Roasted Garlic Dip Recipe

Roasted Garlic Dip is a creamy and versatile dip made with simple ingredients. Serve this irresistible make-ahead marvel with chips, crackers, veggies, crostini, or spread it on a sandwich!

Look, I grew up in the Midwest. I know my way around a creamy dip, OK? When I think of “party snacks,” creamy dip is the very first thing that comes to mind.

This Roasted Garlic Dip is the best combination of 1.) short ingredient list and 2.) incredible flavor.

Three (!) whole heads of garlic are slowly and deeply roasted until the cloves can be mashed into an absolutely luscious paste.

Combine this with some creamy sour cream and mayonnaise, and add a little squeeze of lemon juice, and you have a perfectly balanced, irresistible dip to use for chips, crackers, toasted bread, or as a dipping sauce for mini Hasselback potatoes.

What You’ll Need For Roasted Garlic Dip

• garlic – 3 heads of garlic might seem like a lot, but the longer you roast garlic, the more its flavor mellows, so you need to use quite a bit so that the dip has a nice garlic flavor. Garlic lovers need to check out my pizza with garlic and balsamic steak marinade, too.
• olive oil – for drizzling over the heads of garlic to help them brown while they roast.
• salt and pepper – for seasoning the heads of garlic before you roast them, and also for seasoning the final garlic dip.
• sour cream – one of the creamy ingredients for this dip. But, I have alternative ideas below. Save your extra sour cream for creamy chicken stroganoff!
• mayonnaise – the other creamy ingredient in this roasted garlic spread, and again, there are alternatives discussed below.
• lemon juice – a generous amount of lemon juice really lifts the flavors of this dip and makes it truly irresistible.
• chives – I grow chives in my garden to use in seafood pasta salad all summer long, so I like to sprinkle chives over this roasted garlic dip for garnish, too. You could also use thinly sliced green onions, another type of herb, like thyme, or skip the garnish altogether.

How To Make Garlic Dip

1. PREP GARLIC. Remove and discard the papery outmost layer of each head of garlic, taking care to leave the inner skin so that the head stays intact. Slice 1/4 inch off the top of each garlic head.

2. ROAST. Place the garlic, cut side up, on large piece of foil and drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Loosely wrap it, place it on a rimmed baking pan and roast it until the garlic feels very soft. Remove it from oven and let it stand 10 minutes to cool slightly, then squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins.

3. MASH AND MIX. Place the garlic cloves in a bowl and mash them with a fork. Stir in the sour cream, mayonnaise, lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, and the remaining salt and pepper. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to 2 days.

4. SERVE. Transfer the dip to a serving dish and sprinkle chives over the dip. Serve with crackers, toasted baguette slices, potato chips and/or cut vegetables.

How long to roast garlic

It’s important not to rush the process of roasting garlic. Recipes that tell you that it can be done properly in 30 minutes are wrong.

To properly roast garlic so that it’s deeply caramelized and soft enough to mash into a paste for this dip (or anything else), it will take at least 50 to 70 minutes in an a 400 degree oven when wrapped in foil.

If you’re using very small heads of garlic, it may roast a bit faster, but you should try to use nice medium to large heads of garlic for this recipe.