A buttery, tender almond flour dough stuffed with spinach and feta. This low carb keto spanakopita will have your tastebuds dancing!
How many times have you said a word you’ve used any number of times, only to find out you’ve been pronouncing it incorrectly for years? Possibly even decades. My husband just informed me the other day that I’ve been saying “detritus” all wrong, all this time. And he only knew because he said it at work and someone corrected him. Apparently, instead of DET-tritus, it is actually duh-TRITE-us. Strong emphasis on the second syllable, and a long i in that syllable. You could have knocked me over with a feather. It sounded so strange to my ears and it seemed like it couldn’t be true. But a little Googling proved that weird, formal sounding pronunciation to be correct. Damn, I hate it when I am wrong.
But we all do it at times. Many of us see words written before we ever say them aloud, especially longer, more formal words that don’t enter normal speech very often. When my sister was little, she thought that the word “briefly” was said “Bry-fly” and imagined it was some sort of briefcase. When I was teaching Kaplan SAT Prep, I asked one of my students to read a paragraph aloud and she read the word “epitome” as Epi-Tome. When I corrected her, she was flabbergasted. Of course she knew what an epitome was but had never seen it written and hadn’t made the connection. And I remember my husband (back in the day, when he was still my boyfriend) snorting with laughter when I first pronounced the word Episcopalian. I had all the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.
And then there come unfamiliar words from other languages. I am not sure when I first tried spanakopita but I’ve always loved it. I do know that I absolutely slaughtered the poor word upon my first few times saying it out loud. I was familiar with pita bread so I somehow emphasized those last two syllables at the end. Never mind, someone corrected me along the way and I happily ate the spinach, feta, and phyllo pie ever chance I got. It’s tasty stuff but I haven’t had it in years since phyllo and my blood sugar aren’t exactly friends anymore.
But I was working with the dough from my garlic knots a few weeks back, and it struck me how delicious it would be filled with spanakopita-type fillings. So I rolled my dough really thin and cut it into 16 squares, then mounded the spinach and feta goodness inside. The dough did crack at times, but it’s stretchy and malleable enough that I could pinch it back together and shape it into cute little triangles. And so low carb Spanakopita Hand Pies were born. No matter how you pronounce it, it is delicious!
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Spanakopita Hand Pies
Ingredients
- 6 ounces frozen spinach thawed
- 1 cup crumbled feta cheese
- 1 large egg
- ¼ cup finely chopped onion
- 1 clove garlic minced
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 Magic Mozzarella Dough from Garlic Knots
- Additional almond flour for rolling out.
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- Place the spinach in a tea towel and squeeze out the excess moisture. Transfer to a large bowl. Add the feta, egg, onion, garlic, salt, and pepper and mix until well combined.
- Sprinkle a work surface with about 2 or 3 tablespoons of almond flour. Roll the dough out into a large square about 16 inches by 16 inches. Using a very sharp knife or a pizza wheel, cut into 16 even squares.
- Mound about 1 tablespoons of the spinach mixture into the center of each square. Fold the dough square over diagonally to make a triangle shaped pie. If the dough breaks or cracks when folding, simply pinch back together and shape around the filling.
- Place the triangles on the prepared baking sheet and make a small slit in the top of each to allow the steam to escape. Bake 20 minutes, until golden brown. Remove and let cool on the pan.
Amy says
Hi Carolyn! Can you make these up the day before and bake them the next day?
Carolyn says
Probably!
jewel says
Carolyn,
Wow your site holds such wonders. I made this recipe tonight but did the jelly-roll approach you showed in a different recipe. They came out wonderful and taste so good. Can they really be only 2 carbs per?
I can’t thank you enough for all your wonderful cookery wisdom.
Kind regards,
Jewel
BethinTX says
You know what they say about people mispronouncing words, right? Never criticize because it means they learned it by reading. 🙂
Carol says
I tried the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies out for just me & my hubby last night and HE LOVED IT.
He loved the look of the cookie and the taste resembles a “Reeces cup”. He picked up his “fork” instead of picking the cookie up to eat by hand, and savored EVERY DELECTABLE BITE! Best dessert yet! It was a large size cookie too, which he likes “large” size, which was enough for him! Keep posting those great recipes!
Laura W says
Made these today and they turned out awesome!! The only tricky part was the dough. Getting it to roll out into a square shape proved to be pretty tough. Because of this, a few of mine turned into little blobs instead of pretty triangles. Either way, it still turned out great and they are delicious!
