On a serving plate sit small, dark green balls of spinach and walnut, with red pomegranate seeds scattered on top. Beside them is baked bread, torn into pieces to scoop up the cold appetizer a little at a time. This quiet dish of vegetables and walnuts on the Georgian table is pkhali (ფხალი). It combines chopped vegetables with nuts, herbs, garlic and vinegar, and for all its humble look, once it is in your mouth the richness of walnut, the sourness and the green scent of herbs rise one after another.
This version is made with spinach. Cooking is mostly limited to boiling the leaves; after that, the fat and fine grains of walnut bring the leaves together. These are not fried balls. You squeeze the boiled leaves, chop them, mix them with the nut mixture and chill. Whether it is thick enough to roll depends entirely on one thing: draining decides how well it holds together. From 600 g of raw spinach you can make 4 servings, on a work plan of about 3 hours 30 minutes including 2 hours in the refrigerator.
Spring in Imereti: wild-greens pkhali on the table
Pkhali is not a dish made only from spinach. There is pkhali made with leeks, cabbage, eggplant and other vegetables. In other words, the name points not to one specific spinach recipe but to a shared method of seasoning vegetables and nuts and combining them. If you think of it as a dish where you swap the vegetable, the differences by place and season are easy to accept.
There is also a kind made from spring wild greens, called field pkhali. It exists across Georgia and is introduced in particular as a dish symbolic of the Imereti region. The Georgian National Tourism Administration says the tradition of making field pkhali in Upper Imereti has been given the status of intangible cultural heritage. However, when it began to be made, who first made it, and how often it is eaten across the whole country are not known.
Introductions to the wild-greens version mention a method of not squeezing the leaves too hard and adjusting the consistency with the cooking liquid. A rolled spinach version like this one, by contrast, starts from squeezing out water well. Even under the same name pkhali, how much you drain changes with the finished shape. Remember: drain well if you will roll it.
The wild-greens version is also described with small regional differences. According to the tourism administration's introduction of the wild-greens version, in Guria hazelnuts, herbs and vinegar are used, in Kartli onion sautéed in oil and young garlic are used, and in Samegrelo there are examples that add sour tkemali and red chili. These are regional examples of the wild-greens version, not rules that apply to every spinach version. The ingredient list here is for a cold spinach version made with walnuts.
Ingredients (serves 4)
Before shopping, check the quantities. 600 g of raw spinach and 120 g of walnuts make an appetizer for 4. That is the raw weight, not the weight after boiling. The proportions are a 10-serving local recipe multiplied by 0.4, with only the salt rounded to an easy-to-measure figure. Prep takes about 1 hour 25 minutes, boiling 5 minutes, refrigeration 2 hours, for about 3 hours 30 minutes in total. This is a guide for planning the work, not a measured time.
The cilantro you pick up at the herb section of the market is the one whose fresh leaves and tender stems you use. It is a different ingredient from ground, dried coriander seed, so begin by keeping the herb and the seed powder apart. For blue fenugreek, check that it is sold as utskho suneli or labeled blue fenugreek. Do not swap in ordinary fenugreek in the same amount. If you cannot gather the edible marigold you can make it without, but it will not have the same aroma as the local blend.
Method
The order is simple. Boil the leaves and cool them, then squeeze before chopping. After combining with the seasoned nut base, you cook no more. Reserve time for 2 hours in the refrigerator, and just before eating, garnish with pomegranate and the cilantro you set aside.
In a kitchen without a food processor, chop the walnuts again and again with a knife. Chop a small amount at a time so that no large pieces remain. Large nut pieces do not blend with the leaves and the mixture crumbles easily. You do not need to remove the grains entirely; the target is that no big fragments are left in the mouth. Changing tools makes the prep time longer by that much.
If it will not hold together, check the water and the grain size
If water seeps out once it is on the plate, suspect that the leaves or herbs were not drained enough. If the leaves have not yet been mixed, squeeze them again. After mixing, first see how it holds together over the 2 hours of refrigeration. Even if the water separates, do not try to fix it by adding oil or vinegar. Check whether water seeps on the plate after chilling. If you truly cannot roll it, do not force it into balls; spread it in a shallow dish and eat it as an appetizer. This changes only the texture and is not a way to rescue a spoiled dish.
