These electric colored vegan dips are healthy, full of veggies, and so damn tasty! Try one or all three, and use them in so many versatile ways.
We're making a beet baba ghanoush, a golden fennel dip, and a super creamy and herby sunflower seed dip. These are perfect for meal prepping your school or work lunches and snacks too! You could spread them on stacked veggie sandwiches or dip all your fave cut up veggies in them. They could even be delicious dressings for some big lunch salads. I've even done up a pretty fancy party platter of veggies here, so use it as inspo to make your own rainbow creation!
beet baba ghanoush
This is a bright and tasty take on traditional baba ghanoush that you're going to love!
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Servings: cups
Ingredients
for the beet
- 1 medium purple beet, skin on
- ½ tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
- pinch sea salt & ground black pepper
for the eggplant
- 1 large eggplant
- pinch sea salt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- ½ teaspoon red chili flakes
beet baba ghanoush
- roasted eggplant (from above)
- roasted beet (from above)
- ¼ C lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
- 2 tablespoon tahini
- 4 garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- ¼ C fresh packed parsley
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Halve the eggplant and places the skin-side down onto a baking sheet.
- Sprinkle a pinch of sea salt on each eggplant half. Let the eggplant sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to allow the salt to extract the moisture from the eggplant halves. Use a paper towel to absorb any beads of water that have accumulated on the eggplant halves. Removing some of the moisture before baking will result in a better roasted eggplant and also remove some of the eggplant’s bitterness.
- Brush olive oil on eggplant halves and sprinkle with dried oregano and red chili flakes. Prep the beet next, before placing the baking sheet into the oven.
- Slice the top (stem side) of the beet, so the beet will sit flat on a piece of foil. The piece of foil should be large enough, so the corners can be folded up and over the beet to enclose the beet completely to create a foil packet.
- Season the beet with salt, pepper, fresh thyme and olive oil. Close up the foil package and place it beside the cut eggplant halves on the baking sheet.
- Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until the eggplant is golden brown, very soft and cooked through. The beet should also be tender when inserting a fork. Let both the beet and eggplant cool before handling. Use a fork to loosen the flesh of the eggplant from the skin and scrape the eggplant flesh into a food processor. Discard the eggplant skin.
- Open the foil packet with the beet carefully as hot steam will release. Halve the beet and add to the food processor along with lemon juice, tahini, garlic, olive oil, garlic, garlic powder, fresh parsley, and ground pepper. Blend until smooth.
Notes
You can serve the dip slightly warm right after making or refrigerate the dip for 1 to 2 hours before serving. Lasts up to 5 days in the fridge. Serve with pita, vegetables, or crackers of your choice!
golden fennel dip
This savory creamy dip is perfect on it's own with vegetables, crackers or toasted baguette or even give it a go as a sandwich spread!
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Servings: ½ cups
Ingredients
- 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced - fennel fronds removed (about 2 cups sliced)
- 1 small white onion, thinly sliced (about 1 cup sliced)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 1 teaspoon red chili flakes
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ C vegan mayonnaise
- ¼ C nutritional yeast
- ¾ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Heat a cast iron pan on medium-high heat. Add oil, fennel, onion and salt. Sauté until light brown, about 6 to 7 minutes, tossing occasionally. Add dried oregano, chili flakes, ground pepper, and garlic. Cook for about 3 more minutes.
- Put the cast iron pan into the oven and bake for 10 minutes.
- In a food processor add vegan mayo, nutritional yeast, turmeric, lemon juice and the roasted fennel mixture. Blend until smooth.
Notes
You can serve the dip slightly warm right after making or refrigerate the dip for 1 to 2 hours before serving. Lasts up to 5 days in the fridge. Serve with pita or baguette, vegetables, or crackers of your choice!
The sunflower seed dip is actually an older recipe from the blog which you can find here.
lacey isaak
i wanted to love this so much! its just the most beautiful platter out there. the cooking time on the fenel defnitly left mine burnt. and the beet took about an hour and half maybe closer to 2 hours to cook in that foil, that was a bit frusterating. i think the fenel dip is good but would have been better with more moisture from unburnt fenel. i havent tried buba ganoush bebfore, but im not a huge fan of this dip, it too garlicy. 4 cloves of raw garlic and a tablespoon of dried garlic?! i should have known. maybe i need more eggplant in it, mine was small being organic. anyways, if you have any suggestions how to get these problems fix please let me know, sorry, i had to be honest here. going to attempt to serve this platter for saturday, hope to fix it up!
Lauren Toyota
sorry to hear of the trouble. When following a recipe there has to be some amount of adjusting to cook times given that all stove tops (gas, electric etc.) and oven's are ALL different. Those are the times I landed on when testing, but that's just in my oven. You shouldn't really set and forget in most cases! A tip I've mentioned all along if you watch my channel or have my cookbook is everyone who cooks enough should have an internal thermometer in their oven because having purchased 2 ovens and done recipes for a cookbook with testers, ALL ovens read at the wrong temperature. The one I had previously was off by 100°! Also the size of vegetables is hard to measure... I do my best to give visual clues, however you may have had a larger beet and as you mentioned, a smaller eggplant. Dips are also pretty fool proof, if it ends up that you don't like the consistency you can just blend in more of something after it's completed. Granted, you have to purchase what you need in advance, but when I make new recipes I'm always getting 2 eggplants in stead of 1 just in case. You'll end up eating it for something else anyway, right! Anyway hope you can salvage and still end up with some tasty dips. You could add some tahini to the fennel dip if its not smooth enough OR some vegan cream cheese
lacey isaak
thanks! i appriacte the response back. yah thats good advice actually! well i was thinking maybe a little extra fennel and extra eggplant, i have an asian skinny one, would that work? i did buy extra, i always do that too. let me know, thanks! maybe one small fennel or half?
Emily
I love the beet baba ghanoush! Not only is it absolutely stunning, but it tastes so delicious! I first made it for my baby’s first birthday. I also made your nacho cheese for the spread. The theme was “farmers market”. Everyone LOVED them and I got so many compliments. Making this baba ghanoush again today.. love the earthiness of the beets! Thanks for always providing kick ass recipes!
Jordan
Wait, where's the sunflower dip recipe from the video?? That's the one I wanted to make...
Lauren Toyota
it's linked in the post - https://simplehealthjournal.org/recipes/2014/7/21/creamy-sunflower-seed-dip/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E