Loving Those Leaves: 20 Recipes for Leafy Greens

Tomato Spinach Pasta: Tomato Spinach Pasta

This recipe combines fresh tomatoes and spinach, toasted almonds, and salty Gorgonzola. Served over warm penne pasta, it’s a classy dish, easy and yet perfect for company.
Greens and White Beans with Sausage Pasta: Greens and White Beans with Sausage Pasta

Keep this sauteed greens dish clean and vegan, or make it a hearty meal by adding sausage and garnish with parmesan cheese.
Baked Meatless “Meatballs”: Baked Meatless “Meatballs”

Use any greens you like for these vegetarian “meatballs.” You can even mix and match to use up leftover greens. They hold together so well you can serve them with spaghetti!
Pasta with Peas, Ham & Lettuce: Pasta with Peas, Ham & Lettuce

Pasta with lettuce? It’s amazing, we promise! Especially with yummy snap peas and ham!
Beet Goat Cheese Salad: Beet Goat Cheese Salad

Beets and goat cheese are a match made in heaven! You can make candied nuts for the top, or speed things up and enjoy them toasted. Either way, you’ll be eating healthy leaves because baby salad greens are a key ingredient.
Easy Arugula Salad: Easy Arugula Salad

This arugula salad recipe is easy, quick to make, simple and full of compelling flavors. It uses a simple dressing, leaving the big flavor to arugula, burrata or mozzarella, and a few slices of prosciutto or speck.
Easy Sauteed Spinach: Easy Sauteed Spinach

This recipe keeps things simple, providing you with a side dish or an easy addition to pasta, rice or even grilled cheese.
Cheesy Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms: Cheesy Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms

Though they’re called cheesy spinach stuffed mushrooms, any greens will work well, whether it’s spinach, bok choy, Swiss chard, or baby kal
Spanakopita: Spanakopita

Perfect for parties! Spanakopita turns regular old spinach into quite the delicacy!
Rustic White Bean & Pesto Soup: Rustic White Bean & Pesto Soup

Pesto adds pizzaz to this hearty soup, which calls for a handful of kale. Hearty soups often benefit from the addition of leafy greens.
Butternut Squash Salad: Butternut Squash Salad

Squash lovers will devour this flavorful salad featuring marinated butternut squash served on a bed of baby spinach.
Kale Mango Salad: Kale Mango Salad

If you’re new to kale, rejoice! The kale in this recipe is very low maintenance: wash it, remove the spine from each leaf, cut it into strips, squeeze it in your hands a couple times to soften it up… and then throw it into a salad bowl!
Minty Green Shamrock Smoothie: Minty Green Shamrock Smoothie

Raw spinach has such a mild flavor that you can throw it into a smoothie and still have the smoothie taste sweet. This one’s delicious!
Spinach Lasagna: Spinach Lasagna

There’s really no reason not to add a little chopped spinach to your regular cheesy lasagna. And if you want to make veggies even more prominent, this recipe uses zucchini and spinach instead of meat for a wonderfully cheesy vegetarian meal.
Skillet Dish with Kale or Spinach: Skillet Dish with Kale or Spinach

A great weekend meal that’s super flexible and easy to throw together with ingredients you probably already have.
Potato Beet Salad: Potato Beet Salad

Potato salad meets spinach salad in this unique (and gorgeous) recipe.
Beans and Greens Tacos: Beans and Greens Tacos

Vegetarian tacos that you can easily make your own by swapping your favorite vegetables. We started with Swiss chard, but feel free to use kale or spinach!
Turkey Apple Cheddar: Turkey Apple Cheddar

While you’re preparing your next sandwich, make it healthier by adding baby spinach!
Orange Red Onion Salad: Orange Red Onion Salad

The quintessential winter salad! It’s got zingy citrus, spicy candied nuts, zippy red onions and fresh spring mix. If your palate has been a bit bored while waiting for spring produce, this mix of citrus and leafy greens will inspire you!
Warmed Cherry Vinaigrette with Wilted Spinach Salad: Warmed Cherry Vinaigrette with Wilted Spinach Salad

Andi Wolff recommends this nutrient-packed salad quite highly. She suggests using dried cherries and being careful not to over-wilt the spinach.

954. That’s how many farms harvested kale to sell in 2007… across the entire United States. That sounds a little low compared to the current demand, doesn’t it? By 2012, that number more than doubled as 2,500 farms grew the superfood commercially. Today, kale farmers sometimes have difficulty finding enough kale seeds to plant!

And kale isn’t the only leafy green more farms have been producing since 2007. Slightly more farms have started harvesting collards, spinach and mustard greens, and leaf lettuce went from being produced at 2,891 farms in 2007 to over 4,000 in 2012. Nutrition experts have been telling us to eat dark, leafy greens, and we’ve been listening.

I first ate kale when it came to me in a CSA box in 2009. “What do you do with kale?” I wondered. I tried to sauté it and use it as a topping for baked potatoes. One problem. Kale leaves can be quite rough, and when I sautéed them in a nonstick pan without doing anything to soften the kale first, the result was like sautéing steel wool! The kale scrubbed the nonstick coating from my pan.

Maybe the defect was in the pan, but since then I have been careful to “massage” kale to soften it before adding it to any dish! I now have a favorite kale and blue cheese salad, I use my food dehydrator to make crunchy kale chips, and I fearlessly add kale to skillet dishes. And I am a huge fan of the Emerald Kale Salad Wolff’s chef Chuck Smith makes for the spring and summer menu.

A few summers ago, a friend of mine planted an abundance of dinosaur kale, collard greens, arugula, mustard greens and rainbow chard. On summer mornings, she invited me to come harvest the greens. I discovered more recipes, like arugula pesto, mustard green pesto, chard stem gratin (the best savory dish in all the world), and meatless “meatballs” made with leafy greens.

And if I was ever stuck for recipes, I could have just taken a quick tour through the Wolff’s recipe archive because the Wolff family and staff clearly love their leaves. Look through our slideshow above and try some of the 20 recipes from our archives today! Let us know your favorites!

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