Best Vegan Spinach Dip Recipe

To help you get the picture, let me start by sharing my mental dialog as I devour a normal batch of spinach dip at a party: Bite 1: “OMG!!! This is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!” Bites 2-5: “Ohhh… I reaalllly shouldn’t… but I can’t help myself” Bites 6-10: “Now I’m thirsty, let me wash it down with a giant red Solo cup of soda.” Bites 11-∞:“It’s gone and I ate most of it… What have I done… How could I have been so weeeak…” Perhaps you can relate? Well, here’s the internal dialog I had with myself as I scarfed down this vegan spinach dip: Bite 1: “hmm… not quite the same….” Bite 2-5: " But… this is pretty damn good!" Bites 6-10: “Wow! I can’t {MUNCH}… stop…{DIP}…eating… {CHOMP}… it” Bites 11-∞: " It’s gone… but I just ate 189% of my daily Vitamin A, 94% of my Iron, 82% of my Calcium, 72% of my magnesium, 57% of my protein, 56% of my vitamin C, 50% of my fiber for the day…" And while I can’t promise you won’t feel any guilt at all (especially if you hijack that part of the buffet and slap away hungry hands trying to get a taste), but I can tell you that you won’t have to go to confession at your cardiologist’s office. So what makes it so good? Well, first I use a combination of soft tofu with raw cashew nuts. The soft tofu brings a satiny smooth texture and creaminess like mayonnaise. The cashews mellow out the “soy” taste of the tofu while adding richness and just a hint of sweetness. To get the cheese flavor, I add nutritional yeast. It may sound like a weird addition if you’ve never had it, but one taste and I promise even hardened carnivores will want some to sprinkle on their next steak. It’s made by culturing a strain of yeast, which is harvested and sterilized before it’s dried and packaged. The resulting yellow flakes have a cheesy, nutty flavor, that’s bursting with umami producing amino acids. Because real cheese undergoes lacto-fermentation it’s always a little acidic. This is what gives cheddar it’s “sharp” taste. To mimic this, I add a little apple cider vinegar. It not only makes it taste more like cheese, the hint of acidity helps lighten up the creaminess of the spinach dip ever so slightly. Together with fresh spinach, crispy water chestnuts and a little smoked paprika and you have yourself a luxuriously creamy, spinach dip with all the right textures and flavors, keeping you reaching back for more…. until it’s gone.