Onion-Mushroom Dip

Do you have foods you just can't keep in the house or you'll just gobble them up? For me, that's potato chips and the classic dip made with sour cream and dried French onion soup. I now only buy chips and make dip during one holiday season: the basketball playoffs ... and I make this delicious, healthy, and largely local version dip.

This onion-mushroom chip dip is a bit lighter in taste that the sour-cream version, which helps prevent that greasy feeling of regret. It's also relatively low calorie, low fat, and has no artificial flavorings, preservatives, or mysterious ingredients.

Bonus: make a batch onion-mushroom flavoring once, then just stir in to yogurt for dip all the way through the NCAA Final Four.

Active time: 10 minutes. Total time: 15 minutes. Makes enough for 8 cups of dip, about 32 servings (see notes & tips)

Ingredients

onion-mushroom mixture

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion (1 cup or 160 grams)
2 cloves garlic
8 ounces mushrooms (225 grams)
1/2 teaspoon chipotle or cayenne pepper powder (optional)

dip for each 2 tablespoons of onion-mushroom mixture
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional)
2 tablespoons onion-mushroom mixture

Method

1. Make onion-mushroom mixture. In a medium pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Set up your food processor with the cutting blade. Peel onion, then cut it into halves or quarters so it fits in the processor. Pulse processor until onion is chopped into small pieces but is not mush. Cook onion in oil for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Meanwhile, peel garlic. Turn processor on and drop garlic in while the blade is turning. Turn the machine off. Rinse mushrooms and cut thin slice off bottom of stems. Put mushrooms in processor and pulse a few times until chopped into very small pieces.
3. Add pepper powder to onions and stir. Add mushroom-garlic mixture, stir, and cook until mushroom juice is released and mixture is fragrant, stirring frequently, about 2 minutes.
4. Make dip. While mushrooms cook, put yogurt in bowl. Stir in salt and sugar. Stir in appropriate amount of onion-mushroom mixture (2 tablespoons per cup of yogurt). After sugar has been in yogurt for at least five minutes, taste and adjust seasonings.
5. Serve with chips, raw vegetables, or on top of baked potatoes. Best cold, but will keep at room temperature for about two hours. Refrigerate any extra for up to four days.
6. Freeze rest of onion-mushroom mixture. Put a piece of waxed paper on a cookie sheet or other large flat pan. Drop tablespoons of mixture onto waxed paper. Freeze until hard, then put frozen mixture in a freezer-weight bag or freezer container. Thaw in the refrigerator or zap briefly microwave.

Tips and notes

• Make eight cups of dip at once for a big party or make it up by the cup or even half-cup using frozen onion-mushroom mixture.
• I like this dip without the sugar, too, but a little sugar makes cuts the yogurt tang and makes the dip taste more like the classic.
• Update: I'm adding this recipe to the new site after a great chat with Marty Flanagan on Anytime Health Radio. Marty talked about making a delicious, vegan mayonnaise from cashews to use instead of yogurt for a dip. I'm going to try that with this mushroom-onion mixture. If you try this first, please let me know what you think in the comments.