In my mind, the Superbowl = SNACK HEAVEN. I don’t know why I feel this is the only appropriate time of year to make soft pretzel bites and dips and chips an entire meal, but I guess that’s why girl dinner rose to such acclaim last year.
While I had planned the soft pretzel bake off to be the main Superbowl snacking inspiration of the year (at least from me), a friend mentioned spinach artichoke dip to me and, well.
That leads us to today: a micro bake off (just a bite-sized version of our regular bake offs) of spinach artichoke dip!
As very quick background, I found this snippet around the origins of spinach artichoke dip from Southern Living hilarious. Not sure any European would want to lay claim to this very American snack!
“The origins of spinach-artichoke dip are a bit fuzzy, but the cheesy, crave-able creation is believed to have skyrocketed in popularity after World War II, when soldiers who had been introduced to certain flavor combinations in Europe (spinach, artichoke, lemons, garlic, Parmesan cheese) returned stateside.”
Recipe Overviews
Alexandra Cooks
I was intrigued by this recipe which is inspired by Martha Stewart’s hot crab dip with a base of sautéed shallots, half and half, cream cheese and cheddar. Alexandra swaps Parmesan for the cheddar and adds grilled, marinated artichoke hearts from Trader Joe’s along with fresh spinach (though she says frozen will also work). Most other recipes I looked at used a base of cream cheese and didn’t have such a healthy quantity of cream.
New York Times
This Alison Roman recipe calls for a base of cream cheese and sour cream flavored with a mixture of mozzarella, Parmesan, and what feels like an uncharacteristically small amount of garlic (just one clove). She notes that you can use fresh or frozen spinach, so I opted for the latter (the cheaper option!). This recipe only specified quartered artichoke hearts, so I just used the plain canned artichokes from Trader Joe’s.
America’s Test Kitchen (free version here)
This was seemingly the most extra of the recipes. With a ONE TO ONE ratio of cream cheese to mayo, ATK gilds the lily with both Gouda and Parmesan. It also calls for marinated artichokes (I used the same grilled, marinated ones from Trader Joe’s as in Alexandra Cooks) and sautéed garlic.
After distributing the dips to 10 different tasters, here were the results
With such a small data sample, it’s of course hard to take the rankings too seriously, but there was a clear winner among our tasters. Hopefully the descriptions will help steer you in the direction of your ideal dip!
THIRD PLACE
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