Carolyn says
Tasty little blobs!
Karen says
Two Words. OH YUM. Can’t Stop Eating These. That may be six words ….
Lou says
I have a batch currently in the oven…. sooo hungry
Mary says
If I used fresh spinach for these, would you recommend just a quick saute to break them down first? Thanks!
Carolyn says
Definitely! Saute them and then squeeze out the moisture.
Maria says
Oh. my. god.
This opens a whole world of possibilities!
Thank you, it looks amazing!
Heather says
You need to watch the Wayne and Shuster musical sketch about this food haha!
Melody says
How do ai get the dough recipe
Carolyn says
It’s linked right in the recipe.
Chad Mercer says
I could be wrong, but Step 1 looks like it’s missing something.
Carolyn says
Oh, thanks for the heads up. Not sure what happened there!
Sara says
Oh my! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Did I say thank you? I LOVE Spanokopita!
Kathy says
Any idea if these would freeze well? Would be great to grab one out of the freezer for a quick lunch….kind of like the Hot Pockets I ate in my past!
Carolyn says
Yes, they should freeze just fine.
Marv says
Eeeaaaaahhhh! CANTWAITCANTWAITCANTWAIT! (and why didn’t I think of this, I’ve so missed these?)
–Marv
Paulette says
Hi, Carolyn. I have always prided myself on pronouncing words correctly, and now, because of you, I have discovered that I, too, have pronounced spanakopita and detritus wrong! Oh, the shame! I still remember giving an oral report in grade 7 about the eye, and pronounced “retina” with the accent on the second syllable: ruh-TEEN-a, and my science teacher never corrected me. (Maybe he didn’t know either, because I got an A+ on the report!– or was he just being kind?) I didn’t realize for years that I’d said it wrong.
stacy says
Could I make a batch and put them in the freezer, then just pull out 2 or 3 at a time and bake them?
Carolyn says
Yup, that would work!
Lori Kaumans says
These look delicious! Looking at the dough makes me wonder if you could use these for pot stickers. Hmmm.
Tory says
As my mother always said, ‘Timing is everything’! I picked up shredded mozzarella at Trader Joe’s yesterday, but of course don’t have the frozen spinach :-/ Any reason steamed and squeezed fresh won’t do the trick?
There’s just something so appealing about a hand pie! 🙂
Thanks, Carolyn!
Carolyn says
As long as you really squeeze out that spinach so there isn’t much moisture left.
Tory says
Thanks, it worked great! Delicious! 🙂
Dawn says
1- I object to that pronunciation!
2-you are totally reading my mind lately first Pecan Tassies now spanakopita?!?! YES! YES! YES! and finally
3- Dang I just haven’t gotten the hang of that mozzerella dough, now I really have to! I’m missing out on all of the yummiest things!
Thank you for all your hard work and fabulous recipes!
Carolyn says
I am planning on doing a video soon for the mozz dough to help people out.
stacy says
I’m so pleased you’re going to do a video. The ingredients are too expensive to have it bomb 🙁
Paula Pfarr Jackson says
Yes please do a video on the handpies
Deborah says
Just made these tonight and a HUGE hit with everybody. Delicious.
Hit on a great way to handle the dough that was a great success and thought I would share.
I rolled the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper. Discarded the top sheet as usual and marked off the squared to cut (used my plastic kitchen ruler and a knife). When it came time to actually cut the squares it occurred to me to simply use kitchen shears and leave each square of dough attached to its piece of parchment paper.
Transferred each square (with its paper still on) to the baking sheet and added the filling. Folded the square in half (aided again by the paper which was still attached) and pressed/sealed the edges. Only then did I remove the paper from the top then flipped the filled triangle over….and removed the paper completely. Then did the final crimp/seal with the fork. Leaving the little square of paper on the dough meant I had no cracking, no tearing, and a 100% success rate with this great (but somewhat fragile) dough. It worked like a charm.
One other tip….rather than use a tea towel to wring the water out of the spinach I put the thawed spinach in my potato ricer and pressed the excess moisture out that way (pressed out the bottom and tipped out the moisture collecting on the top as well). I use this ricer for making the BEST cauliflower mash. It really gets rid of excess moisture and insures a nice fluffy cauli mash. I use it with the smaller of the two grids….too small to force the cooked cauliflower through, forcing only the excess water out before dumping the strained cauliflower into a bowl to add warm cream, parmesan and other seasonings. Ex-potato ricer finds new a new purpose in its life in the low carb era.