If you’re having a party and inviting me to it, please, don’t sit me next to the onion dip.  I swear, onion dip is my diet-busting downfall.  And to be brutally honest, I don’t care if it’s made with a package of dry soup mix or it’s plopped into a bowl from a container from the dairy aisle.  It’s really the cold and creamy sour cream that makes onion dip so addicting for me but this homemade version is a little different.  Well, a lot different since it’s a bacon, scallion, and caramelized onion dip and not made from a package.  Plus?  Yup – bacon and caramelized onions?  Sign.me.up.

I showed you how to make caramelized onions a few weeks ago and this dip recipe was the primary reason why I wanted to finally get my caramelized onions right.  When they are the star of a dish, they had better be right!  So you’ll use a batch of those onions and mix them up with some crumbled baaaaacon, scallions, sour cream, cider vinegar, and cayenne pepper.  Homemade onion dip – done and done.  And yeah, keep me away from this one too – it’s dangerous!!

Where oh where do I begin with this dip?  Maybe with the fact that it was originally made and posted as a tribute to football-loving men but that the first time I ate it was with a bunch of my best girlfriends.  Yep, that’s about right.  I should also say that in the 6 weeks since the first time this dip was consumed (errr…devoured), it has shown up, not so surprisingly, again in my house two more times.  And each time, I swear people think this dip makes me a genius in the kitchen.

I’m certainly not feeling like a domestic kitchen goddess recently since I’ve come thisclose to royally screwing up two cheesecakes in the past two weeks but this cheesey chorizo and caramelized onion dip makes up for all of those mistakes.  The dip, in and of itself, is one sent from the heavens.  It’s base is a mixture of sweet caramelized onions, spicy chorizo sausage, cream cheese, and mozzarella cheese and when baked, you’ll need to to exercise the utmost restraint.  You’ll want to bathe in this dip.  You’ll want to huddle in a dark corner with this dip and a bag of Fritos.  You’ll not want to share.  But if you want to spend the next 48 hours in the gym working this dip off your holiday hips, I suggest you pass the spoon.

I can’t pinpoint when it happened but all of a sudden, I want to dip everything in ranch dressing.  Well, maybe not everything – just dippable things like sweet potato fries and broccoli.  And tortilla chips.  And even though I was truly mortified when I first saw my girlfriends dipping pizza in ranch dressing back in college, I realize now they were totally on to something.

It’s not hard to love homemade ranch dressing, especially since it’s low in fat (i.e., low in guilt) and doesn’t reside in a bottle from the grocery store.  It’s even more difficult not to love a kicked-up version of this dressing: chipotle.  Smoky chipotles immersed in cool ranch dressing?  Bring.it.on.  I love it almost as much as the original but when the right food calls for it (like honey-lime marinated chicken salad or plain ol’ garden tomatoes), this version certainly delivers.

If there’s one recipe that I’ve been meaning to share with you guys over the past 3 years, it’s this one.   And for the most part, it’s because as many bloggers know, the problem with blogging certain recipes is that sometimes the dish needs to be served hot, before there’s any time to snap a few photos.  Take into account the time needed to adjust camera settings, fiddle with the light source, ensure all props are in place (none of these things are ever right even after test shots are taken when the food is still cooking), and essentially the dish starts getting cold by the time the photos are finished…every one of us is all too familiar with eating luke warm dinners.  But this doesn’t fly when you’ve got a room full of hungry people eying the steaming and bubbly spinach and artichoke dip that’s just emerged from the oven – we all know that.

So in honor of the Northeast dominated Super Bowl next weekend, I decided to make the sacrifice (ha!) to remake this dip and blog about it for you because you NEED this dip at your party.  Now, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve actually watched the Superbowl (for the record, I just don’t get football), but I’m definitely all about understanding the snacks that go with it.  This old-standby dip is kicked up a few notches with a secret ingredient: alfredo sauce.  I almost couldn’t believe it the first time my friend Andrea brought this to a party and revealed her secret but it’s true!  The alfredo sauce adds to the creaminess of the dip without having to use mayonnaise and with few other ingredients and minimal effort, I can assure you that this dip will be gone in less time than a Super Bowl commercial break.

Need more Super Bowl snack ideas?  Check out the sidebar for a bunch of winning snack ideas!