The BEST Spinach Artichoke Dip

How has it taken us over 10 years to have a proper Spinach Artichoke Dip recipe on the site?! Well we have one now and I guess that’s all that matters! Anyway, it’s our opinion that spinach artichoke dip is THE dip of all of dips!

What is there not to love about a warm, creamy, and cheesy dip that can be made with a handful of ingredients in under 30 minutes? The answer is absolutely nothing! I still get excited when I see it on a menu and order it every single time.

How to Make Spinach Artichoke Dip

Ingredients

Process

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F. Place cream cheese and mayonnaise into a large mixing bowl and stir together to breakup block of cream cheese.
2. Add spinach, artichokes, garlic, 2 ounces each mozzarella and gruyere, 1 ounce Parmesan, salt, and pepper.

3. Mix together until completely and evenly combined.
4. Pour mixture into a 2 quart baking dish or 8 inch skillet and smooth top.

5. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.

6. Bake spinach artichoke dip for 15 minutes. Transfer to broiler for 1 minute to brown top. Remove from oven and serve with tortilla chips.

Why We Use Fresh Spinach in Our Spinach Artichoke Dip

A lot of spinach artichoke dip recipes call for frozen (thawed) spinach, to save on time, but we prefer to use fresh spinach. Not only do we prefer the taste, we actually think it takes more time to use frozen spinach considering you still need to thaw, squeeze and chop frozen spinach.

Should You Blanch or Wilt Spinach?

We prefer wilting to blanching fresh spinach for two main reasons:

1. Much less water is needed – wilting spinach only uses a couple tablespoons water, while blanching uses several cups for both the pot and ice bath.
2. Wilting spinach only takes about a minute or 2 longer to do then blanching, which we’re totally okay with.

How to Wilt Spinach (and Prepare for the Dip)

Wilting spinach is so easy to do. It only takes a few minutes and steps to do:

1. Place a large pan or pot with 2 tablespoons water over medium heat.
2. Once the water begins to simmer, add spinach to pot in handfuls, stirring after each addition.

3. Once all spinach has been added, gently stir and fold it over itself until all the leaves have collapsed/wilted. That’s it!

Once all spinach leaves have wilted just allow them to sit until cool enough to handle, then squeeze as much excess liquid from them, and chop!

What to Serve with Spinach Artichoke Dip

We love serving our dip with tortilla chips, but have also served them with our Homemade Potato Chips or Root Vegetable Chips and they have both been delicious! Other great options are:

• crostini
• crudité (such as carrots, celery, snap peas, Belgium endive leaves, etc)
• crackers
• pita chips
• baguette slices

Tips and Tricks for Success

• If you forget to soften your cream cheese ahead of time you can soften it quickly two different ways. You can either unwrap the block completely and microwave it on high for 15 seconds OR you can keep the block of cream cheese in the foil wrapper (but remove the cardboard box) and submerge it in warm water (hot water from the tap works very well) for about 15 minutes.
• You can assemble the entire dip, pour it into your baking vessel, tightly cover it with plastic wrap (directly over the dip), and refrigerate it up to 2 days ahead of time.
• If you prep and refrigerate the dip ahead of time, add 5 minutes to the baking time (since the dip will have been chilled vs room temperature.

Variations

• We mentioned above that we really love using fresh spinach for this recipe, but frozen, thawed spinach is totally fine too. Just make sure to squeeze as much water from the spinach as possible, once thawed. You also want to use 11-12 ounces of frozen spinach to account for the extra weight of the ice.
• Swap the spinach out for another leafy green like kale. When we do this, we usually reduce the amount we use to 6 ounces.
• Switch up the types of cheese. Some other great options we like for spinach artichoke dip are fontina, havarti and comté.
• For a slightly lighter dip swap the mayonnaise out for Greek yogurt and reduce each cheese by about 1/2 ounce.
• To add a slight tang to the dip swap the mayonnaise out for sour cream.

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