16 Favorite Party Dips

I’m not as enthusiastic about the fall sports season as I once was, but I will take advantage of an opportunity to have snacks. A perusal of The Archives suggests that dips are the queens of The Messy Apron snacking nation, and so I’ll give you a list of 16 of them here. Hot, cold, smooth, chunky, savory sweet, there’s a little of each. For your snacking pleasure.

Hummus is particularly satisfying no matter what you like to dip into it. In addition to classic chickpea hummus, I like this Green Pea Hummus, too.

Smashed and pureed vegetables make particularly good cold dips, especially the eggplant in this Spicy Eggplant Dip with Basil and Mint, the red bell peppers in Roasted Red Pepper, Garlic, and Onion Dip, and the zucchini in Grilled Zucchini and Feta Dip.

And if you want something into which to dip your favorite crunchy vegetables, there’s Garlic and Herb Vegetable Dip.

Fresh salsas are hard to beat, and can be used to accentuate other snacks, like nachos, as well as simply scooped and munched with chips. If you want the fun of using the grill, you can make Grilled Tomatillo Salsa.

 

Or you can just get out a knife and make Tomato and Cucumber Pico de Gallo,  Cucumber Salsa with Cilantro and Mint,

or Radish Cilantro Salsa.

While I like cold dips for early autumn snacking, as the temperatures drop, I like to heat things up. Bean Dip with Sour Cream, Salsa and Cheese (pictured at the top) is one of my favorite recipes, as is Spinach and Artichoke Dip.

 

You don’t even have to stop snacking when it’s time for dessert. You can get yourself some graham crackers, vanilla wafers, or firm fruits, and dip them in tasty sweet dips, like Caramel Dip for Apples, Chocolate Cookie Butter,

 

Fluffernutter Cream Cheese Dip,

And Sweet Pumpkin Dip, which I love with cinnamon-sugar pita chips.

There are so many ways you can go, no matter what delivery system you like, whether it be tortilla or pita chips, crackers, cookies, or something healthier like fruits and vegetables. I hope you, too, enjoy having a line of dips in your snacking life.

Other posts like this one: 12 Seasonal Favorites, 6 Late Summer Soups

Grilled Tomatillo Salsa

 

Every few years I plant tomatillos. They tend to be easy to grow and produce prolifically. This year has been no exception in my garden, although the plants are particularly robust, bushing out all over their raised bed space, while the fruit production is just moderate based on my previous experience. That still means that there are plenty of tomatillos to work with.

I grilled some, along with onion and chile to make a grilled version of green salsa. The piquant sauce gets a subtle, smokiness from charring the vegetables on the grill. I use a gas grill and a grill pan, although you could grill your vegetables however you like.

You also could roast the tomatillos and onions in the oven if you can’t or don’t want to use a grill. You could skip the charring altogether, but you should cook the tomatillos in some way. Simmering them in water until they are tender would work, as would using canned tomatillos, which are already cooked. As long as I felt like it was still grilling season, however, I was happy to do things that way.

 

You may get some variation in this salsa depending on how tart your tomatillos are and how spicy your chile pepper is. It would probably be simple to adjust the flavors with more or less lime juice, or even a bit of sugar, honey, or agave nectar, if it needs some sweetening. You can also adjust the amount of chile you add to suit your taste for spiciness.

This salsa is a delicious mix of the complex flavors of tomatillo, chile, cilantro, and lime. It’s great anywhere you like to use your favorite salsa: with tortilla chips, on a big plate of nachos, in burritos, on quesadillas, on a bowl of beans. You don’t need me to tell you this. Salsa is fun stuff, and since this one also uses the grill and the garden, I found it even more fun! And delicious!

 

Coming up: I have a cookie recipe I need to tell you about, but I can’t find my notes on it, so I’ll have to make more cookies. The sacrifices I make for my art….

Grilled Tomatillo Salsa

Adapted from The Best International Recipe

1 pound tomatillos, husks removed and sticky residue scrubbed away

½ medium white onion, cut into wedges

1 medium green chile pepper

½ teaspoon coarse salt

1 clove garlic, chopped

½ cup chopped cilantro

1 tablespoon lime juice

1. Preheat a gas or charcoal grill. Place the whole tomatillos, onion wedges, and whole chile pepper in a grill pan on the grill. Alternatively, cover the grill rack with foil and place the tomatillos onion and chile on the foil.

