Healthy spinach artichoke dip, and where the calories were hiding
Three swaps take spinach artichoke dip from about 289 calories a serving to 135, and the fat from 25 g to 7 g. What each swap is worth, and what goes wrong.
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Ingredients
- 224 g cream cheese Out of cream cheese?
- 120 g sour cream Out of sour cream?
- 80 g mayonnaise Out of mayonnaise?
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 280 g frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
- 240 g artichoke hearts, canned in water or frozen, drained and chopped
- 112 g low-moisture mozzarella, grated
- 48 g parmesan, grated
Method
- Heat the oven to 190C (170C fan, 375F).
- Put the thawed spinach in a clean tea towel, twist it into a ball and wring it out over the sink until almost nothing more drips. This is the step that decides whether the dip is creamy or watery, so keep going for longer than feels necessary. Pat the artichokes dry and chop them.
- Beat the cream cheese in a bowl until soft, then mix in the sour cream, mayonnaise and garlic. If you are using cottage cheese instead of cream cheese, blend it completely smooth first. If you are using Greek yogurt, stir a teaspoon of cornstarch into it before it goes in.
- Stir in the spinach, artichokes, most of the mozzarella and half the parmesan, with plenty of black pepper. Taste before adding salt, because the cheeses bring a lot of it.
- Spread it in a small baking dish, about 20 cm (8 inch) across, and scatter over the rest of the cheese.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until it bubbles at the edges and browns in patches. Take it out as soon as it does: a dip left in the oven goes oily on top as the cheese gives up its fat.
- Leave it for 5 minutes before serving, with vegetables, chips or toasted bread.
Spinach artichoke dip is mostly cream cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream, with the vegetables as a garnish. By our estimate those three carry about two thirds of the calories, and the spinach and artichokes less than a tenth. Swap the three for cottage cheese and Greek yogurt and a serving drops from about 289 calories to 135.
The recipe above is the classic with nothing swapped. The goal buttons apply the swaps, and the rest of this page is what each one is worth and where it goes wrong.
Is spinach artichoke dip healthy?
Not the classic, however green it looks. One serving is an eighth of the dish.
| Part of the dip | kcal | Fat |
|---|---|---|
| Cream cheese, 28 g | 98 | 10 g |
| Mayonnaise, 10 g | 68 | 7 g |
| Mozzarella, 14 g | 42 | 3 g |
| Sour cream, 15 g | 30 | 3 g |
| Parmesan, 6 g | 25 | 2 g |
| Spinach, artichokes and garlic | 26 | 0 g |
| Per serving | 289 | 25 g |
The spinach does not make it a vegetable dish. What you dip in it matters almost as much as the dip:
| Dipper | Amount | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Tortilla chips | 28 g, a small handful | 140 |
| Carrot sticks | 60 g | 25 |
| Celery sticks | 60 g | 8 |
If you want the lightest dip on the table, anything built on salsa or yogurt beats anything built on cream cheese, which is the argument for the swaps below.
The three swaps, and what each is worth
Ranked by the calories each saves per serving, at the quantities in this recipe.
| Swap | kcal | Protein | Fat | Running total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cream cheese to blended cottage cheese | −71 | +1 g | −8 g | 218 kcal, 17 g fat |
| Mayonnaise to fat-free Greek yogurt | −62 | +1 g | −7 g | 156 kcal, 10 g fat |
| Sour cream to fat-free Greek yogurt | −21 | +1 g | −3 g | 135 kcal, 7 g fat |
Two things the table does not say on its own.
This is a fat swap, not a protein one. The three together add about 3 g of protein a serving, because a serving of dip holds only a spoonful or two of each. The cream cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream pages compare every option on macros per 100 g, where the protein difference is bigger.
The cheese stays. Mozzarella and parmesan are what make it taste like the dip, and after the swaps they are about half of what is left. Cut them and you have a warm spinach yogurt, which is a different thing.
What can I use instead of mayonnaise in spinach artichoke dip?
Greek yogurt, as above, is the one that moves the numbers: about 7 g less fat and 62 fewer calories a serving. More blended cottage cheese works too, and keeps the dip thicker. Leaving the mayonnaise out without replacing it gives a stiffer, less glossy dip, because the mayonnaise was adding both.
What goes wrong
A watery dip. Nearly always the spinach. Frozen spinach holds a lot of water, and whatever you do not wring out comes back in the oven as a puddle. Drained artichokes add a little more. Fat-free yogurt and cottage cheese can weep too, which is the second reason for full-fat cottage cheese.
A grainy dip. Unblended cottage cheese keeps its curds, so blend it until it is glossy. Fat-free Greek yogurt can split in the oven, because its proteins clump with heat and it has little fat to protect them, as Food52 explains. A teaspoon of cornstarch, cornflour in the UK, stirred into the yogurt first holds it together (Ricardo covers why).
An oily top. Cheese heated too long gives up its fat. Bake until it bubbles at the edges and browns in patches, then take it out.
Cold spinach artichoke dip
The swapped version works cold, which the classic does not really do, because it firms up in the fridge as the cream cheese sets. Mix everything except the topping cheese, chill it for an hour so the flavours settle, and serve it with vegetables. The yogurt cannot split without heat, so the cornstarch is not needed.
Without cottage cheese
Use Greek yogurt for all three, or keep the cream cheese and swap only the mayonnaise and sour cream, which still takes off about 10 g of fat a serving. Neufchâtel, sold next to cream cheese in the US, has about a third less fat and behaves the same way.
Making it ahead
Mix it up to a day ahead, cover it and keep it in the fridge, then bake it from cold for about 10 minutes longer. Leftovers keep 3 to 4 days in the fridge, the USDA guidance for leftovers. Reheat them in a 180C (350F) oven until hot all the way through.
Every figure here is an estimate from typical ingredient values, mostly USDA FoodData Central, rather than a measurement. Why recipe macros are estimates explains how far they move with the brands you buy.
Where next
Worth cooking next:
- Healthy chicken enchiladas, swap by swapCreamy chicken enchiladas come to about 956 calories a serving by our estimate. Four swaps take them to 606 and add 18 g of protein. What each swap is worth.
- Cottage cheese pasta sauce, blended properlyA creamy pasta sauce from cottage cheese at 29 g protein a plate. Why it splits in a hot pan, how to stop it, and the blending step nobody skips twice.
- Lighter mashed potatoes that are still worth eatingGreek yogurt for the sour cream keeps mash creamy and adds protein. Why floury potatoes and warm milk matter more to the texture than the fat does.
Cooking it as part of a week? ReciPop plans seven days of meals around the time you have, the appliances you own and how many you are feeding, then turns them into one grocery list sorted by aisle. How the weekly plan works