Alton Brown Cooks Food | Episode 24: The Dip's The Thing

Indexed: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Unlike a sauce, which is often cooked and meant to augment a food or even become part of a final dish, like, you know, bashimmell and lasagna. um or a dressing uh typically uncooked, viscous, acidic, um intended to coat and season a food like a salad or a buffalo wing or a dipping sauce, a watery yet pungent usually solution, very salty into which foods are typically dipped. Think uh tempura into uh tensuya.

[00:00:33]Dips are different. despite appearing along the continuum of viscous culinary accompaniments is never an adjunct. Dips don't sing backup. The dip is the thing.

[00:00:46]Uh while the dipped food is little more than an edible transport platform physically capable of handling the load.

[00:00:54]Now to my mind, dips are defined by the following. To qualify as a dip, the pasty food in question must be able to be scooped by the eater's platform food of choice and remain on said platform long enough for the eater to walk across 8 ft of deep pile white carpeting. If the platform breaks, that's operator error. You made a bad choice. But if the dip fails, falls to the floor. To me, it's lost its dip status. This is why salsa, which is Spanish for sauce, of course, can never really be a dip unless it's mixed with, say, sour cream or mayo, in which case it becomes a salsa dip. Honestly though, just about any sauce, dressing, uh, dipping sauce can become a proper dip if its viscosity is changed around. I mean, you could mix um this stuff, you know, into I like pureed chickpeas. Uh just the seasoning and guess what? Boom. A dip. Now, today we're going to produce two dips, both alike in dignity, albeit at opposite ends of the dip continuum, so to speak.

[00:02:09]They are very different, separated by decades, and yet at their heart, they are kin.

[00:02:22]In 1950s America, manufactured and packaged foods were all the rage. Many of them left over from technologies developed during World War II and the Korean conflict. The recipes created to utilize said products resulted in a refocusing of entertainment cuisine on dips and their assorted transports, potato chips, tortilla chips, pita chips at all. Many said dips were what I refer to as SEM dips. That is uh based on sour cream and mayonnaise very often in a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio. And the undisputed king of these was California dip created by some unknown home cook in Southern California, probably around 1953.

[00:03:08]California dip was literally nothing more than an envelope of Liptin, dehydrated onion soup mix stirred into a pint of sour cream. That's it. It caused a sensation and the folks at Lipton back in New Jersey picked it up and ran with it, creating multiple campaigns around the dip, which by the time I was a Tikeke, no suburban party would be complete without. California Dip was literally everywhere. And why not? Look at her face. I'll have what she's having. You know, over time, due to its curiously beefy flavoring and the influence of franophile Julia Child, California dip became colloquially known as French onion dip and is commonly known as such today. I love me some French onion dip, but I wish to suewe beef products while generating more oniony flavor. For me, that means bypassing any manufactured mixes and going to the source, onions, caramelized onions. So, I have all my uh onion cutting stuff here. I've got my favorite chef's knife uh scraper.

[00:04:18]And yes, this is a little fan, an adorable little USB charge fan. You've seen me use this before. I'm going to set it off to the side to blow the fumes so that I don't cry. Yes, I used to be tough and could take all the onion stuff and now I'm I'm I'm soft and older and I I just don't want to cry anymore. I don't notice I'm cutting um latitudinally uh that is um crosswise from the uh the stem end down to the uh the root end. Uh if we were like Frenching it or something, we would go uh in the other direction. But I want all of these rings to just fall apart. And they don't have to be that thin.

[00:04:56]I've got my onions going into a fairly wide uh heavy uh vessel. Um I am using a enameled uh cast iron piece here uh for a few reasons. One, I want there to be a lot of contact uh between the onions and the bottom of the vessel. I'm using enameled because I need this to be either white or or bright shiny metal uh because I need to see the browning, right? And if I do this in just a cast iron skillet, I'm not going to really be able to see the browning on the bottom, which is absolutely uh key uh to pulling this off. So, those are in. Now, I also want to uh take a moment to um start breaking down kind of the rigid cell structure of the onion. So, I'm going to add a tablespoon each of dark brown sugar and kosher salt. And I'm using Diamond Crystal kosher salt. And I'm saying that not because I want them to give me money or because it measures very differently from uh say Morton's kosher salt, which I don't like. There.

