Dip, Dip, Dippity Dip
Savory yogurt, a love note
I love dips. And sauces. All condiments, really. They can be snacky, or they can be sneaky ways to make boring food feel special. Someday I’m going to make a little cookbook all about dips, and I’m going to title it “Dee-yup.” Say it out loud, it’s fun. If you don’t think it’s fun to say I guess that’s okay…Nevertheless I’m sure you’d enjoy a collection of tasty sauces and dollops with creative ways to use them. A whole little book just waiting for your next party/movie night/social-hibernation-in-bed-with-a-book session. Someday I’ll make that book for you...
In the meantime, I need to tell you how much I love savory yogurt. Particularly yogurt dip. Sorry, yogurt dee-yup.
I grew up thinking that yogurt was inherently sweet, usually vanilla, but sometimes fruity and bright pink. I knew what tzatziki was, and eventually I met salty raitas at a restaurant, but I never really internalized that those delectable condiments were, at their cores, just salted flavored yogurt.
At some point, when I was living off-campus in college and stocking my very own fridge shelf, I met Plain Yogurt. In my parent’s house, we always had an assortment of little fruity yogurt cups in the fridge for lunchboxes, plus a big tub of Dannon or Yoplait for blopping into smoothies. I thought that’s what I was buying—smoothie yogurt. I avoided the flavors and grabbed the plain stuff. Neutral, not fruity, fit for a smoothie base or my morning granola. Happy to have a familiar, friendly tub on hand, I cheerfully scooped out a spoonful as a quick treat as I unloaded the rest of my groceries.
I was betrayed.
This was not sweet and creamy. This was not the friendly, half-dessert half-breakfast, “plain yogurt” I was raised with. It wasn’t as repulsive as curdled milk, but it tasted so wrong. It was tangy, almost sour. It took a few beats and a grimacing swallow before it dawned on me… We never, ever had plain yogurt. What we called “plain” was always vanilla, and it was always very sweet.
I’m sure I stubbornly finished that tub of yogurt, but it was a long time until I bought true plain yogurt again. To be honest, I’m not even sure how I ended up where I am now—I exclusively buy plain yogurt.
And, while I do still enjoy yogurt-based smoothies, I rarely eat yogurt in sweet contexts. More often than not it’s just a big bloop as garnish with a pinch of flaky sea salt. That being said, I also have a deep and abiding love for making dips out of thick, creamy, Greek-style yogurt. I have a whole host of recipes, and I’ve finally started polishing them up to share on my website. So if you enjoy today’s collection, then you’ll be glad to know there will be more to come!
All three recipes below are excellent in classic dip contexts—with crudites, chips, etc—and are also superb smeared in sandwiches or wraps, folded into potato salads, or spread on a platter as a bed for grilled veggies.
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Hey there! Cooking for friends and family is a love-language, am I right? Well, let’s take that love and spread it as far as we can! May I suggest seeking out local nonprofits that support mutual aid endeavors like community fridges and advocacy for your unhoused neighbors? Or perhaps supporting organizations that provide critical support for Trans youth? I also encourage finding ways to support anti-genocide efforts and relief aid in Palestine, such as through organizations like Anera.
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Harissa Yogurt Dip with Capers
One of the main ways these dip recipes come about is finding inspiration in other non-creamy condiments. This harissa dip is a great example of that. It started as kerkennaise sauce, a Tunisian sauce of fresh chopped tomatoes, capers, and green onions that’s usually served with shrimp. Clearly, this dip looks nothing like a kerkennaise sauce.
In order to keep the yogurt dip thick and creamy I had to abandon the fresh tomatoes (too watery), instead reaching for the super-powered tomato flavor of tomato paste. And, while I’ve never seen a kerkennaise recipe that calls for harissa, I have seen a few recipes that incorporate some of the same chilies and spices found in harissa.
