5 Quick Dips To Make For Your Next Party

For me, this is a perfect bite.

[vegetables crunching]

[upbeat music]

Hey, my name is Pierce Abernathy,

and I'm a Bon Appetit contributor.

Today we are making five quick dips.

It's the one area in the kitchen

where there are almost no rules.

When I'm making dips, I'm my most creative.

[rhythmic music]

So the first dip we're making is a fresh turmeric

and black pepper labneh dip.

Labneh comes from the Middle East,

specifically the Levant.

It's very thick.

It's similar to a cream cheese in consistency.

I would say a little more tangy, even fattier and richer.

Fresh turmeric, it is a root similar to ginger,

native to Southeast Asia and India.

It is a natural dye,

so I would recommend using gloves with this.

And look at that, super bright color.

Black pepper, lemon,

and just squeeze some juice in here.

There's so much fat in the labneh

that we really just wanna brighten it up

as much as possible.

Salt, I'm gonna season semi-generously,

but I'm also gonna taste it and adjust

after everything's incorporated.

A little more salt.

And actually a touch more pepper.

[grinder clicking]

So this dip is ready to go.

Plate up, serve it right now.

But if you wanna take this to the next level,

throw it in the fridge, let it hang out for a little bit,

an hour, two hours, and these flavors are just going

to enhance even further

and make this dip so much more delicious.

I have a little shallow bowl here.

So I'm just gonna finish this off

with a little more freshly cracked black pepper

and then a little zhuhz of olive oil,

some flatbreads, perfect vehicle for many dips.

And just go right in.

Right away, that fresh turmeric flavor really hits you.

It's something highly versatile

and it's something that goes great with anything.

[upbeat music]

This dip is our Swiss chard, artichoke, and cashew dip,

or what I like to gracefully call it, the chardichoke dip.

It's obviously a play on a spinach artichoke dip.

I love to use roasted cashews.

You can roast them yourselves, they're raw.

We're gonna do about 1/2 a cup right in the boiling water.

We're softening the cashews fast,

and then also imparting some of that flavor

into the water, which we'll then use as a liquid

to help thin out our dip.

To a pan here, we're gonna turn this on,

a generous glug of olive oil.

So we've separated our stems to our leaves

of the Swiss chard.

The Swiss chard stems are obviously fibrous

and they'll take a little bit longer to break down.

There's also a lot of natural sweetness in the chard stems

that, as they cook, that sweetness will draw out.

I'm gonna go ahead and cut off the cashews here

and just let these sit in that boiling water.

So these are looking good.

To this, I'm gonna go ahead and add our garlic

and our chard leaves.

They're gonna wilt aggressively,

so they don't need to be broken down extremely fine.

They're also gonna be hitting the food processor

and broken down even further.

A little bit of salt and just a little bit of black pepper.

Cut the heat.

And transfer this back into a bowl.

Take our cashews here that have been soaking.

It's totally fine if you get a little bit of water in here.

We're gonna save this liquid if we want to thin out

our dip at all if it's a little bit too thick.

So first things first, we are going to blend our cashews.

There's a little bit of liquid in there as well,

but I'm gonna go ahead and just eyeball this,

give this a blend. [processor whirring]

Open this up and just push down on the sides here.

I'm also noticing here that it is a bit thick,

so I'm just going to add a little more

of our soaking liquid.

[processor whirring]

So this is looking beautiful,

has a nice consistency here.

From there, we have our cannellini beans.

Take our beans and strain them.

Always rinse your beans off too.

You ultimately just don't want that liquid.

This recipe calls for a cup.

I think there's about a cup and 1/2 of beans

in every 14.5-ounce can.

This is nutritional yeast.

It is widely popular in plant-based cooking

because it has this kind of cheesy flavor,

giving us our cream cheese base.

[processor whirring]

This is perfect.

I'm happy with this.

So we have our chard here.

This is a pantry staple that I recommend everyone have

at least one, ideally more than one, jar of artichokes.

They are flavor bombs.

This liquid is absolutely gold.

I have a bowl underneath the strainer here,

just so we can save this liquid.

Just a little lemon juice.

With the fattiness of the nuts,

it's just nice to have something a little bit bright.

Just a little bit of salt.

I don't want this to be a fine dip.

I want it to have a little bit of texture.

Ooh, that looks good.

Give this a little taste here.

That's good.

So this looks great.

Grab our baking vessel.

What I will do is just season it slightly

with a little bit of olive oil at the bottom.

So we're gonna go ahead and head to the oven and broil this.

It'll quickly heat everything all the way through,

give us a nice beautiful crispy top.

