10 Delicious Dips for Your Veggie Tray
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A veggie tray lives or dies on what is next to it. The vegetables are easy — whatever is crisp and in season, cut so people can pick it up without thinking. The dip is where the tray either disappears in twenty minutes or sits there all afternoon looking healthy and untouched.
These are ten I actually make, most of them built around something coming out of the garden. Several link to the full recipe here on the site. Put two or three on a tray, not one, and give people a reason to keep going back.
How to build a tray people actually eat from
- Three dips, not one. Something creamy, something bright, something with heat. That covers almost everyone at the table.
- Cut for the hand, not the plate. Spears and planks over coins. Anything that needs two hands or a napkin gets skipped.
- Cold vegetables, room-temperature dips. Dips straight from the refrigerator are stiff and taste like nothing. Pull them out twenty minutes ahead.
- Blanch the hard ones. Thirty seconds in boiling water and straight into ice water turns raw broccoli and green beans from a chore into something worth eating.
1. Roasted beet hummus with dill
The one that makes a tray look like someone planned it. Roasted beet hummus with dill is deep magenta, earthy and sweet, and the dill keeps it from getting heavy. Serve it with anything pale — endive, cucumber, white carrots.
2. Herbed cream cheese spread with chives and dill
The creamy anchor every tray needs. This herbed cream cheese spread comes together in about ten minutes and it is the one children reach for. It also does double duty on bagels the next morning, which is not nothing.
3. Spiced eggplant and yogurt dip
Smoky, tangy, and lighter than it sounds. Spiced eggplant and yogurt dip is what to make in the stretch of late summer when the eggplant will not stop. Toasted pita alongside, and let it come to room temperature before serving.
4. Harissa yogurt
The heat on the tray. Borrow the harissa yogurt from the carrot fritters — plain full-fat yogurt, harissa stirred through, lemon, salt. It takes two minutes and it is the dip people ask about.
5. Curry aioli
Richer, and worth having one rich thing. The curry aioli from the roasted okra fries is good on raw vegetables too, especially sweet peppers and blanched green beans.
6. Garden beet hummus with toasted seeds
A second hummus, with more texture. Garden beet hummus with toasted seeds has crunch on top, which matters when everything else on the tray is smooth.
7. Peanut sauce
The one nobody expects on a veggie tray, and the first bowl to empty. The peanut sauce from the summer rolls is built for raw vegetables. Thin it slightly with warm water so it stays scoopable.
8. Herbed cheese ball, flattened into a dip
A herbed cheese ball with pecans does not have to be a ball. Press it into a shallow dish, scatter the pecans across the top, and it becomes a dip that holds its shape next to sturdy vegetables.
9. Spiced cranberry-orange chutney
The sharp one. Spiced cranberry-orange chutney cuts through everything creamy on the tray, and it is the reason the cheese and the raw fennel work next to each other.
10. Warm baked brie with fig jam
Not technically a dip, and nobody has ever complained. Baked brie with rosemary and fig jam set in the middle of the tray gives people something warm, and a warm thing on a cold tray is what makes it feel like an occasion.
What to put around them
Cucumber spears, sweet pepper planks, blanched green beans, radishes with the tops left on, carrot sticks, endive leaves, cherry tomatoes, blanched broccoli, sugar snap peas, and something unexpected — raw fennel, kohlrabi, or thin slices of raw summer squash. Most of that list comes out of a Zone 9 garden between spring and first frost, which is most of the year.
What I Reach For to Put a Tray Together
A good tray is mostly about how it is arranged and how cold it stays. The dips are the easy part.
Keeps things from running into each other, which is most of what makes a tray look considered rather than dumped.
Almost every dip on this list is thirty seconds in one of these. It is the single most-used thing in my kitchen in December.
Nest them into the platter so you can refill mid-party without rebuilding the whole thing.
Ridged edges hold more dip and make ordinary carrot sticks look like someone bothered.
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If you are making one tray this season, make the beet hummus and the herbed cream cheese and put the harissa yogurt between them. That combination has never once come home with me.
