Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip
Bubbling hot spinach-artichoke dip with chips or bread — two ancient Mediterranean vegetables whose cultivation histories span thousands of years, combined in an American dip that became one of the 1980s most enduring party foods.
- 10 ozfrozen spinach(thawed and squeezed dry)
- 14 ozartichoke hearts(canned, drained and chopped)
- 8 ozcream cheese(softened)
- 0.5 cupsour cream
- 0.5 cupmayonnaise
- 1 cupparmesan cheese(freshly grated, divided)
- 0.5 cupmozzarella cheese(shredded)
- 3 clovesgarlic(minced)
- 0.5 tspred pepper flakes
- 0.5 tspkosher salt
Can be assembled up to 2 days ahead; cover and refrigerate. Add 10 minutes to baking time if baking from cold. Can also be made in slow cooker on low for 2 hours.
- 1Preheat oven to 375°F
- 2Squeeze all excess moisture from thawed spinach - this is critical for proper texture
- 3Beat softened cream cheese until smooth
- 4Mix in sour cream, mayonnaise, 3/4 cup parmesan, mozzarella, garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt
- 5Fold in spinach and artichoke hearts until evenly distributed
- 6Transfer to 9-inch baking dish or cast iron skillet
- 7Top with remaining 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
- 8Bake 25-30 minutes until bubbling around edges and golden on top
- 9Let rest 5 minutes before serving with bread, crackers, or vegetables
The key is removing as much water from the spinach as possible - wring it in a clean kitchen towel. Fresh artichoke hearts can substitute for canned if you want to elevate the dish. Bake in a cast iron skillet for rustic presentation and better heat retention. Stir in some crab meat for a luxurious variation.
The two vegetables in this dip have histories that stretch back to opposite ends of the ancient world and meet in the bubbling cream cheese of the American casual dining era. The artichoke is a cultivated form of the wild cardoon (Cynara cardunculus), a thistle native to the Mediterranean and North Africa. Homer and Hesiod both mention the cardoon as a garden plant as early as the 8th century BCE, and Pliny the Elder wrote about artichokes in 77 AD — famously, if contradictorily, calling them "one of the earth's monstrosities" while his fellow Romans ate them prepared in honey and vinegar with cumin. After the fall of Rome the artichoke fell out of favour in much of Europe; North African Moors revived its cultivation in Arab-controlled Spain from around 800 AD (their name al-kharshūfa is the direct ancestor of the English word artichoke). First cultivated at Naples around the mid-15th century, artichokes were brought to France by Catherine de Medici when she arrived from Florence at age fourteen to marry the future Henry II in the 1530s. Spinach has an equally well-documented geographic origin. Wikipedia confirms that spinach originated in Persia (modern-day Iran) and its earliest known Mediterranean appearance is in 10th and 11th-century Arabic agricultural treatises. Arab traders and scholars carried it from Persia through their controlled territories into Spain, and from there it spread to France and England by the 12th to 14th centuries; in medieval Germany, England, and Spain it was known as the "herb of Spain" or "Spanish vegetable." The two ancient plants found their unlikely modern combination in American chain-restaurant kitchens of the 1980s and 1990s, where the creamy, hot, scoopable dip format became a staple of casual dining menus — and has never left.