And in just mere minutes, we'll be eating our artichoke dip.

[air whooshing]

It's steamy, it's bubbly.

We have some really nice color on top.

So we're gonna serve this with tortilla chips.

Microplane some of the roasted cashew on top,

and it's ready to go.

We have our Swiss chard, artichoke, and cashew dip.

I'm excited.

[chip crunching]

It's so creamy.

It's decadent. It's rich.

This is my continued love letter to jarred artichokes.

It's a chardichoke dip.

[rhythmic music]

So this dip is a caramelized shallot and anchovy dip.

Basically we're making a bagna cauda.

Bagna cauda is traditionally just garlic and anchovies

cooked with olive oil and butter.

This is basically a caramelized shallot bagna cauda.

Put these in a pot here.

Add a generous amount of olive oil,

'cause we're gonna slowly caramelize these.

We're gonna keep this nice and low.

We have kind of overcrowded our pot,

so that'll ensure things will steam and not burn.

So we're gonna let these sit.

While this is going, we'll go back

and we'll make our garlic anchovy paste.

If there's one thing I can recommend,

it is buying good anchovies.

You want a high-quality product

because this is the star of the show.

Start with just a few cloves of garlic here.

So this looks pretty good.

Now we're gonna add in our anchovies.

Let's sample the product here.

Ooh.

Mm.

If your Caesar salad does not have anchovies,

you probably don't wanna go there.

Take about 1/2 of these anchovies in this jar.

If you don't have a mortar and pestle,

this can definitely be done in a food processor.

But some things are just better the traditional way.

I think this is one of them.

We have our paste.

We can have a little bit of character,

a little bit of texture, some bigger pieces of garlic.

Let's check on our shallots.

They are looking lovely.

I was checking on them every couple of minutes,

giving them a nice stir.

This is perfect, so I'm gonna go ahead and add in

our garlic anchovy paste here,

as well as we're doing 1/2 cup of butter.

Last but not least, a little bit of Calabrian chile.

And this is not traditional for bagna cauda.

This is a chile paste made in Calabria in southern Italy.

It has quite a bit of heat,

anywhere from like three to 10 times more than a jalapeno.

So just be mindful of that.

If you don't want it spicy, you can omit it.

Really, we just want all these flavors to mesh together

and then we'll be ready to plate.

We're gonna make our crudites plate.

Crudites is any cut vegetable.

Here, we have an assortment of rainbow carrots,

some cucumber, some beautiful endive, radicchio,

and this lovely radish.

Slice it up how you want.

I love that the stem is on here,

so I'm gonna just go ahead and halve these.

These are Persian cucumbers.

They are the smaller seedless version of typical cucumbers.

This is a beautiful radish.

Endive, the perfect little salad cup.

This is a baguette, another perfect vehicle

for this hot bath.

Look at that.

It is this beautiful golden brown hue.

Oh my god, look at that.

I'm salivating.

And here's our caramelized shallot and anchovy dip,

my riff on bagna cauda.

Give this a little mix.

Things tend to separate just a little bit.

I mean, liquid gold.

It's a crowd pleaser.

I'm pleased.

I wanna take a hot bath in it.

[rhythmic music]

We are making a sweet potato dip with broccoli salsa verde.

You're getting two dips in one here.

You're getting the sweet potato dip,

fine and great on its own,

and you're also getting the broccoli salsa verde.

When combined, they're a beautiful marriage.

Start by peeling, dice them.

These are gonna cook extremely quickly.

So we have a nice saute pan here.

Into medium-high heat, neutral oil.

Kinda let it sit, let it develop color,

and season with a little salt.

So almost all of this liquid has been reduced.

So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna cut the heat,

cover the pan, and take it off the hot burner.

We'll let that sit and we'll make our broccoli salsa verde.

Broccoli stems are delicious

and they're great in the salsa verde.

We're just making some slits.

We want some smaller pieces here for the stem.

And once you get to the top here, to the florets,

they really break down easily.

I have three different herbs here.

We have some cilantro, some dill, and parsley.

And we're adding in everything, stems and all.

So I'm gonna separate the stems.

The stems of herbs have so much flavor.

And then, for me,

when I'm cutting up a bunch of herbs like this,

what I like to do, get them into a tight ball,

and this is, I think, the most efficient way,

as long as you're not looking for a super precise chop.

Zest some lemon.

One month ago, I finally learned that this is the proper way

to use a Microplane for citrus.

We'll hit this with a little bit of lemon, some garlic.

This is an instance where you wanna use good olive oil.

It's gonna be a lot,

but it's gonna make everything really shine.

