Hello friends!
Here’s something I haven’t done in a while: a cooking with Nicole! But I was home and making our usual holiday treats, and I thought I’d take pictures and share with you our Peeler Family Crab Dip. It’s Peelerific because it includes our Peeler Family Secret Ingredient. I’ll share that ingredient with you, but just don’t tell anyone. Okay?
We have a recipe for this, but I’m not going to bother putting it here, as we’ve totally changed it over the years. But here’s a picture of everything you’ll need (sans secret ingredient) and the cream cheese (which I forgot to put out):
The recipe is super (not) healthy and full of frightening, typically American ingredients. For my overseas readers, I have no idea how you’d make this. I never quite found a processed cheese product in the UK that matches Velveeta’s curious (and slightly alarming) unctuous viscosity. I probably turned you off even trying to find anything like Velveeta by using the words “unctuous” and “viscous” together. I apologize.
Anyway, for this recipe you will need:
about 1/2 an onion, very finely diced
a small pack of mushrooms, very finely diced
1 lb of Velveeta (mmm viscous)
1 8oz packet of cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
imitation crab meat (you can use real, but we’ve found it really makes no difference as all you really taste is mushroom. In fact, were I to make this for my own friends, I’d probably make it with artichoke or something like that)
Secret Ingredient (TBRevealed)
You want to do a really fine dice on the onion and the mushroom, but especially the onion.
Then you want to melt a little butter (about a tablespoon) in a nice, deep saucepan over medium heat. You’ve got a lot of unctuous cheese product to melt, so don’t be stingy with your pot.
Then you want to toss in the onion and the mushroom, cooking them till the onion has softened and the mushrooms have released their liquid, which you’ve mostly cooked off. You don’t want to brown anything though, so adjust the heat on your stove accordingly.
Once the mushrooms and onions are ready, throw in your various fatty substances. I usually cube up the Velveeta, partially to marvel at its consistency. But, yeah, all you really have to do is chuck in the sour cream, cream cheese, and Velveeta and melt it.
While everything melts and mixes, chop up your imitation crab meat. Again, feel free to use real crab meat. Or use none, and increase the mushrooms, for a vegetarian version. I can also envisions a version with artichoke.
When everything is melted, throw in the crab meat and fold it in. If you do use the imitation stuff, you probably want to break it up with your spoon so it’s nice and small.
Finally, you add your Peeler Family Secret Ingredient, which is sherry. Yes, sherry. We put it in basically everything, but mostly my dad. From whom you first have to wrestle the bottle.
Add the sherry to taste. We put about 1/4 cup full, but we like it sherry-riffic. Here’s the finished dip!
Serve the dip in some sort of heated pan, as it congeals like crazy. We serve it with toast cups, which I’ll teach you to make in my next Cooking With Nicole.
And that’s our Peeler Family Crab Dip. It’s super simple, really fatty, and absolutely delicious. Ask me any questions you may have in comments, and enjoy!
Yummy yum! Looks delicious! A double Zumba class after this and the calories are off 😉 Thanks for sharing your family’s secret ingredient. Love your blog! 🙂
Looks yummy! Your dad looks just the same as he did 15 . . . no 17 years ago! Maybe better. Say “hello” for me.
I likes me some unctious, viscous cheese product. I’ll have to send this post to my sister who works for the peeps who created this cheese product. She’ll get a kick out of it, especially since she doesn’t work on the unctious side of the house.
Happy Christmas!
Hi Titti! So nice to hear from you! I love the pictures on your blog, and I wish I could understand it. 😉 Dr. Ruth and I are poking at the idea of Norway this summer, but I imagine you’ll be warm in Spain?
Rachel: Hi there!!! I will! Hope you had a great holiday! *hugs*
Vickie: LOL That’s awesome! I hope she enjoys it. And I’ll be blogging the toast cups “recipe” on Friday. It’s not much of a recipe, really, but they’re such great dippers!
This looks fantastic and I have to be honest…. I use sherry as a secret ingredient in so many things, goes great in chilli! Would you use dry or sweet sherry?
I wonder if Primula would work instead of Velveeta… or dairy lea
I’ll let you know if it works.