Here’s our guide to how to make a dip out of anything and a case for keeping cans of tomatoes, chickpeas, kidney beans, and white beans in your pantry – along with good quality extra virgin olive oil and chilli oil, jars of tahini and olives, and spices, herbs, nuts, seeds, or crispy shallots to add fragrance, flavour and texture.
You’ve invited friends over for drinks and ran out of snacks? Or you’re having a spontaneous gathering – the best kind – and don’t have anything to nibble on while you decide what to do for dinner? Homemade dips are the answer – but you need to stock the pantry for such times.
We’ll always make a homemade dip before serving a store-bought dip to guests. We’ve long made dips from scratch, even if it was just for Terence and I to snack on while sipping drinks as we cooked dinner. Homemade dips are so much more delicious, and they’re also healthier as you know exactly what’s going in them.
As a child growing up in Sydney in the 1970s, Saturday mornings were often spent helping mum prepare for friends dropping over for weekend lunches and backyard barbecues. Back in those days, dips were creamy, made with a base of cream cheese and sour cream. Try my homemade French onion dip or Eastern European dill dip with Jatz biscuits for a step back in time.
Following a backpacking trip around Mexico, our first overseas adventure – Terence and I returned to Sydney and started making homemade guacamole and margaritas when friends dropped over for sunset drinks. And it was hummus from scratch after moving to the Abu Dhabi and a Lebanese colleague shared her recipe with Terence.
Apart from homemade dips being more delicious and healthier, preparing dips from scratch is a small gesture of hospitality that will be appreciated by your guests.
Looking for more cooking inspiration? We have many hundreds of recipes you can browse in our archives, and if you click on the heart on the right of every post you can save your favourites in your own private account. Now let’s tell you how to make a dip out of anything.
How to Make a Dip Out Of Anything – Because Nothing Beats Homemade
Here’s our guide to how to make a dip out of anything.
Choose Your Base
We always seem to have a jar of tahini open in the fridge, and if the pandemic taught us anything, it was to keep the kitchen cupboards well stocked with tins of tomatoes, cans of chickpeas, kidney beans, and white beans, such as butter beans, cannellini beans and pinto beans, and jars of olives, capers, and gherkins.
Drain the contents of a can of beans, keeping the liquid aside, and tip the beans into a food processor or blender with pounded garlic, a little lemon juice, salt and pepper, and extra virgin olive oil, and pulse. Voila, you have the basis for a divine dip. If the texture is too dense, add a little of the liquid from the can or more olive oil.
With tahini and a can of chickpeas you can make a classic homemade hummus, one of the oldest, healthiest and most delicious of dips, and a traditional Middle Eastern mezze that’s served as an appetiser, or a starter or side dish, along with salads such as tabbouleh or a farmers salad, and spiced meatballs, beef kofta, and garlicky chicken kebabs.
A homemade white bean dip is just as quick and easy to prepare and while it’s delicious as it is, it’s also a great base for other dips, as well as salads and vegetables. A can of kidney beans makes a fantastic Mexican or Tex-Mex style chilli bean dip. As does leftover chili con carne.
Tin tomatoes will make you a Mexican red salsa – perfect for serving alongside homemade guacamole (a cinch to make if you have an avocado or two on hand) and dipping tortilla crisps or corn chips into, as well as spooning on top of tacos or quesadillas or dousing on top of my ultimate nachos. Whatever you do, wash it all down with margaritas and micheladas.
With a jar of caviar or fish roe you can make taramosalata, a jar of black olives will make you a homemade olive tapenade, and with jars of marinated artichokes, red peppers and olives you’ll be serving up this Mediterranean style antipasti inspired artichoke dip in no time.
That second recipe is super versatile and is another clean-out-the-fridge dip; you could add whatever you have left in jars, such as sun dried tomatoes or marinated mushrooms.
Softer white cheeses such as goat’s cheese and Persian-style feta make wonderful whipped cheese dips, which you can eat on their own with crackers, or spread on a plate and pile with veggies or salad, such as these roasted cherry tomatoes on goat’s cheese or cucumbers on whipped feta.
Cream cheese and sour cream make great bases for those creamy retro dips, such as my smoked salmon dip with capers, dill pickles, and fresh dill. (More links above).