2. Grill the vegetables, turning them occasionally, until they are charred all over and soft. Remove each item from the grill when it reaches the desired state and continue until everything is finished.

3. Place the grilled tomatillos and onion in the bowl of a food processor or in a blender jar. Add the salt, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice. Process until smooth.

4. Remove the stem from the grilled chile and discard. Chop the grilled chile very finely. Stir into the tomatillo mixture. Taste the salsa for seasoning and add more salt or lime juice if needed. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Makes about 2 cups. The salsa may get very thick upon standing. You can stir in some water or lime juice if needed.

Other recipes like this one: Spicy Cilantro Mint Pesto, Cucumber Salsa with Cilantro and Mint, Tomato and Cucumber Pico de Gallo

One year ago: 12 September Favorites

Saturday Night: September Transitions

 

It’s September. In a few days, anyone who’s going back to school will do so. Lots of other things tend to change this time of year, too, as if we never really shake the rhythm of the school year. I never minded the coming of autumn, and I liked school, so this was usually a time of positive change for me. And since the fall doesn’t really fall, but transitions into our lives throughout the month of September, we at least get some time to think about what lies ahead.

Labor Day Weekend…

** A turning point. The greatest turning point of my life came at this time of year. I met my husband on a Labor Day weekend 21 years ago. We bonded over Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, the theatrical version of the television show, of which he had a copy (on VHS!). Together, we’ve watched hundreds of episodes of MST3K and its progeny, Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic, the short-lived Film Crew, and the newest Netflix MST3K series. It’s super cool to think we’re still enjoying something together that we did when we first met.

**The day job. I frequently work weekends, and often end up covering shifts on holidays, but I’m excited to say that I’m experiencing a real three-day weekend! It remains to be seen whether I’ll use these days wisely.

The garden…

**Vegetables. The vegetables seem to be deciding whether to keep going in this warm weather or to read the signs in the changing angle of the sun that it’s time to winter up. The tomato plants are withering, and the squash vines are getting weaker. There are just three butternut squash out there, but they look pretty delicious, so I’m happy.

 

**Herbs. The herbs seem content to keep going, with the exception of the basil and cilantro. It’s time to pull up the rest of the basil and make a batch or two of pesto. Then, I can plant some arugula or some other cooler-weather greens in its place.

**Decorative plants and flowers. I’m rooting coleus and geraniums in hopes of keeping them going and even having them as house plants over the winter.

**Zucchini. It’s still coming. Nothing new to report.

**Tomatillos. I’ve got quite a few of these as well. I’ve made delicious Grilled Green Salsa that I hope to post here soon.

Reading…

**I started reading The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu. I really enjoyed Chu’s Time Salvager and Time Siege. So far, The Lives of Tao is very entertaining!

**I also picked up Culinary Reactions: The Everyday Chemistry of Cooking by Simon Quellen Field to brush up on the nerdier aspects of my culinary life.

**I finished The Scar and Fahrenheit 451, and with all due respect to the importance of Bradbury’s work, I have to say that I prefer the freaked-out entertainment piped directly into my brain by the darkly weird and wonderful work of China Mieville.

Recipe fantasies…

**Dorie’s Cookies. If today I could begin a semester-long study in which I cooked and ate my way through a cookbook, it would be this one by Dorie Greenspan. There are so many, many wonderful cookies in there, from familiar to exotic. In August, I made the Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies on page 155, which were lovely. I plan to make the Coffee Malteds on page 116 next.

**Apples. We acquired our first bag of locally-grown apples today, so I better transition my research and testing from summer fruits to apples. I’ve got to make a classic apple pie this year. This is tough to admit, but I can’t remember the last time I made one. (Have I ever made one?) I’ll probably still look for late season fruits like plums and grapes to make desserts like this cake, this galette, and this gelatin dessert, but once I really dive into apples, I don’t intend to look back!

Lots of things seem to change with this particular calendar flip. Nature, people, interests, entire lives. I’m a bit nervous facing some upcoming challenges as I shift from summer’s free-wheeling informality and consider busier, darker, and colder days to come. But there’s a lot of comfort to be had in some of the constants, like books, cookies, making fun of bad movies, and the alchemy of a successful long-term relationship in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. (I love you, Harry!)

Happy September! And respect to all work and workers on Labor Day!