Pinterest Beer Dip

Of course I have a Pinterest account.  Actually, I was a little late to the Pinterest party; a friend of mine looked at me like I was nuts and told me I would love it.  I kinda do.  But other times I feel a little overwhelmed.  I already have over a thousand recipes clipped and saved, a dozen or so cookbooks… do I really need to be "pinning" recipes online? Well, no.  But then I find things like "beer dip", and get really excited.  

My husband and I planned to have a Super Bowl party this year.  (Yes, I'm that behind on my blogging.)  Unfortunately, after ordering 50 wings and buying ingredients for three kinds of dip (plus dippers), the snow came.  Up until that point it had been a mild winter.  It was like the climate suddenly realized it was missing its chance, and dumped snow on us for 24 hours.  So much snow.  So the only people that made it to our place were our neighbors.  BUT!  That is not the point.  The point is, I tried out the beer dip recipe, as well as two others, also from Pinterest.  I thought this was most interesting, so I photographed it and made notes.  Wouldn't you know, it was the one we liked least.  It wasn't bad, it just needed quite a bit of tweaking.  I present below the recipe as I made it.

Beer Dip (adapted from ladybehindthecurtain)
2 bricks of cream cheese, softened
1 C beer
1 envelope ranch dressing seasoning
1/2 tsp beef bouillon granules
hefty pinch dill seed
small pinch crushed red pepper flakes
pepper to taste
1 Tbsp corn starch
2 C shredded cheese

In a mixing bowl, beat together cream cheese, beer, and ranch.  Stir in the bouillon, dill seed, red pepper flakes, and pepper.  Thicken by sprinkling over a thin layer of corn starch and stirring that in.  I use it to absorb some of the excess liquid without giving much flavor, and you want to sprinkle rather than just drop it in, or else you wind up with a clump of starch, and that's just yucky.  Stir in the cheese and chill until serving.  Serve with pretzels, veggies, or chicken wings.

First things first: if you follow the link to the original recipe, you'll see that only the beer, cheeses and ranch seasoning were called for.  You'll also see that I've tripled the amount of beer a half recipe would call for.  Because I wanted to taste BEER!  And I wanted more flavor.  I do agree with the author that it is plenty salty, and deliciously so, but otherwise, I think we have rather different palates.  Not a problem-- it takes all sorts to make a world-- but I needed to tweak things for myself.

My husband and I also agreed that we were not fans of the chunks of cheese in the dip.  I didn't care for the texture of it, and my husband found the flavor difficult as well.  Maybe less of it would be better, or finer shredded (microplane?), or even melted into part of the cream cheese.  But I think we might just cut it out next time. We wanted beer dip, with beer flavor; we didn't really need cheese.

Finally, thanks, Lady Behind the Curtain.  I would not have come up with this on my own.