Dips

This post is part of our Easy, Waste-Busting Food and Drink Recipes resource.

This page includes recipes for:

• Dips
  • Sunflower Seed and Smoked Paprika Dip (GF, V+, OF, NF, RAW)
  • Garden Greens Pesto (GF, V+, OF)
  • Miriama Kamo-approved Beetroot ‘Hummus’ (GF, V+, OF, NF, **contains sesame seeds**)
  • Muhammara (GF, V+, RAW, OF)
  • Real Hummus (GF, V+, OF, NF)

Scroll down to find the recipe you’re interested in.

Sunflower Seed and Smoked Paprika Dip (Gluten-free, Vegan, Oil-Free, RAW, Nut-free)

Ingredients

• 1 cup of sunflower seeds
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
• Decent splash of either tamari or balsamic vinegar (ideally, both)
• 1 lemon (maybe 2 if you feel it needs it)
• Salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)
• Optional: 1 fresh tomato (or a handful of dry sundried tomatoes from a bulk bin). Personally, we only use tomatoes when they are in season. If using fresh tomato, you probably don’t need as much lemon, but just see how you go, altering things to your taste).
• Optional: a few leaves of fresh basil (again, if available and in season).

Instructions

1. Soak the cup of sunflower seeds in a bowl of water for a few hours (ideally, if you remember, soak them overnight). If using dry, sundried tomatoes rather than a fresh tomato, soak sundried tomatoes along with the sunflower seeds and you’ll probably want to soak in boiling water rather than cold if you’ve got sundried tomatoes in there, to really soften them up).
2. Drain the soaked sunflower seeds in a sieve. If you soaked the sundried tomatoes with the seeds, then conserve the water as a splash or two of this will be a tasty addition to the dip.
3. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. You can also add a splash or two of the water you conserved at step 2, if you used sundried tomatoes.

Garden Green/Weed Pesto (Gluten-Free, Vegan, Oil-Free)

I always make this recipe with massive amounts of guess-timation, so you may have to make it a few times to get it to the balance you like. Basically, just throw things in and hope for the best!

Ingredients

• A colander full of raw edible greens (try and mix it up so that it’s not just one sort of green) – onion weed, nasturtium leaves, chickweed, rocket, parsley, silverbeet, spinach, sorrel etc.
• A handful and a half of walnuts
• Half a handful of pumpkin seeds
• 2 big cloves of garlic
• A good dash of nutritional yeast/savoury yeast (to taste) – probably about 2-3 tablespoons
• Lemon juice (to taste)
• Salt (to taste)

Instructions

1. Roast the walnuts and pumpkin seeds in the oven at 180 degrees, or on the stove top in a dry frying pan (no oil). Just keep an eye on them to make sure they aren’t burning. About 5 minutes is usually enough, just make sure they are lightly browned and fragrant.
2. Tear the greens a bit.
3. Put everything into a food processor (but start off slightly conservative with the nutritional yeast, salt and lemon juice so that you can adjust it to your taste as you go – you can put more in, but you can’t take it out!!)
4. Blend until the mixture reaches a consistency you like – we like it a bit chunky!
5. You’re done! Serve on pasta or other cooked grains, or as a dip with crackers and bread.

Miriama Kamo-approved Beetroot ‘Hummus’ (Gluten-Free, Vegan, Oil-Free, Nut-free **contains sesame seeds**)

Miriama Kamo identifies her favourite dip by The Rubbish Trip

Featured on the Sunday TVNZ programme, this hummus isn’t a hummus because ‘hummus’ means ‘chickpeas’ in Arabic and this dip actually replaces the chickpeas with beetroot. So, we should probably call it Beetroot Dip. However, for some reason, Beetroot Hummus has stuck.

We decided to substitute chickpeas for beetroot partly because we love the taste of beetroot and because it makes everything look amazing, but mostly because we try to favour local ingredients over imported. Beetroot grow easily and prolifically in New Zealand, whereas chickpeas are mostly imported from the Northern Hemisphere.

Please note that we make this dip to taste, so quantities of everything are pretty random and we change them based on things like our mood or the acidity level of the particular lemons we are using – feel free to jiggle quantities around as you make it to suit your tastes.