The salt will also draw out any moisture in the herb stems,

in the broccoli,

so it will also loosen the salsa verde as well.

This is looking so good.

It's pretty much there,

but I wanna let it sit, knowing that that salt

is gonna draw out a little more moisture.

Our sweet potatoes have cooled down.

Go ahead and go right in

to the food processor here.

The two main flavoring components here

are tahini and harissa.

Tahini is ground sesame paste.

Harissa is a spiced chili paste from Northern Africa.

Stir your tahini.

A lot of the oil will rise to the top,

where the ground sesame will rise to the bottom.

Just give it a little mix and here we go.

You can find harissa in now commonly most grocery stores.

Because I haven't had this brand in awhile,

I'm gonna taste it just to make sure

it's not ridiculously spicy, which it's not.

So I feel comfortable using this amount.

And then lastly, we have a few spices here.

These are spices that are actually found in harissa as well,

cumin, coriander, and a little bit of allspice,

and then some crushed red pepper

just to give it a little more heat.

Just a little squeeze of lemon, one,

to loosen up this tahini, and then two,

to brighten it a little bit and even it out.

[processor whirring]

I think that's it.

It's time to build our plate.

I love to serve this with just a nice sourdough.

I'm gonna show you a trick on how I love to cut sourdough.

Take it like this.

You have a flat surface with every slice.

This texture is looking divine.

Make a little bit of a well here in the middle

for our broccoli salsa verde.

And again, this is one of those things

where you can just play for hours, and I have,

with my dips, trying to style it perfectly.

But especially when you're adding something else to it,

don't be too sacred.

And then finally, just a little bit of olive oil.

Our hard work is done.

We've made not one but two dips.

Take some sourdough, try to get that perfect bite.

Wow, mm.

I feel like this really highlights why I love dips so much

is that you can get really creative.

[light music]

This dip could be controversial.

Some may not even call it a dip.

I call it a chopped beet salsa.

This dip is super easy.

The most complicated thing you have to do

is work on your knife skills.

So we're gonna start with some fennel,

and I'm just gonna treat this how I would cut an onion.

Next, we have a Serrano, good amount of heat here.

You can definitely remove the seeds if you'd like.

I think because we're only using one,

I'm gonna leave these seeds in.

We have a green apple here.

We're gonna do about 1/2.

I love green apples in savory dishes.

They're not as sweet as a red apple,

and they have a really nice crunch as well.

I'm going to add in some lime juice and lime zest,

just to ensure that our apple won't brown.

The lime zest, for its, you know,

it has much more of the flavor.

That's where the oil of the citrus is,

and that oil is a little more floral.

Here's a little trick.

Limes can be a little tough.

Sometimes they can be really firm.

Sometimes not too easy to squeeze,

and if you don't have a juicer,

what I love to do is take a pair of tongs,

place your lime at the bottom here,

and just use the pressure just like that.

I'm using yellow beets here that we've already precooked,

but you can buy precooked red beets.

They're widely available.

I just love this color,

and they also don't stain your hands.

They also don't stain your dishes.

Next we have some pickled onions.

I think pickled onions

should be a pantry staple for everyone.

They should always be in your fridge.

They are so easy to make.

And we're just gonna chop these up.

The vinegary punch of the onion will really just take it

to the next level.

We have some pecans here.

These have been toasted slightly,

and we're just gonna go ahead and crumble these in,

as well as reserving about 1/2 to garnish.

Last but not least, some cilantro and some parsley.

Just a nice chop here.

I think that's good.

I'm gonna season with salt

and some oil.

Right away, look at the color story here.

I mean, beautiful.

Look, if you wanna make your dip look good,

stack it high.

It's more dramatic.

All right, before we garnish,

I think endive is the perfect vehicle for this dip.

Literally, a lettuce with a built-in spoon.

A few more finely crushed pecans here.

A little more of our cilantro and parsley.

And good olive oil.

And that's it, chopped beet salsa.

It's time to indulge.

This lettuce was truly made for this.

[vegetables crunching]

It's everything I want.

It has the heat from the Serrano, the crunch,

the tart sweetness from the apple and the beet,

fresh herbs, it's super simple.

You're not leaving your cutting board.

It can really come together in no time.

Throw it in your fridge.

It'll only enhance in flavor.

So if you made it this far, you've seen them all,

five easy, unique, diverse, approachable dips.

All of these come with highly accessible ingredients

and can be made in most likely 30 minutes or less

and are gonna be showstoppers.

Look, you got options here.

All I'm asking is please don't skip the dip.

She loves me, she loves me not.

It's a dip.

It's a salad.