced
- ¼ fine himalayan pink salt (U.S. option HERE)
- 20 g extra virgin olive oil (U.S. option HERE)
- ½ tsp grated nutmeg
- ½ tsp paprika
- 2 sprinkles freshly ground black pepper
- 1 beef stock cube (U.S. option HERE)
- 2 large eggs
- 250 g ricotta
- 100 g mozzarella dry block type
- 50 g double cream
- 75 g freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano Grana Padano has a less intense flavour, so you'll need more, maybe 100g
Instructions
- drizzle extra virgin olive oil into a shallow pan or wok.
- add spinach, garlic, crumbed stock cube, nutmeg and paprika and a generous sprinkle of black pepper.
- stir and cook until dry and just beginning to crackle; taste, adjust seasoning if required (but don't add salt at this stage), and set aside to cool.
- pre-heat oven to 180ºC fan (200ºC static).
- whisk eggs until tripled in volume.
- add ricotta (discard any visible liquid) and whisk again.
- incorporate cream and whisk once more.
- add ¼ tsp salt, a sprinkle of black pepper, the cooled spinach, 50g Parmesan and the cubed mozzarella.
- stir everything and pour into your buttered oven dish.
- level it out with the back of a spoon and sprinkle the remaining Parmesan all over the top.
- bake for 30 mins then raise the oven temperature to 200ºC fan (220º static) and bake for a further 3-5 mins until nicely caramelised.
- serve immediately.
Notes
Nutrition
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I have a ton of fresh spinach I need yo use up. I saw where you said to replace it without 1.2 kg of fresh, but does it need to be cooked before adding to the step where you would have otherwise used frozen spinach. If it’s not cooked I fear it’ll release a bunch of water while cooking.
Yes, cook it first, briefly.
I ran this through cronometer and got 11 net carbs per serving (1/4 pan like your recipe states.) Ricotta cheese itself is a bit high in carbs. I double checked on carbmanager and 61.5 gm of ricotta (1/4 the recipe) has 4.5gm net carbs alone. https://www.carbmanager.com/food-detail/cc:1c6e1a87a3ccec156049d426f3e0d554/ricotta-cheese-whole-milk so I think the carbs are off in your recipe. It sounded too good to be true. 🙁
Hi, I’ve revisited my calculations and they’re correct, according to the official UK food database (quadram) and product packaging where available.
The net carbs are 8.98g for the whole recipe, which means 1/4 = 2.24g carbs, which I rounded to to 2.5g.
Specifically, Parmigiano Reggiano has no carbs, dry-type mozzarella contains 2g carbs per 100g, and the frozen spinach is mostly water, resulting in 300g cooked spinach – which contains 0.5g carbs per 100g.
You’ll probably find that American food differs from European food in terms of nutritional values, likely due to the many additives that are banned in the EU and UK, but are commonly added to most foods in the U.S.
Also, online and app-based food calculators are highly inaccurate, hence why I calculate all my nutritional values manually, double-checking every time to avoid errors.
Delicious!
Can use fresh spinach? How much?
About 1.2kg baby spinach. More if you use older spinach and need to remove coarse stalks.
I just made this!! Was absolutely lovely and had a second portion!!!
Although I misread the instructions “…and bake for a further 3-5 minutes” as
“bake for a further 35 minutes ” ….
And so it was a little over cooked 😅😅 but still very delicious!!!
Hi Lydia, good to hear it turned out well despite the accidental long baking… 😀
This low carb spinach ricotta bake looks so good! I can’t wait to try this someday. Thanks for posting!
This looks really delicious! Thanks for sharing this recipe!
Yummy! I’m going to try this tomorrow. I hope I’ll do it right though. Thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome!
I’m looking to lose 2 stone for the summer and was so happy to come across this recipe. The chewiness of the mozzarella and the flavours of the chesses were amazing !! Can’t wait to make this for friends and family and would be gorgeous with a rocket salad , cherry tomatoes and a crisp white wine.
Sounds perfect. ?
This sounds so good. I have made a spinach and egg bake that I use different types of cheese in, a bit similar to this, so I am thinking this will be so YUM.I have a package of spinach in freezer and some cream that I do not have pegged for another use, so this will be made in the next day or two.
Oh my goodness. Just made this and it is delicious. Italian restaurants eat your heart out.
Yey! Thank you for your comment!
I have extra ricotta I need to use…can this be frozen! Before or after baking? Thanks.,
Definitely! After baking 🙂
I made this, but subbed the cream with jalapeño cream cheese and a bit of water. So good! Thanks for sharing this recipe, I really loved how fluffy it was.
Hi! Thanks for leaving feedback, it means a lot to me. Glad you liked the recipe with your clever subs!
Oh yay! I don’t have any cream but I have cream cheese. Perfect substitution!!
Nicely done! I often use cream cheese instead of cream 🙂