If long leaves remain, the surface of the rolled balls tends to crack. Chop it finer before mixing. If large walnut pieces remain and it falls apart, grind more finely next time. If it just dries out and cracks even after chilling, add clean drinking water 1 tsp at a time and mix. Do not add too much at once.
Chili varies in heat by product, so add it from a small amount. It is difficult to reduce heat after mixing. When adding vinegar, add it little by little as well, and do not keep adding sugar or oil in an attempt to cancel the sourness. The sharpness of raw onion and the heat of chili are different things, so adjust the onion's at the chopping stage.
Serve cold with bread
Serve the chilled pkhali in small portions, topped at the end with red pomegranate seeds and herbs. As an appetizer to go with bread, taste the richness of walnut, the vinegar and the herbs a little at a time. Eaten a little at a time as a cold appetizer, each bite brings out a different aroma. At a meal outside Georgia, about two pieces per person beside the main dish is recommended.
If you like pkhali's use of walnuts, the next dish could be satsivi, which dresses chicken in a walnut sauce. It is a doorway for when you think, one more dish with walnuts. On days you want to enjoy bread with an appetizer, try khachapuri, the cheese bread, too.
Refrigerated storage and precautions before eating
This is a dish you do not reheat after adding raw herbs and onion. Precisely because you do not reheat after mixing, wash your hands, cutting board and utensils well, and wash the herbs under running water before use. Do not serve it to anyone with a walnut allergy. Check the labels, such as wheat in the bread you serve alongside.
Walnuts are a nut that can cause allergic reactions. Check the allergies of those eating and the labels on the products. If you share tools or a cutting board that were used to grind nuts, also watch for cross-contact. Replacing them with other nuts is not recommended as a safe substitute. Use spices sold for food, and do not use ornamental flowers or wild plants whose species you cannot confirm.
Under the general food safety guidance shown by FoodSafety.gov, the refrigerator should be at or below 4°C, food that needs refrigeration should not sit at room temperature for more than 2 hours, and in an environment above 32°C it should be refrigerated within 1 hour. Count the cooling time, the mixing and the time after plating together as time at room temperature. Put it in a shallow container and move it to the refrigerator promptly.
There is no source that gives a storage limit specific to pkhali. The editors' suggestion here is to make a small amount and finish it the same day or the next. This does not guarantee a safe limit. Keep it covered in the refrigerator and take out only what you will eat with clean utensils. Do not assume that something left out at room temperature for a long time becomes safe by chilling it again. Because the texture of a mixture of leaves and nuts cannot be guaranteed after freezing, this recipe does not recommend it. Making an amount you can finish is best.
The nutrition figures are a rough estimate of the whole batch, four times the per-serving estimate in the original FoodLab recipe. They do not include the optional ground coriander. They are not measured values and vary with the size of the onion, rounding of the spices, salt that goes into the cooking water and so on. The whole batch is about 1028 kcal, 39.2 g protein, 81.6 g fat and 61.2 g carbohydrate, and the rough figure for one appetizer serving is 257 kcal.
Sources
- Georgian Recipes — Spinach Pkhali: ingredients, boiling, draining and shaping of the spinach version. Accessed and checked 4 October 2026.
- FoodLab — Spinach Pkhali: quantities, 2 hours of refrigeration, herbs, steps, estimated nutrition. Accessed and checked 4 October 2026.
- Georgia Travel — Field Pkhali: spring wild-greens dish, Imereti tradition, regional differences of the wild-greens version. Accessed and checked 4 October 2026.
- FDA — Food Allergies: What You Need to Know: walnuts and other food allergens, and label checking. Accessed and checked 4 October 2026.
- FoodSafety.gov — 4 Steps to Food Safety: hands and utensils, produce hygiene, refrigerator temperature, time at room temperature. Accessed and checked 4 October 2026.