[00:05:54]That's going to uh to start pulling moisture out and kind of collapsing the structure of the onions. Let this sit for 10 minutes.

[00:06:04]All right, 10 minutes has uh gone by and you can already see uh that the um the onions have have lost a little bit of their their structure. Not a lot, but they're they're starting to. So, um, we begin the cooking process. Uh, but I'm going to add, um, at this point some fat and also some water. Uh, so I've got, uh, 2 oz, 4 tablespoons of, uh, butter.

[00:06:25]Just cold, doesn't matter. And 1/4 cup, 2 oz of H2O.

[00:06:31]Uh, the thing here is that yes, water doesn't brown. I get that. But what we want to do is we really do want to break down, cook down those onions without necessarily letting them brown yet. Um, and water steam is going to help to really really uh collapse this structure. And the sooner we get all the onions down into the bottom of the pan, the sooner we can get to the uh caramelizing process. So, I always start with water. All right, lit up. And I'm going to start this at uh medium um whatever medium is on your cook top cuz remember until the uh uh the the water cooks out, we we've got some protection here uh against anything burning. So, I'm going to let this go again for another 10 minutes.

[00:07:15]All right, 10 minutes has gone by. Ah, the lid now comes off. We can see that the uh the steam has done its job kind of really really starting to break down these onions. Um, now we want to start slowly cooking moisture out. So, no more lid. So, give everything a good thorough stir, leaving that heat exactly where it is. We'll walk away for 10 minutes, but don't walk far. I mean, stay in the vicinity.

[00:07:40]Ah, another 10 minutes have gone by.

[00:07:42]Time to stir. Now, you see, we've got some color. Got this little little pocket of uh browning happening right here. That's not necessarily at all a bad thing, but I want to control that.

[00:07:52]So, usually when I see the first real dark brown, I turn the heat down to medium low. We'll cook another 10 minutes. I'm watching you. All right, another 10 minutes has gone by. We're at the 30 minute mark now. And oh, you guys. Um, okay. Okay, we've got a fair amount of of of browning here, but this time we're ready for it because what I'm going to do is I'm going to delaze the pan uh with just like 2 oz of water here. Now, amounts are going to vary depending on what you see. Uh but you're going to need a little extra moisture if you want to get all of the fond, which is the brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan, back up into the onions where you want it because that is very flavorful stuff. So, pretty much from here on out, whenever you're doing stirring, you're going to be doing some scraping. Again, this is one of the reasons that we want to have a uh a bottom that's very easily uh you know, contrasted to the darkness of the fawn there. Okay. And now we'll go for another 30 minutes. Um, we could, you know, if life weren't too darn short, really dig in now to the deep and meaningful scientific delineations between browning onions and caramelizing onions. The first depends mostly on mayard browning reactions and occurs when sugars and amino acids act together in the presence of heat. The second depends on more complex chemistry involving the thermal decomposition and oxidation of the sugars themselves. The first can be achieved quickly. The second not so fast. Time, fairly low heat. And a little bit of chemistry will get us to what most of us think of when we think of caramelized onions, which is a dark kind of mahogany looking jammy product um with caramel flavors, onion flavors, as well as a considerable savory and kind of meaty overtone. uh combination of my yard reactions and the oxidation plus some sulfur stuff that's going on in there, but we don't have time for that.

[00:09:52]I'll be back.