Ingredients

• 1 decent-sized fresh beetroot or two middlers
• 2-3 lemons or limes, including zest (sometimes you can get away with just 1 lemon, it really depends on size and acidity)
• 1/2 cup of unhulled brown or black sesame seeds OR 3 tablespoons (or more, to taste) of tahini
• 3 (ish) cloves of garlic
• Salt, to taste

Instructions

1. Wash the beetroot and cut off the stalks and leaves (you can use these in salads or in another recipe in place of spinach and silverbeet). If not organic, peel it. If organic, don’t bother peeling!
2. Cut the beetroot into slices or cubes and then put in a saucepan with enough water to cover the beetroot pieces by about 2 inches. Cover the pan and then bring to boil. Once boiling has started, reduce to low or medium heat (just enough that the pot does not boil over) and leave until the beetroot pieces are soft enough that a fork goes through relatively easily. Usually about 20 minutes, depending on how thick the chunks/slices were.
3. While the beetroot is cooking, do the following:
   • Toast the sesame seeds on the stove top (or in the oven if you have the oven on anyway) until they are fragrant. Put in a spice grinder and grinder to a powder. Skip this step if you are using tahini.
   • Dice up the garlic into nice small bits.
   • Zest the lemons and limes.
4. Once the beetroot is ready, remove all the beetroot pieces and reserve the water for non-toxic watercolour paints, or to use in homemade stock or red velvet cake.
5. Put the beetroot, zest from citrus, sesame seeds or tahini, garlic, salt and juice of ONE lemon into a food processor/nutri-bullet. You can also do this in a bowl with a stick blender but just be careful of stuff spraying everywhere because beetroot stains…
6. Blend and taste, gradually adding more lemon/lime juice until it reaches the acidity you like – we like it quite acidic, but others prefer it less so, which is why we recommend only starting off with juice of one lemon and then adding more if you want. If the mixture is too dry, but it’s already reached the acidity you like, add a bit of that beetroot juice you left in reserve instead of more lemon/lime.
7. Blend it until it’s a nice, smooth consistency.

Optional extra – at that time of year when walnuts are abundant and easy to forage, adding some toasted walnuts into this recipe is also DELISH.

Muhammara (Gluten-Free, Vegan, Oil-Free, Raw)

We have used this recipe by Kimberly Snyder, and think it works a treat, though we skip the olive oil as we don’t think it’s necessary. The only thing this recipe is missing is a 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and a dash of whatever sweet syrup you can find in bulk in your area, such as rice syrup, apple syrup, molasses, honey – this cinnamon/syrup combo will give the dip that characteristic, sweet kick that makes muhammara so snazzy, so give it a go!.

NB: If you have a bit more time and aren’t fussed about keeping the dip raw, then we would recommend popping the capsicum on an oven tray (whole) and putting them in an oven at 200 degrees celsius for 30-35 minutes (turn them once or twice throughout the cooking time). After 30-35 minutes, pull them out, wait for them to cool enough to touch, then peel off the outer layer of skin and cut out the stem and seeds and drain out the juice. Then follow the recipe as set out in the link above.

Real Hummus (Gluten-Free, Vegan, Oil-Free, Nut-free)

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups of dry chickpeas (soak 24 hours in advance)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 5-6 tablespoons of unhulled sesame seeds OR 3 tablespoons of tahini (if you can find the latter in bulk)
• Juice of 3-4 lemons (or to your taste)
• 4-6 cloves of garlic (or to your taste)
• Salt to taste
• Optional: 1 tsp of ground cumin (or to your taste)

Instructions

1. Drain the chickpeas from their soaking water and give them a rinse.
2. Cook them on the stove in a pot of water (chickpeas should be fully submerged by about a centimetre) with the teaspoon of baking soda (you can also add a bit of salt to the water too, for taste, if you like). Bring the pot to the boil and then put it straight down to simmer. Leave for 20 minutes or until the chickpeas are just soft (we like them not to be too mushy).
3. While the chickpeas are cooking, if you’re using sesame seeds rather than tahini, toast them in the oven on a tray at 180 degrees celcius OR over the stove in a dry frying pan. Cook until fragrant and JUST beginning to turn golden (don’t overdo it or they’ll taste burnt). Once ready, take them out and pop them in a spice grinder (or a mortar and pestle) and grind until powdery or even paste-like if you are using a spice grinder.
4. Once chickpeas are ready, drain (but conserve the water in a bowl) and leave them to cool.
5. Once chickpeas are cool, pop them in a food processor or blender, with the remaining ingredients and then blitz it!
6. Add some of the conserved chickpea cooking water (a bit at a time!), while blending, until you achieve your desired consistency. Don’t add too much at once or you will get a soup, which would be sad.