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Spin Dip Mac and cheese in the Lab

5/25/2018

The recipe lab is a busy place, and it is full of cheese. Mac and cheese, if you will. Chips and dip are my all time favorite bar food, and I like to try and translate them into something I can eat at home without as much guilt. It’s still insanely cheesy and relatively unhealthy, but whatever. It’s a meal, not a dip.

This is just the beginning. There are obvious improvements to make, which you will see later on.

Ingredients

1 package frozen spinach
1 can artichoke hearts
1 block cream cheese
3 tablespoons sour cream
1 box cavatappi pasta (or noodle of choice
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
Olive oil

Instructions

Cook frozen spinach according to package. While this is happening, begin boiling a post of water to cook pasta. This is your prep time! Chop your onion and garlic finely. Get a tall pat of salted boiling water ready.
Heat a deep skilled over medium heat. Add a light coating of olive oil, and then add the onion to the oil when the pan is heated. Cook until slightly translucent. Add garlic and artichoke hearts, quartered. Add your pasta to the water and cook according to instructions.
Let it go for a bit until your kitchen smells like garlic. Add the spinach and cook out any residual water. Be sure to squeeze as much water out as you can before adding to your future sauce.
Add cream cheese. Break into small pieces in the pan with a wooden spoon. It will begin to melt in the pan. Thin it out with a few spoonfuls of sour cream. Allow cheese to melt and combine with sour cream.
When your pasta is done, use a big slotted spoon to transfer into your tall skillet. Combine with the sauce. Any residual water will help thin the sauce, so don’t feel bad if you don’t shake it all out of the spoon. Mix pasta in and serve with some parmesan.

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RECIPE LAB UPDATE!!

5/23/2018

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So it begins.

My first challenge in the recipe lab is going to be cheesy. Mac and cheesy, if you will. Since moving to Delaware, I’ve come to love hot crab dip. The other day, I had an idea to turn it into a mac and cheese. I know it’s been done before, especially now that I’ve started to do some research, but I want to make something that is all me. That meant starting from the base, a crab dip itself.

I started off using the old bay standard hot crab dip recipe, and these are the flavor adjustments I made for the crab dip that will eventually become my mac and cheese template. I just added hot sauce. That is the only modification to the recipe that I made, so I won't bother typing it up a new. If you want to make it like me, just toss a couple shakes of hot sauce into your mix while you're bringing the cream cheese and mayo together.

I already know I won’t be putting mayo in a mac and cheese, so there’s that much. This has helped me get to know the ingredients used in most crab dip recipes. I think this is how each of these 'recipe lab' portions will go. We'll tweak already existing recipes to get to something I can call my own. Keep an eye out for that in the next few weeks.

Pre-baking crab dip

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Spin Dip Mac and cheese in the Lab

RECIPE LAB UPDATE!!

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