Want to be popular this holiday season? Show up for a party with a creamy dip and something crisp for scooping it up.
Around the holidays, it’s almost essential to have quick and easy appetizers for drop-ins, potlucks or your own celebrations. When I started talking with my colleagues about creating easy, sour-cream-based dips for the season, I knew I was onto something, because I got a stream-of-consciousness lineup of ideas that began with: “You know what you could do …” and continued on and on until I realized the hardest part of creating the recipes was going to be winnowing down the options.
That’s because sour cream makes an ideal dip base.
My favorite old-school sour cream dip is onion. One of my guiltiest guilty pleasures is whipping up a batch using dried Lipton soup mix, although I admit making it from scratch is so much better-tasting. Nourish columnist Ellie Krieger’s Triple Onion Dip, with sauteed fresh onion, onion powder and scallion, is a great example. She, of course, makes it with yogurt, so it is better for you.
For these five dips, however, we tried to think outside the box while keeping the recipes extremely simple. Each requires just one 8-ounce container of sour cream, but they all can be doubled or tripled. And you can substitute Greek yogurt if you like, but you may have to add a little water, too.
Each takes 20 minutes or less to throw together. You can make them in a bowl, but I do recommend that two of them go in a food processor for a creamier finish. Only one requires about a minute of stove time to bloom a little smoked paprika in oil.