Spiced Cottage Cheese Chip Dip

Cottage cheese blended with spices makes a simple dip that is great with potato chips or vegetable dippers. But really, you want it with potato chips. The ruffled kind are best.

On this blog I typically share how I feed my family the seasonal produce of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. Occasionally I'll share other, non-produce inspired recipes.

This is one of those times because every summer gathering needs a good potato chip dip.

This is an old family recipe that has been passed onto the 3rd generation. My daughter now makes it, and scribbles the amounts I call out in decimals--".66 mayonnaise", anyone? It seems awfully silly for a family recipe of what amounts to a diet food [used as a way to get more potato chips into my mouth] but no matter.

Growing up my mom didn't buy those tubs of sour cream-based dips for parties. She'd just make up this dip instead. When my brother comes home from overseas, in addition to fried eggs, he wants a bag of chips, a container of cottage cheese, and seasoned salt--the bachelor version. I thought everyone ate cottage cheese as a chip dip, and had no clue cottage cheese was thought of as a diet food until recently.

We are particular about our cottage cheese and prefer a dried style and smaller curd than most nationwide brands. Each time we move I have to find a new cottage cheese source, and here in Ohio it's Michigan brand cottage cheese.  Since I'm still not really sure how to respond when someone yells O-H!, and since my spouse is from Michigan, there is no foolish sports-related reason not to live in Ohio and enjoy Michigan brand cottage cheese. No sponsorship implied--sharing a fine example of 'good' cottage cheese for this dip. Back on the east coast it was Nordica brand. I never found a good brand in Hawaii. I ate sushi and malasadas instead.

For grins and giggles, even though there's not a vegetable in it or a Chip Dip Category on it, check out the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. If you're still got time to kill while avoiding something more pressing, head over to Pinterest and follow my Awesome Vegetable Apps and Snacks. Still want to poke around? Learn how to Use This Blog here.

Amazon affiliate notice--I'm sharing some brand names in this recipe because they are what I've been buying and using to make it for years. To guide you (help you see the ingredients so you can find something in your neck of the spice shop) I'll provide Amazon affiliate links below. If you want to actually measure out these spices and don't have skinny measuring spoons as shown below, here's an Amazon affiliate link to a terrific set (that yes, goes down to ⅛ teaspoon).

Note--the spices listed are really just a basic guideline to this dip--dill mix, Worcestershire, seasoned salt and mustard are a given for us, but whatever we've got on hand that sounds good goes in to the batch. One time the kids emptied a bunch of (pre-selected by me) dribs and drabs of spices into one big jar to make a Chip Dip Blend. It was not bad at all--and a fun way to clean out the spice drawer!

Spiced Cottage Cheese Chip Dip

3 cups cottage cheese
⅔ cup mayonnaise
2½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce (corrected from the initial version--my girl wrote '2st')
1 Tablespoon deli style mustard
1 teaspoon dill spice blend mix (I often use Pampered Chef Dill Mix)
½ teaspoon seasoned salt (I use Lawry's Seasoned Salt )
¼ teaspoon steak seasoning
⅛ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon dried minced onion
½ teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
⅛ teaspoon mustard powder
⅛ teaspoon salt & herb blend (I use Jane's Krazy Mixed Up Salt)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Grab a ruffled potato chip and scoop up a taste. Do you want more mustard? More dill blend? More Worcestershire? I like to let the flavors develop for about 30 minutes at room temp (tasting every 5-10 minutes as I walk by) or 2 hours in the fridge. This keeps a couple of days though we plow through it around here. I suppose you could enjoy it with veggies, too.

Oh, and it's also tasty on a BLT--like I showed on my very first blog post ever.

There's bread in the bread machine, sourdough starter in the bowl, and lots of measuring and tasting going on here.