The final result of all my tinkering and tweaking is a luscious, creamy dip that has a savory, mouth-coating quality. I’d generally expect this level of unctuousness more from a cheese- or mayo-based dip, not tangy, “healthy” yogurt. I love it slathered on any and everything. Snack plates of cucumbers and carrot sticks, in sandwiches, with french fries…. For a gobsmackingly good sandwich, smear some inside a crusty ciabatta roll with grilled broccolini and raw or pickled onion.
Get the recipe for harissa yogurt dip here!
Sesame Garlic Yogurt Dip
This recipe is an oldy for me, developed in a past life. It sounds so simple, but trust me when I say that it’s a classic “more than the sum of its parts” dip.
Tahini-yogurt dips and dressings are all over the internet, but I confess that I don’t really like them. I find the tahini to be too bitter, not toasty enough, and make the texture overall to thick and gloopy (unless it’s thinned to be too drizzly). So this recipe was my answer to that dissatisfaction. Instead of tahini, I use toasted sesame oil. It yields a much more aromatic and mouthwatering sesame flavor, and keeps the texture silky and spreadable.
Between the gentle acidity of the yogurt, the richness of the sesame, and the super savory garlic, this dip is another multi-talented player in your lunch and dinner game. I particularly like it with falafel or any crispy bean fritter, but it’s just as good when used to dress a cucumber salad or spread inside a turkey sandwich. If you’re hunting for a bit of a variation, try swapping out the parsley for dill, cilantro, or mint.
Get the recipe for sesame garlic yogurt dip here!
Roasted Red Pepper Yogurt Dip with Walnuts and Georgian Spices
Another inspired-by-a-classic-condiment yogurt dip, this recipe is the direct result of my obsession with Georgian red pepper adjika. Olia Hercules writes about a wet and dry version of red pepper adjika in her cookbook Kaukasis: A Culinary Journey through Georgia, Azerbaijan & Beyond. In the book, her main recipe is for a dry version, made with dried ground chilies, resulting in an intensely aromatic chili salt. However she also offers instructions for making "wet red adjika," using fresh chilies and creating a thick, salty paste. It's this wet version that hooked me the first time I tasted it.
Essentially, this dip recipe is just Olia’s wet adjika recipe stirred into yogurt. I have tweaked the spices a bit, trying to account for the fact that I don’t have Georgian blue fenugreek, but the heart of the adjika paste remains true to tradition (I hope).
As with the other two recipes, you really can’t go wrong smearing this yogurt dip into sandwiches or wraps, or serving it on a snack plate with crunchy things for dipping. I particularly like the way the roasty red peppers and spices play with grilled food, so try it slathered on anything from grilled veggies to fish.
Get the recipe for red adjika inspired yogurt dip here!
Other nibbles and bits…
Listening
Batting Around Podcast — It’s a podcast about baseball that somehow ends up talking more about food and Star Trek than baseball. It’s got the hot takes, the queer theory, the hilarious guests, and it turns out that’s a perfect combo for a lazy weekend brunch soundtrack.
LoFi Girl - Chill Beats for LEGO building — LoFi is generally great for self-regulation and I’ve been finding this playlist especially good for those bad ADHD days. Chill, but not too chill.
Watching
An acquaintance recently turned me onto The Great Pottery Throwdown (streaming on HBO Max). The first two seasons were a bit slow, but I just finished the third and it’s finally found its tempo. If you’re a maker or fan of handmade things you should check it out!
Snacking
My local big box grocery store recently started carrying a cheese from Cabot called “Alpine Cheddar.” It’s one of their basic mass-made, plastic-wrapped cheeses, not the smaller scale artisan cheeses like the classic Cabot Clothbound. It’s nowhere near as complex and delicious as something you might get at a cheese counter, but even so it’s probably the best tasting cheese I’ve had from a refrigerator case that also houses bags of pre-shred.
As always, let me know if you try any of the recipes in today’s newsletter! Leave a comment here, or rate and comment directly on the recipe page on small-pantry.com, or shoot me a message on Instagram! If you post any photos of your creations I’d love to see them—tag @smallpantry and/or #smallpantryrecipes!
xoxo
Julia