This recipe is one I just whipped up for our most recent dinner group gathering, which you’ll hear about very soon. My assignment for dinner group was “appetizer” and the hosts were serving Italian-ish/French-ish food. It’s all good when the hosts use terms like “ish” when they’re describing what they’ll be serving!
This dip is easy and a good base layer especially if you want to layer toppings with strong flavors on top of it. We enjoyed it with tapenade and anchovies, both of which were chopped up very small. I made this with beans that I soaked and cooked but you could use canned beans if you’re in a pinch for time.
- 3 cloves [url href=”https://gogingham.com/2011/11/roasted-garlic-spread/” target=”_blank”]How to roasted garlic + roasted garlic spread[/url]
- 3 sprigs thyme, leaves only
- 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 cups white beans, [url href=”https://gogingham.com/2013/07/how-to-cook-with-dried-beans/” target=”_blank”]soaked and cooked[/url] or 1 each 15ounce drained and rinsed
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 4 shakes Tabasco
- Place roasted garlic and thyme in food processor and pulse.
- Add remaining ingredients and pulse until smooth.
- Adjust seasoning as needed.
- Refrigerate in an airtight container.
I tried the dried thyme in it and it tastes like dirt. No one wants their food to taste like dirt. It could have been that my thyme is old and stale, but trust me on this.
I made a large batch of this and froze several containers for future use. It freezes nicely in an air-tight container. Stir well before serving if you freeze it.
If using canned beans, make sure to rinse the beans before adding them to the recipe. Canned beans have lots of added sodium but a quick rinse in a colander with cold water will help remove the salt and other additives. Substitute 1 can of beans for the 2 cups in this recipe.
Serve on crostini (sliced baguette, lightly toasted and rubbed with a sliced garlic clove and brushed with olive oil) with white bean dip and small bowls of tapenade and anchovies. It’s also tasty with arugula. I made a plate of these up and then left some for friends to assemble on their own. Not everyone likes anchovies. This dip is similar to hummus but without the tahini, which has a distinct taste and not the flavor I wanted for this base layer dip. Enjoy and happy dipping!
Do you like to serve a bean dip as a layer? What’s your favorite bean to use?
Go Gingham related links:
How to organize a dinner group can be found here
Pretty wine charms I use while entertaining – super easy to make
A little wine bottle slip-cover you can sew easily from a discarded dress shirt
More dinner group gatherings are here and when we did Bon Apetit here – oh, and at our house here
A lovely backyard dinner group gathering is here with the appetizers I served here
Go Gingham 
That looks really good – and easy! I will print and add to my list of recipes to try!!!
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Annie, this is super-duper easy and tasty. Our kids have been eating it with a spoon, too. Can’t wait to hear how it turns out!
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This sounds absolutely delicious, but isn’t everything that has roasted garlic in it? Thank you for letting us know it freezes well. I love making things in large batches and saving the extra in the fridge for those days when we’re hungry but too busy to cook.
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Yes, Katie, everything is delicious with roasted garlic! I think the flavor is so much better with roasted garlic and it’s easy to roast a big batch all at once and keep that in the freezer, too. We just warmed this bean dip up and served it hot last night with bean and cheese burritos – I thought I had beans in the freezer but no! The bean dip was excellent warm and I may do that again.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.
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We have made bean dip often and beans are a regular staple in our house. We use Rancho Gordo beans almost exclusively, we find their taste superior to nearly all other dry beans. If you are in a hurry, or lazy as we often are, using the pressure cooker makes quick work of cooking the beans. We pressure cook the beans for 35 minutes in fairly seasoned water. We add a pinch of salt at the beginning, after the beans have cooked we add additional salt and acid. Most of time the beans come out perfect. If they are stubborn then we just slow cook them for a few additional hours. Having a combo pressure / slow cooker helps ;-).
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DPaul,
Thanks for this! I don’t cook beans with a pressure cooker very often but you’re right – they do make short work of a long cooking process. I’m guilty of being lazy about soaking beans as well! My pressure cooker is out of commission right now 😦 and I need to find a replacement. It was an estate sale find that has seen a better day! Thanks for stopping by…
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