Creamy Greek style yoghurt can be added to reduce the richness of those dips, or used as a base for a healthier dip. Yoghurt and cucumber is a popular combination for mezze style dips throughout the Mediterranean, such as Greek tzatziki.
Harder white cheeses such as Greek feta and Cypriot feta are fantastic crumbled on top of dips.
Clean Out the Vegetable Drawer
Making a homemade dip is a great opportunity to clean out your fridge vegetable drawer. If you have have red capsicums (bell peppers), you can make this Syrian muhammara dip, one of our favourite Middle Eastern dips.
Got an eggplant? You can char it on the stove-top over a gas flame or even a barbecue, and make this easy Greek eggplant dip, or this Middle Eastern baba ganoush or eggplant dip with pomegranate seeds and pine nuts.
Roast some carrots, beetroots, pumpkins, or sweet potatoes: peel them, cut them into smaller pieces, lay them out on a baking tray brushed with olive oil, brush the veggies with more extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, perhaps some ground cumin or paprika, and slide the tray into the oven or under the grill (broiler).
When the vegetables are tender and have cooled down you can toss them into the food processor with a can of chickpeas or white beans, pounded garlic, salt and pepper, and extra virgin olive oil, and blitz until you get a creamy consistency.
You can make pumpkin hummus, carrot hummus, beetroot hummus, and more. We have recipes for those and more hummus recipes here.
Spice It Up
Taste the dip and adjust the seasoning to suit your palate (we love to use a quality sea salt and cracked black pepper or a milder white pepper), adding spices or herbs.
Stir through spices such as ground paprika, cumin, coriander, which add warmth, while chilli powder or chilli flakes will add a kick of heat. I tend to reach for paprika for Mediterranean-style dips and cumin for Middle Eastern dips.
Garlic powder is great if you don’t have fresh garlic.
Add Fragrance and Flavour
Fresh herbs add aroma and flavour, and can also be stirred through the dip, as well as sprinkled on top. Fresh dill is wonderful in everything, especially more Eastern European style dips.
Fresh coriander and fresh basil add fragrance and flavour, while flat leaf parsley also adds freshness and is wonderful with lemon juice.
Reach for the Good Oil
Scoop the dip out into a bowl and drizzle on some good quality extra virgin olive oil. In the Middle East, where we lived and travelled for almost a decade, hummus in its many iterations is nearly always traditionally served with a pool of olive oil at the centre of the hummus, often used to hold whole chickpeas.
We prefer to use the end of a spoon or knife to swirl around the top and drizzle on the extra virgin olive oil so it falls in the valleys between the ridges. If you’re sprinkling more spice on top or showering with fresh herbs or a condiment, sprinkle them on after drizzling on the oil.
A little sesame oil is lovely on more delicate East Asian inspired dips while chilli oil and chilli crisp are fantastic on everything. If you have some basil pesto in the fridge, stir it through some olive oil and swirl it on top of a dip. I love to drizzle this Southeast Asian style pesto on dips.
Add Tang and Zing
If you’re like us and always have homemade pickles in the fridge, diced dill pickles or gherkins, as well as chopped olives and drained briny capers, are fantastic stirred through a dip and sprinkled on top to add zing and tang to a dip, such as mixed green and black olives do in this easy olive dip recipe.
Add Texture and Crunch
You can add more texture and crunch by sprinkling on some dukkah, the Middle Eastern nut, seed and spice blend; the Italian toasted breadcrumbs, pangrattato; Japanese furikake; or crispy fried shallots.
You can make fried shallots from scratch, but we love store-bought fried shallots, which are super crunchy. You can buy them online, in the Asian section of your supermarket or a specialist Asian grocery store.
Serve your dips with crispy pita chips, homemade croutons, crusty sourdough, cheese straws, sourdough crackers, spicy crackers, or vegetable crudités, such as carrot sticks, celery ribs and cucumber batons.
Use Those Leftovers
Got leftover dip? Take inspiration from Middle Eastern cuisines and spread it over a plate and use it as a base for roasted or grilled vegetables or a salad.
And that’s our guide to how to make a dip out of anything. Got any tips to share?
