25 Fast And Easy Dip Recipes

Super Bowl weekend and I do not particularly care about football at the professional level but I do care about Super Bowl food, which is the entire point of the Super Bowl for people who are not fans of either team. The game is background noise. The food is the main event.

I made a Super Bowl spread: buffalo chicken dip, which is cream cheese and shredded chicken and hot sauce mixed together and baked until bubbly, served with tortilla chips. Pigs in blankets, which are just little sausages wrapped in crescent dough, which are just my Christmas crescent sausage bites rebranded for football, and nobody noticed because food does not care about branding. Seven-layer dip. A batch of chili, because chili is always appropriate, at any time, for any reason. And a plate of nachos loaded with ground beef, cheese, jalapenos, sour cream, and guacamole.

Dave invited two guys from the truck stop, Phil and Mike, which meant I was cooking for nine people, which is just a regular Tuesday when you have this many kids. Phil brought beer. Mike brought a bag of chips, the store-bought kind, which I put out next to my homemade dip and which disappeared first because there is no accounting for taste.

The kids watched the game for approximately twenty minutes before disappearing to their rooms. Justin lasted the longest because Justin likes watching anything where people hit each other, which is concerning and also developmentally normal for an eleven-year-old boy. Tyler asked if anyone wanted to see the go-kart engine he was rebuilding. Nobody did, but Tyler described it anyway, in detail, to Phil, who listened with the polite confusion of a man who did not expect a dissertation on small engine repair at a Super Bowl party.

After the game I cleaned up, which took longer than the game itself, and Dave helped, which meant he carried the trash out and I did everything else. The buffalo chicken dip was the hit of the night. Phil asked for the recipe. I said cream cheese, chicken, hot sauce. He said that is it? I said that is it. The best recipes are always that is it. Simple, three ingredients, impossible to mess up. That is the whole philosophy of my cooking: simple, good, repeatable. Like the road. Like the life.

Phil asking for the buffalo chicken dip recipe and being genuinely surprised that it was just three ingredients — that right there is the whole case for keeping things simple. If you want to build a spread that has people scraping the bowl and asking “that’s it?” all night, these 25 fast and easy dip recipes are exactly where to start. Every single one of them follows the same philosophy I was explaining to Phil: simple, good, repeatable.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 8–10

Featured Recipe: Buffalo Chicken Dip

2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup hot sauce (Frank’s RedHot recommended)
1/2 cup ranch dressing
2 cups cooked shredded chicken (rotisserie works great)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese, divided
Tortilla chips, celery sticks, or crackers for serving

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9-inch baking dish or a small cast iron skillet.
Mix the base. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Stir in hot sauce and ranch dressing until fully combined.
Add chicken and cheese. Fold in the shredded chicken and 1 cup of the shredded cheese. Spread evenly into the prepared baking dish.
Top and bake. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup of cheese over the top. Bake uncovered for 20–25 minutes until bubbly around the edges and lightly golden on top.
Serve hot. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving. Set out tortilla chips, celery, or crackers alongside. Watch it disappear before the store-bought bag does.

Nutrition (per serving)

25 Fast And Easy Dip Recipes — The Only Super Bowl Spread You Actually Need