[00:09:54]All right, we're now 40 minutes into the uh the cook. We've got a lot of great flavor development. You can tell by the aroma. Uh there's really really good color. Still a fair amount of uh liquid um in here. So, uh this is typically when I cheat. Um, I am uh bringing uh 1/4 teaspoon of uh baking soda to the party. And now I'm going to make a slurry with 1 oz. It's 2 tbspoons of H2O. Why would I do this? Well, as everyone knows, uh baking soda is uh very basic. That means it's uh very alkaline. And what adding this uh to I'm adding it to my clothing. um adding this uh to our mixture and really stirring it in is going to slightly elevate the pH of the entire um onion mixture basically at this point. And what that is going to do is it is essentially well, you know what, it's going to turn the my yard reactions to 11. Enough said. I don't like doing this at the beginning of the cooking process because it can really mess with the flavor. But we've already really established good flavors here. Um and and now's the time. U do you have to do this? Absolutely not. But if you really want that dark mahogany color, this is when you get it. Another 10 minutes and then we'll add a secret ingredient. Another one, but not cheating. Well, a little bit.

[00:11:16]We are now 50 minutes into the uh process. Still stirring and cooking down. You can see things got a lot darker in here. Starting to u to lose a good bit of moisture. And there still looks some deglazing that could be done here. I really do want all that frrawn in the onion. So, I am going to give a final addition of liquid, but not just any liquid. I'm adding bourbon because um it tastes great, but it's going to basically go away. I'm not about to tell you that all the alcohol is going to cook out because that's a lie. It never actually it never actually does. Um but most of it, a good bit of it will. And it is definitely going to give us a deepening of flavor. You could go as little as an ounce.

[00:12:01]We'll go with 2 oz. 1/4 cup bourbon. Perfectly fine by me. That's going to give us enough liquid for a final bit of deglazing. And trust me, it's going to well add a little bit of color, but above all, depth of flavor. 10 final minutes. That's going to get us to 1 hour. And you know what? That's how long it freaking takes. All right, we're at an hour. And I could stop here, but I'm not going to. I'm going to give I'm going to drop the heat and I'm going to just cook out a little bit more of this uh liquid. So, I'm going to give it another five total. Completely optional. If you pull out at this point, nobody would blame you. It would be the safe thing to do. I'm Yeah, five.

[00:12:44]All right. I'm willing to call it uh quits at this point. That is uh plenty of deep, dark, and brown jammy goodness and not a lot of liquid left. Did I say that the bourbon was going to be the last flavoring that I added? I lied.

[00:12:59]Black pepper. Just a few grinds. No one will know it's there. Unless they're allergic to black pepper.

[00:13:09]You can tell them it's there. It's fine.

[00:13:10]All right. Now, kill the heat and remove from the heat. Yes. Thank you. Let these cool to room temp.

[00:13:21]All right. Ideally, we only need half a cup of our onions here, but I find this stuff kind of hard to measure. So, I'm going to weigh it into my mixing bowl.

[00:13:29]145 gram. Uh you don't have to, but uh that's what scales are for. And then uh we kind of get to the engine room, which of course the mayo and the sour cream.

[00:13:39]And look at these spiffy containers.

[00:13:41]Alton Brown brand. They're not available. They're very, very old. I don't look like that anymore. All right.

[00:13:46]I'm going to go with the uh the mayo first. Uh this is 3/4 of a cup of mayonnaise. I very fairly often work uh with a 2:1 ratio to the sour cream. So, this is a cup and a half. I want to really push that tang forward. Uh but the uh the mayo is going to provide some extra fat that's going to kind of help to stretch the flavors. Sorry, got it stuck. Um also adding just one last little burst of flavor. Just a tiny 1/4 teaspoon each of white pepper and garlic powder.

[00:14:19]and stirring that in. Now, those are just going to add a little bit more depth of flavor. There we go.

[00:14:28]Are we going to eat this now? Of course.

[00:14:30]No, we're not.

[00:14:34]Now, you might think that you're just going to dip into your dip, but you are not. No, you are not because this really does need uh to sit in the refrigerator for a minimum of 1 hour. Did I say 4 hours? I meant 12 hours. Overnight would be a lot better. Firmly covered with plastic wrap, of course, because uh fats uh tend to absorb flavors in the um in the refrigerator. Trust me, your patience will be rewarded here as we really want uh the uh the flavor of the onions to kind of permeate the entire uh uh batch. Uh speaking of the uh the onions, uh here is the remainder. Uh we are not done with these yet.

