Baked Spinach Artichoke Dip

Hey everyone, welcome back to my kitchen. I'm Bethany, and today's recipe, I'm gonna show you how to make a creamy, cheesy, baked spinach artichoke dip. This is perfect for holiday gatherings or a game day appetizer, whatever you fancy. So let's get right into it. Okay, so the first thing that I wanna go over is the cheese that I'm using. In case you wanna swap anything out, I'm just kind of sharing why I'm using the certain cheeses and some other swaps that you could make because every cheese in this recipe serves its purpose. So first things first, we're gonna use some sharp cheddar, and this has a nice sharp taste, but also it's a nice cheesy cheese. So it's good for melting, but then we have our Gruyere cheese, and this is really creamy and cheesy and perfect for like mac and cheeses type recipes. So it's gonna be really good in this recipe to swap for this. You could do mozzarella. I just felt like I always use mozzarella, and I really like Gruyere in this recipe. And then we have Parmigiano-Reggiano, surprise. This is really good in this recipe for creating a salty flavor. It doesn't really give a ton of cheesiness. It does a little bit, but mostly this is for flavor. So you can swap this for Parm, Parmesan, not the same thing as Parmigiano-Reggiano, but that's kind of why I'm using these three cheeses. There's a few swaps that you can do. We'll leave them on our website as well that you can change out the cheeses that you wanna use. Now we're going to shred 3 1⁄4 cup of sharp cheddar cheese. And if you want a really cheesy dip, you're gonna use fresh shredded cheese, not the ones that you buy pre-shredded because those have some additives in it that are like anti-caking ingredients, and they're not great. I like to use freshly grated cheese because you get better results with that too and better flavor. Then a heaping 1⁄2 cup of Gruyere cheese. Last but certainly not least, our favorite, Parmigiano-Reggiano. We're gonna do a heaping 1⁄2 cup of this. All right, that looks good. Now we're gonna mix up the cheese. So now we're going to reserve just 1⁄3 cup of the shredded cheese because we want to sprinkle this over top of the dip once it's ready to bake. So for the next ingredients in our dip, we're gonna do one cup of chopped cooked spinach. And I just did frozen spinach, and what I did was squeezed all the liquid out of that so that there's no extra liquid in the dip. Next, we're gonna do our artichokes. So I have one can of artichoke hearts. They're not marinated, they're just plain, and we drained the liquid. And I'm just gonna chop these up just so that we have some nice bite-sized pieces in the dip. All right, and now we'll add those, and it's just a rough chop, nothing fancy. Then to season our dip, we'll do one minced clove of garlic. Then we're gonna do 1⁄4 cup of green onion, and that's just gonna add like a nice mild onion flavor in the dip. It's nothing intense, but it's just perfect. Next, we're gonna do six ounces of cream cheese. I like to have this at room temperature just so that it's not super hard, and we can easily mix it into the dip. Then 1⁄2 cup of mayonnaise, and the mayonnaise is just really nice for the flavor of the dip, but also it helps with the consistency too. Then for flavoring, 1⁄2 teaspoon of salt, and one healthy pinch of red pepper flakes. It's not to make it spicy, just adds a nice little touch of flavor and heat to the dip. All right, now we're gonna mix everything up. And when mixing this, if there's big chunks of cream cheese, you just kinda wanna break those up because I don't really like dipping into this and just getting a whole big chunk of cream cheese. You wanna make sure everything's really evenly incorporated. So now that that is mixed up, what we're gonna do is we're gonna put it in a one-quart baking dish. It's a fairly small size, but everything will fit nicely in here. You can just use any baking dish you like, cast iron skillet too. And we're going to add this in, but I did not grease this dish at all. The cheese and all of that is enough grease, so you don't need to worry about sticking. Now we're going to sprinkle the cheese that we reserved over top. And you can even do a half a cup. I even like more cheese on top for a nice cheesy top. That was one third cup, but you could even do a half a cup of the cheese. All right, now we're gonna bake this in the oven at 400 degrees uncovered for 25 minutes. It should be bubbling and browned on top. That's when you know it's done. All right, so the dip is out of the oven. We took some shots of it, so it's not really perfect anymore, but Drew's here to taste. We have different options for dipping, so you can either do tortilla chips, or we like pita chips. That's really a nice little dipping, or you can do crostini or a nice crusty bread. I'm definitely going with the pita chip. Yeah. This is my favorite. Yeah. You like it? I love that. Good. You get so much cheese, which I love. And the artichoke and the spinach also gets like a nice tanginess. You get that from the cream cheese, the mayonnaise. And then I like getting those bites of the green onion. I think that really adds a nice touch to it. It was incredible. And that's everything for today. And as we film this video, we are on the cusp of 20,000 subscribers. And I just wanted to say thank you so much. When we first started this channel, I was truly convinced that no one was gonna be watching these videos. And I am pleasantly surprised to see so many of you enjoying them, commenting each week. I really, really appreciate it. And shout out to two of our viewers, Douglas J Cook, or Cooks, trying to remember it off the top of my head, and Jordie Jones, Chris from the UK. You both have been making every single recipe that I put out here on YouTube, and I genuinely appreciate it, want to acknowledge that. And for those of you who don't comment and watch and make my recipes, I'm not someone that comments on YouTube, so I totally get it. And I appreciate your support so much. So whether you're commenting or you're quietly making these recipes or enjoying our videos, I appreciate it so much. So as always, we'll catch you in the next recipe.