Clean Eating Spinach Dip Recipe

The Spinach

Frozen spinach still retains most of the nutrients of fresh spinach, so don't worry about using it in this recipe. In fact, frozen spinach often has more vitamin C than its fresh counterpart. Thaw the spinach in a small colander so the water can drain out. Then press it to get the remaining moisture out. I like to use a bowl that fits inside of my colander to push on the spinach. 

The Fresh Veggies

Wash and cut the bell pepper and green onions. For this tutorial, I used yellow and orange peppers. But you can use any color you have on hand. Bell peppers are full of nutrition! 

Put the vegetables into a food processor. I use the Ninja Chopper. Pulse it until it becomes a fine mince. See the photo for what it looks like.

Put the pureed vegetables into a mixing bowl and add the fresh minced garlic.

Note About Flavors

If you are used to a clean eating lifestyle, the sharp flavors of raw onion, garlic, and pepper are probably delightful to you. But if you are new to eating fresh vegetables, you may find the onion and pepper flavor too powerful. Certainly the traditional spinach dip recipe has a more mellow onion flavor because it uses onion powder instead of fresh onions.

The solution is to simply saute the vegetables (before you puree them) in a small amount of olive oil. Cooking them will mellow the flavors.

The Dairy

For my recipe, I use yogurt instead of the mayonnaise normally called for. The texture is closer to mayonnaise than sour cream, but you could simply double the amount of sour cream. You can also use homemade mayo. At any rate, you need a full cup of dairy -- sour cream, yogurt, mayonnaise, or a mixture.

Mix

Mix the vegetables, dairy products, and spices together in a mixing bowl. This recipe will probably need more salt that is called for, so do several taste tests to get it right. The soup mix in the traditional recipe is mostly salt, so it's not surprising that you want to add a lot of salt to this healthy makeover. 

Other spices you can add in are

• dill
• thyme
• basil
• cayenne pepper.

Add no more than a teaspoon at a time, stir, and taste. Remember that the flavor will improve as the dip sits, so try to plan to make this spinach dip at least 4 hours and up to 24 hours before you want to eat it. Stir it again and do more taste testing right before eating it. You may find it needs even more salt or some other favorite spice.