Begin Spinach Artichoke Dip

Video Transcript

"I'm going to show you how to make my party dips. So the other dip I am going to prepare is actually my personal favorite and it is evolved over the years. This is a spinach and artichoke dip with sausage and water chestnuts. Now the sausage and the water chestnuts are the two ingredients that aren't your typical items in the spinach and artichoke dip. Now when I first started making out this dip, I didn't have the sausage and I didn't have the water chestnuts in there but throughout the years, I've dined at different restaurants and tried different dips that have so many elements of the spinach and artichoke dip. Now one particular restaurant had a dip that didn't have the spinach but it did have artichokes, cheese and water chestnuts and sausage and that's what gave me the idea to bring this all together. So now let me take you through all the ingredients that we're going to use to make my favorite dip. The first thing you will need is some frozen spinach that will defrost in the microwave. We have a lemon that I'm just going to use the zest from. I've already juiced it for another recipe and I had it leftover. I have the sausage that I'm going to brown up with some extra virgin olive oil. Now this particular sausage, I got from the meat counter at my grocery store and I asked for a mixture of a little bit of the hot Italian sausage and you know more of the country sausage which has some of the sage and some of those other spices that will compliment the dip. Other spices that we're going to use are parsley, and crushed red pepper flakes. Then for the base of the dip, we're going to use some sour cream and some mayonnaise, then we have the artichokes, some garlic that we're going to saute and use to flavor it. We have the water chestnuts, and we have just some salt and pepper we're going to use to flavor the dish as it's finishing cooking. We have the Italian three or four cheese blend, whatever you happen to have in your grocery. We have some Parmesan cheese and some cream cheese to give it a creamy, smooth texture."