The Reluctant Cook: Easy, Awesome White Bean Dip

Part of an occasional series about cooking for my family, even though I don’t like to cook.

From time to time, I get the urge to clean out the pantry. At the very least, this involves straightening things up the shelves, but oftentimes it includes taking everything off and cleaning the shelves themselves.

Yesterday was one of those gotta-clean-the-pantry days and it was while I was removing everything from the shelves that I discovered that not only did I have several cans of cannellini beans, but also a half pound or so of dry beans.

I suddenly remembered why I had bought all those cans of beans: white bean dip. A few years ago, I got some absolutely divine white bean dip from a local store. I decided to figure out how to make it myself so that I could have it whenever the urge struck — hence all the cans of beans in my pantry.

Since the dry cannellini beans had been in the pantry for nearly a year and really needed to be eaten, I decided that they needed to made into dip posthaste. I poured them into my smallest crockpot, added water, and set them to simmer all day. Many hours later, I was ready to make dip. Here’s the recipe:

Easy, Awesome White Bean Dip

What you need:

• 2 cans of cannellini (white kidney) beans, drained and rinsed (Feel free to start with dry beans.)
• olive oil
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• salt (optional)
• rosemary, fresh or dried (substitute other herbs or spices, such as sage, cayenne, etc.)
• prosciutto, chopped into small pieces (optional)
• Some sort of delivery method for getting the bean dip to your mouth — crackers, chunks of bread, raw vegetables, your fingers.

What you do:

• Heat 2-4 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan on medium-high heat.
• Add garlic and herbs and cook for about a minute, until the garlic starts to brown.
• Remove pan from heat and add beans. Stir for a minute or so, making sure the beans get coated with the oil/herb mixture.
• Pour the whole shebang into a food processor and pulse several times until it’s chunky-smooth.
• If the dip seems a little dry and/or too thick (and it most likely will), add a little olive oil to the food processor, one tablespoon at a time, and pulse again.
• If you want to add little chunks of prosciutto, stir it in once the beans reach the desired consistency. If you don’t add prosciutto, you’ll probably want a little salt to enhance the dip’s flavor.

That’s it. Easy peasy.

I made this for friends a couple of months ago and we inhaled it in approximately 17 seconds.

Part of my lunch today will involve bean dip spread on a piece of leftover ciabatta from our weekend noshing. Yum.

Enjoy.