[00:15:16]Stay. Good dip.

[00:15:23]Now, if French onion dip is the alpha of sour cream and mayo dips, then hot spinach artichoke dip is absolutely the omega. It's also several decades younger. Born around 1987 or 88 when a patron dining at the Houston's restaurant in Chicago, Illinois, ordered one of the menus popular vegetable side dishes and requested tortilla chips to dip into it. genius. Soon after, Houston's uh christened their newest appetizer, spinach and artichoke dip, aka Chicago style spinach and artichoke dip, aka C-SPAN for short. Now, I myself uh moved to the uh Windy City in 1988 and dined frequently at Houston's, which I mistook for a local joint. Here's a photo of a matchbook I still have in my collection. I am here to tell you that uh C-Spin was and is the bomb. Although my own iteration relies on a slightly less gooey cheese combination. Um, in any case, I always have C-Spin fixins on hand because company could just happen when you least expect it.

[00:16:29]So, why is spinach artich choke tip uh or hot spinach and artichoke dip my go-to? Well, because I always have in my freezer uh besides things like uh puff pastry and edetami frozen articho carts and chopped spinach always.

[00:16:49]And from up here in the fridge, we're going to need some wine. Um Savano Blanca or pog grigio would be fine. Uh we also require uh mayonnaise, um some sour cream, and a trio of cheeses. Uh, we need some uh cream cheese. Uh, we need 80 g of feta, crumbled, of course, and about half as much Parmesan by weight, and a uh a lemon. We'll also need a couple of cloves of garlic, red pepper flake, uh some olive oil, and salt. But if those were in here, that would that would just be real weird.

[00:17:24]Now, I typically speed thaw my block of spinach. Just put a colander inside a big bowl. Um, drop in the, you know, the block of Popeye food there, little frostbite on it, and then, uh, pour just really hot water over it and let it soak in for about 10 minutes or till it thaws through. Um, and, um, that's, you know, that's what that usually kind of looks like. Now, of course, we got to kind of squeeze it out. So, I reverse um, squeeze the bowl down into the colander, but I want to get more moisture um, out of it uh, from this process. Oh, and I also want to get out some frustrations.

[00:18:00]Now, when it looks like this, it's still not dry enough. So, um I typically put that onto a uh a clean uh kitchen towel, tea towel, uh style, and then just ring the life out of that sucker. I mean, again, I mean, we could cook this water out, but it would take a while. Um, and this is a lot more fun because, you know, it's you could just strangle that thing. Just really feels good just to that. Maybe it feels too good. I don't know. I'm doing it anyway. All right.

[00:18:27]This part's maybe taking longer than it should, but you really do want to get it as dry as possible. I just I think we're I Okay. Okay. Really? I I think I think Okay. When you're finished uh with that should look like this. That's nice and dry. Let's go with that. And then, of course, the artichokes. Now, these artichokes have been in the freezer for clearly um since the first ice age. That's um that's we're not going to be able to use those. We'll just So, um, here's the replacement. Now, you can thaw them, uh, the same way as the spinach, although it would take a little bit longer because of the density. But since I'm going to chop these, I usually just chop them frozen. Okay, we'll skip the water. Just chop them up. Uh, because to tell you the truth, once they thaw, they're kind of squirmy little devils and hard to uh, cut up. So, I'm just going to grab a a heavy cleaver and uh, smack these around a little bit uh, while they're in a frozen state. Just make sure they don't like fly across the room. That sometimes happens.

[00:19:25]You don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be even. Matter of fact, I prefer them to be uneven. So, you got some bigger chunks and some smaller chunks. Um there's still plenty of moisture um in them as they uh thaw during this process. Um we're not going to bring them out again. I I've had enough violence. Uh says the guy with the cleaver. So, I'm just going to uh lay some paper towel over that and uh kind of push it down. And we'll let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes just again to get as much moisture out as possible.

[00:19:52]All right, let's let's move on. Okay.

[00:19:54]All right. Got it.

