4 Ways to Make the Best Spinach and Artichoke Sauce
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a bad spinach and artichoke sauce – it’s hard to make something unappetizing with that much milk and salt. But what’s good can always be great, and I took it upon myself to put together four improvements that can be applied to any Spinach Artichoke Sauce recipe.
Get some pepper Jack over there
I don’t reach for cheese with peppers that often, unless I’m making a spinach and artichoke dip. As I mentioned earlier , it’s “the perfect combination of creamy and cheesy, offering good cheesy cravings and a subtle, sweet tangyness” that keeps your taste buds going. It melts like shredded mozzarella, which means you can substitute other cheeses for it with no problem; or you can just add an extra handful of it along with all those other cheeses. Pepper jack also bubbles and browns well, so be sure to add it on top of the sauce before frying it.
Add a pinch of monosodium glutamate or Worcestershire sauce.
The best dipping sauces are the most savory, and MSG and Worcestershire sauce are full of umami. If you’re looking for a (vegan) hit of pure savory flavor, add a few pinches of MSG. If you want to make the dish a little more unusual, you can add umami and season with a few drops of Worcestershire sauce. Just make sure you have real products with fermented anchovies and tamarind – Worcestershire sauce is not the same without them.
Mash some roasted garlic
Many recipes for this sauce call for garlic, usually minced or powdered. But crush a few cloves – or a whole head! – fried garlic is a good move. Roasted garlic is sweet and mild, with a deeper, more developed flavor than its raw or powdered counterparts. You can cook garlic either in the oven or in the deep fryer . Roast until it’s a deep, sticky amber, then beat it into the sauce base with wild energy.
Replace spinach with Brussels sprouts.
Brussels sprouts are not only in season, but also have the ability to brown, which spinach does not have. As I mentioned earlier , this is also incredibly easy to do:
Instead of defrosting spinach and mixing it with cream cheese, which comes out very soft, chop the sprouts, fry them in some fat over high heat until they are crispy around the edges, and then mix them with cream cheese. Your sauce has better flavor and more textural contrast. (Besides, Brussels sprouts just have a more interesting and stronger flavor. Sorry, but it’s true!)
Just swap the same amount of sprouts by volume and cook them as above, then sit back and reap the benefits of the best sauce.