January 2026 Recipe: Spinach Dip

Keeping up with my 2026 Bingo Card, I'm making one new recipe each month. It's probably not a good sign that I put this simple dish off until the end of the month, but you know how it goes. Winter depression comes for us all. This month, I'm going to be making spinach dip.

I have a long history with this dish, although I never knew how it was made. It seemed to always be a staple during family holidays while I was growing up. Even as a kid, an age range you wouldn't expect to like spinach dip, I couldn't get enough of it. Every Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or any other holiday, I would pretty much eat the whole thing myself.

Last year for Christmas, my partner's mom made it, even though she never made it before. I ended up taking it home and eating it all, although it was a bit too salty. I knew I wanted to try to make it myself, and omit the typical sourdough bread for something else. My partner also isn't into the whole bread bowl idea, so I bought some Triscuts instead.

Getting started, I'll be following a recipe from Allrecipes. Of course, remove the sourdough bread and replace it with Triscuts. As you can see, it's not a very complicated recipe, but I wanted to start off with something easy. Due to the sour cream and mayonnaise, this dish isn't vegan, but it is vegetarian-friendly.

Ingredients

Sour cream (500ml or 2 cups)
Mayonnaise (240ml or 1 cup)
Can of water chesnuts (100g)
Bag of frozen spinach (280g)
Dry vegetable soup mix

Drain and chop both the water chestnuts and the frozen spinach. Add everything together, mix well, then let it sit in the fridge for six hours. That's it!

Final Result

Image of the spinach dip on a plate with some Triscuts

My partner's thoughts: The first bite was extremely disgusting and vile. As I started to eat more, it started to taste more like a normal chip dip, but I'm still not a fan. The water chestnuts were the best part, which I didn't expect. This is also the first time I've ever had a Triscut, and they're very unfamiliar to me. However, the more I eat it, the more I enjoy it. I can taste the vegetable soup mix, and I like that taste. Very unique flavour, but I'd probably never have it again. It's palatable. It goes well with the Triscuts.

My thoughts: It tastes similar to how I remember it as a kid. I didn't add any salt because it was all supposed to come from the Triscuts. It's way wetter than I wanted it to be, which means I didn't drain the chestnuts and spinach enough. There was also way too strong a taste of sour cream, which means the recipe had bad ratios. This was essentially a sour cream dip with spinach in it. In the future, I would either half the sour cream and mayo, or double the spinach. I lean towards doubling the amount of spinach.

Overall, I think they turned out just okay. If I had to give it a rating, I'd say they're 5/10. Other than removing more water and adding more spinach, I don't know how I could make this any better. I was considering adding some shredded cheese, but I decided against it, since it felt like it would be overkill. I'm going to have to agree with my partner and say it's palatable, but I'd probably never make it again.

_{Published 31 January 2026 @ 11:40:02 PM UTC}