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The season of the slow cooker has arrived, and this slow cooker Balsamic Honey Pork Loin is a must-make recipe! Eat it sliced with cooking liquid spooned over the top or reduce the liquid to make a scrumptious pan sauce. It’s a bit of a flavor twist, but you will love it and keep coming back for more! Continue reading “Slow Cooker Pork Loin with Balsamic Honey Glaze” » LEGGI TUTTO
It’s not a party without 7 Layer Dip! We make it with hot refried beans and topped with cheddar cheese, chilies, tomatoes, avocados, sour cream, and sliced black olives. It’s an essential Game Day appetizer.
Photography Credit: Elise Bauer
Refried beans should be served warm.
There, I’ve said it. I don’t usually put my foot down about food preferences, but cold refried beans are about as appealing as a cold hamburger. This is why I make 7-layer dip starting with a layer of hot refried beans.
How to Make 7-Layer Dip
Shredded cheese is added directly to the top of the warm beans so it melts from the heat of the beans. Then the layers of tomato, avocado, olives, and chilies, onions (all mostly room temp) are added.
The only cold part of the dip is the topping of sour cream (or crema Mexicana). Served this way and the taste delightfully mimics tostadas or homemade nachos, but in an easy-to-serve dip form.
Ways to Adapt this Recipe
By the way, depending on what you have on hand, your 7-layer dip may end up with eight or nine layers, or six. The basics are refried beans, grated cheese, avocados (or guacamole), chilies (or salsa), sour cream, and olives. Improvise with more or fewer toppings to your own taste.
You can also add a layer of seasoned ground beef or shredded chicken. Warm them up and add them along with the refried beans and cheese.
What You Can Do Ahead of Time
While the dip itself should be assembled and served while the beans are hot, there are some components you can do ahead to make the final steps easier on yourself.
If you’re making your refried beans from scratch, you can make those a day or two ahead and then just re-warm them as directed in the recipe below when you’re ready to assemble the dip.
Shred the cheese up to a day ahead, and keep it refrigerated in an air-tight container until needed
Chop the chiles or or pickled jalapeños up to a day ahead, and keep refrigerated in an airtight container until needed
WAIT to prep the avocado and tomato: The avocado will turn brown if prepped in advance and the tomatoes will turn mushy and lose flavor if refrigerated.
How to Serve 7-Layer Dip
Serve your 7-layer dip with plenty of corn tortilla chips for dipping! This is a fairly thick and heavy dip, so make sure to buy thick, sturdy chips, not the super-thin kind.
Blue corn tortilla chips are a fun alternative to regular white or yellow corn chips.
More Favorite Party Dips
Updated January 9, 2021 : We spiffed up this post to make it sparkle. No changes to the recipe itself.
7 Layer Bean Dip Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups refried beans, from one 15-ounce can or homemade
1 teaspoon (or more) of bacon fat (or 1 strip of bacon, cooked and minced), optional
1 teaspoon chipotle powder, Tabasco chipotle sauce, or adobo sauce, more to taste (or plain chili powder to taste)
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt
1 cup shredded cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 cup chopped green Anaheim chiles (canned) OR 1 tablespoon chopped pickled jalapeños (more to taste)
1 avocado, peeled and chopped
1 hot house tomato, cut in half horizontally, seeds and juice gently squeezed out and discarded, chopped
1/3 cup sour cream, or if you can get it Crema Mexicana (Mexican sour cream)
1 cup sliced ripe black olives, from a 15-ounce can
Corn tortilla chips, to serve
Method
1 Prepare the refried beans: Heat the refried beans in a medium sauté pan or cast iron skillet. Stir in enough water to get a creamy, easily dip-able consistency, about 1/4 of a cup.
The taste of refried beans is greatly enhanced by bacon fat; we’ll add a teaspoon to canned beans or a tablespoon or more to taste if we are making the beans from scratch.
If you don’t have bacon fat, you can cook up a strip of bacon, chop it up fine and add that to the beans.
If you are trying to avoid pork, note that most canned refried beans are made with added lard, so check the ingredients. You can use olive oil instead, to help the consistency of the beans.