[00:19:57]Now, a lot of moisture is clearly uh come out. Of course, now this paper towel can be saved for No, I'm joking. I can't. And we go. All right. Next, place a 10in cast iron skillet or other heavy cooking vessel over medium heat. Add two tablespoons of the olive oil that we were talking about and pile in the artichokes. You don't have to wait for the pan to get hot. There's plenty of time for that. And we'd like to drive away some more moisture. Half a teaspoon of the kosher salt goes in. Now, um, just stir and cook and stir and cook.

[00:20:27]Trying to kind of press uh the the artichokes down against the bottom of the pan to accelerate browning. Makes a bit of a mess. Now, when the artichokes um have a little bit of color, probably about 3 minutes, maybe four. That looks good. Can go ahead and add uh the next ingredients being, of course, the spinach. Uh there we go. Nice and dry cuz we, you know, choked it to death.

[00:20:51]And we're gonna grate in one clove of garlic. There'll be two cloves all day.

[00:20:55]Uh one here and one in the cream cheese mixture. Just goes right in. It wants some uh some cooked flavors and some raw flavors for the garlic. Just Yeah, I dropped it. You got to be careful with these things. They're slippery. Okay.

[00:21:08]Okay. It's like I've used one of these before, you know. All right. Okay.

[00:21:13]Sometimes you just got to wipe off the bottom, get everything off into the cooking vegetables. All right. uh red pepper flake. Uh that's half a teaspoon.

[00:21:23]Now is a good time to add that. And um I'm going to add a little bit more salt.

[00:21:27]Another half teaspoon here as well. All right, we turn our mind now to the engine room. Uh so to speak, 8 oz, that's one block of uh cream cheese and 1/4 cup each. Remember, not available in stores, of mayonnaise and sour cream.

[00:21:44]And a teaspoon and a half of lemon juice. We need to brighten up the acidity here. and um half of each of the cheeses, the parmesan and the feta. Just half. You don't have to measure it. All right, just cream on a medium speed. I like a hand mixer for this. You could use a stand mixer until smooth and thoroughly combined. But obviously, it's, you know, if it's smooth, it's it's thoroughly combined. Side note, uh cream cheese was invented in uh 1872 when a New York State dairyman named of uh William Lawrence accidentally added too much cream to a batch of nutell, a spreadable French cheese. The resulting product was named Philadelphia because back then that name was synonymous with fancy. Uh cream cheese is often found in hot dips as it helps provide structure uh when the sour cream and mayonnaise can't face the heat alone. here. Feel like I'm forgetting. Oh yeah, another clove of garlic. One in the hot stuff and one directly in here. Just grated in. Should have done that sooner.

[00:22:44]I know it seems odd to split the garlic between two places here, but I really do like both the cooked flavor, you know, over um you know, with the clove and the vegetation and the brighter, snappier flavor of the raw going in here. Even though it's all going to get cooked together, it's how I do it. If you want to put all the garlic in one or the other, go ahead. This is just how I like it.

[00:23:14]All right. Uh, by now the artichokes have taken some nice color. I'm going to delaze the pan with 1/4 cup. That's a couple of ounces of white wine. You know, this isn't so much delazing uh because I'm not trying to dissolve anything off the pan. Just trying to bring some acidity and fruiness to the party. Give that a few shakes. Let the moist of the moisture cook away because I don't want it to be wet. Turn off the heat. And we go um to the creamy stuff.

[00:23:39]Some people prefer to let the artichoke mix cool down before adding it to the bowl. I have found that it just it just doesn't matter. There's no reason to do that. Um it's it's not like, you know, the the cream cheese isn't going to explode or or break or run screaming from the building. So, just go ahead and get it in there carefully, of course.

[00:24:00]Now, I'm moving it to the uh to its baking vessel that I'm also going to serve in. It's a snappy little uh Danish vintage number. It's from the '60s.

[00:24:17]It's oven proof, oven safe, of course.

[00:24:19]Um, and I like to leave a little room up the side. I don't want the mixture to come up all the way to the top of the pan or it gets messy when you serve.