Mix in the chipotle chili powder (or Tabasco, or adobo, or regular chili powder) and cumin to taste. Note that the avocados and the sour cream will cool down the spiciness of the beans considerably, so you can afford to be a bit more spicy than you might think.
Stir in salt to taste, depending on how salted your refried beans are to begin with, and depending on how salty the tortilla chips are that you are serving with the dip.
2 Spread on serving dish, top with cheese: Once the beans are hot and bubbly, spread them over the bottom of a warmed serving dish. Immediately add the shredded cheese so that the heat from the beans helps melt the cheese.
(The cheese doesn’t need to be completely melted, but even if it is just a little, it will help the dip stay on the chip.)
3 Layer on toppings: Layer on the chopped green chilies, chopped avocado, chopped tomato. Spoon on the sour cream (or crema Mexicana, crema fresca, or even cream fraiche).
Top with sliced green onions and olives.
Serve immediately with tortilla chips.
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Elise Bauer
Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family’s recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
More from Elise LEGGI TUTTO
This month, welcome Sara Bir. Sara Bir is the author of two cookbooks, Tasting Ohio and the IACP award-winning The Fruit Forager’s Companion. She also moderates and replies to your comments here on Simply Recipes. Follow her @sausagetarian.
Unfailingly, by the time we make it to dinner, it feels like a small victory. Really, it’s just the march of time, but after jobs and workouts and walking the dog and folding the laundry in between checking emails, getting to sit down to dinner feels like a real reward.
I like having dinner to look forward to. Do you find it’s one of the few times you sit down with no agenda? If so, that’s a small victory you can savor every day. Here are five recipes you can look forward to this week, plus the beloved weekend baking! LEGGI TUTTO
This month, welcome Sara Bir. Sara Bir is the author of two cookbooks, Tasting Ohio and the IACP award-winning The Fruit Forager’s Companion. She also moderates and replies to your comments here on Simply Recipes. Follow her @sausagetarian.
As much as I love the holidays, there’s something liberating about how free-form January is. The only seasonal obligations I can think of are simply making it through dreary weather.
On nights when it’s just us, my daughter and I have taken to playing Connect 4 at the dinner table. Violating the sanctity of a family meal this way is something I never would have gone for a year ago, but nowadays it’s how we spice things up after spending yet another day in the house together.
With that in mind, these recipes bring spice, heat, or warmth in one form or another. Whether it’s playing games while distracted by food or turning the thermostat up a few degrees higher than normal, this January, I’m loosening up my wintery demeanor and leaning into the coziness we create. LEGGI TUTTO
This month, welcome Sara Bir. Sara Bir is the author of two cookbooks, Tasting Ohio and the IACP award-winning The Fruit Forager’s Companion. She also moderates and replies to your comments here on Simply Recipes. Follow her @sausagetarian.
When I have an idea of what I’m making for dinner ahead of time, I feel more centered. Usually, I jot ideas down the week before, sometimes taking inventory of foods we’ve had kicking around a while that need a final destination. (Pile of winter squash, I’m looking at you!)
And inevitably, the meal plan changes the week of execution. Our moods change and we switch up the order, or a meal gets bumped because of unforeseen events and I get a late start. But you know what? It’s okay. We cook the food eventually. We sit down to some form of dinner every night. That’s success in my book.
It’s all worth it, because I know we’re covered. We hope our meal plans give you a little peace of mind, too. LEGGI TUTTO
These small bites are just the right size to satisfy sweet cravings, and they're made lighter with fat-free ingredients. A simple kitchen trick transforms crisp pizzelle cookies into cookie cups.Many people use January to rethink their eating habits and reduce indulgences. I personally think that 2021 is not the year for reducing any small pleasures we can come by (so far). Here, dessert is – and will always be – on the menu.However, the holidays brought many rich things to our plates in the form of stately layer cakes, decadent chocolate, and so much candy. A few lighter desserts are in order, I think. These small cheesecake cups are made with creamy fat-free yogurt and cream cheese, so they taste absolutely indulgent but won't weigh you down. Continued, click to read more… LEGGI TUTTO