[00:24:26]That looks good. Now, uh, the rest of the cheese, parmesan first. Just sprinkle it on. There you go. Sometimes it, you know, gets stuck in the bowl there. Now I got it on my fingers.

[00:24:38]Probably shouldn't have done that. There we go. And of course, the feta. The feta should always be last on top because that's going to brown a little bit and it's the first thing everybody's going to see. You know, don't go overboard on the feta. It's very tempting to add more. Uh, but that's that's plenty.

[00:24:54]That's all you want. Need to clean up my act here. All right. And into the broiler or under the broiler and cook until it's h kind of golden brown. Uh, depending on your broiler, it could be 3 to 5 minutes. This is four.

[00:25:09]And yeah, that looks good. Otherwise, it'll get crunchy around the edges, and I don't want that. Voila.

[00:25:18]Well, we have all our delightful dips.

[00:25:20]Uh uh the uh uh uh spinach artich choke dip is out and cooled down enough to not even need a trivet anymore, but still warm, which is how it should be served.

[00:25:30]Um we've got a wide array of potential transportation platforms. Uh the major ones, potato chips, and I do believe in ruffles uh when it comes to dips because this physical shape actually adds physical support. Uh we've got pita chips. Excellent with the uh the feta of course based um artichoke dip and credite which is just sad. I mean I'll be really honest. I if I have a party and I serve a crudeite that's for stock. I mean cut up the you know the the cucumbers and maybe eat those but everything else just go in a stockp just sad. makes me cry. So, oh, there is one more thing that we could do here.

[00:26:15]Our onion dip, of course, has been sitting and thinking about what it's done in the refrigerator um for quite a few hours. Um and that that one half2 cup of uh caramelized onions that we mixed in have really kind of steeped throughout, infecting infusing every uh more than infecting every molecule of the dip with goodness. But I say at this point, why not add one more half cup?

[00:26:38]I've already measured it. It's 145 gram.

[00:26:41]Um, so that we have now chunks, flavorful chunks of the onion inside the dip, which I think will make this um, absolutely the onion dip to end all onion dip. That leaves us, of course, with um, one last half cup of the caramelized onions, and that's okay. They will freeze wonderfully, and you can use those in soup, French onion soup perhaps, or just save it for the next dip. Now, I I know I shouldn't lick this in front of company.

[00:27:14]Delicious. But is it dip?

[00:27:19]There's only one way to find out, isn't there?

[00:27:22]We have uh spread 8 ft of white carpet right over here.

[00:27:29]Time to take a walk.

[00:27:41]Well, I think that answers that question. This here is a dip. Let's double check that deliciousness, shall we?

[00:28:00]Spectacular. But to be honest, I think next time I'm going to add a few drops of Wisher sauce just to get uh even a little bit more more umami. Excuse me. But between samplings, one should cleanse one's mouth with alcohol.

[00:28:18]Except for children. Children shouldn't do that.

[00:28:23]But doing this is what makes children.

[00:28:26]That was wrong to say. Now we have to check our second dip, our casserole dip, our hot spinach and artich choke dip.

[00:28:34]Now I like pita chips for this, but there is a danger when toasting your own pita chips. If you overtoast, um you could make them too brittle so that they cannot stand up to the scooping process.

[00:28:46]Let's see how I did. By the way, never do first dip right in the middle. That's just rude, tasteless, crass.

[00:28:53]Um, I broke a chip. That's an operator error. All right, that's a that's a mighty dangerous load I've got there. All right, let's find out. Is it really a dip?

[00:29:25]Heck yeah. It's a dip. And is it delicious?

[00:29:44]I wouldn't do anything to that at all, but eat more of it.

[00:29:52]I don't want to talk to you with my mouth full.

[00:29:59]Well, that wraps it up for this week's show. Um, please subscribe, won't you?

[00:30:05]Because if you haven't, you should because it'll make me feel bad if you don't. And you don't want that to.

[00:30:11]Should I try to? I'm going to go for it.

[00:30:13]See you next time.