7 Surprising Ingredients in the Best Peanut Butter Dip Recipe
This peanut butter dip recipe is super unique and really tasty! Making an easy peanut butter dip is a gut healthy app that is also budget friendly!
The ingredients in this creamy peanut butter dip just work. With peanuts, peanut butter, shallots, onion, balsamic vinegar, and lime you’ll be getting plenty of protein and plant points in one bite! You can bring this appetizer to your next party or picnic, or make it at home for a date night in!
This post is all about a must try peanut butter dip recipe!
HEALTHY MICRO SUPERSTARS FEATURED IN THIS Peanut Butter Dip recipe
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What Will it Take To Throw Together This Peanut Butter Dip Recipe?
- First, chop the shallot, garlic, and onion. Wait 10 minutes to allow the allicin to activate!!
- Then, sauté the vegetables. Add the sesame oil.
- Next, heat the maple syrup. Add the balsamic vinegar, then the peanut butter, then the peanuts.
- Finally, combine the sautéed veggies with the peanut butter dip mixture. Add salt, lime juice, and red pepper.
- Serve with crackers, pretzels, or apple slices!
This peanut butter dip recipe is super unique and really good!!
Your new fave peanut butter dip includes diced shallots in the vegetable sauté. Shallots are sweeter than onions and delicious raw or cooked. They are a little less pungent than onions so perfect for salad dressings or a peanut butter dip recipe!
Pro Tip
You can typically find shallots in the onion section of your grocery store.
Shallots look like mini onions and are generally purple hued. Shallots are like garlic in the sense that they come in a head of more than one. So, when you peel the skin off of the shallot you will probably see at least two inside!
To give the peanut dip a bit more flavor, combine half a diced Spanish onion.
Including garlic in this dish is not just good for the recipe, it’s also good for your gut health! Garlic, onion, and shallots all contain allinase which when activated becomes allicin – a VERY HEALTHY bacteria for your gut (Bulsiewicz, 2020).
Allicin is a healthy superhero in garlic that is really good for you. When garlic, onions, or shallots are cut, crushed, minced, or chewed it activates the alliinase inside. Activated alliinase creates a chemical reaction and becomes allicin. Allicin provides us with many of garlic’s benefits including reducing cholesterol, reducing blood pressure, reducing inflammation, and even protecting you from the common cold! Want to know more? Check out 3 Amazing Ways Eating Garlic Everyday Benefits Your Health!
Balsamic vinegar is a sweet and tart tasting vinegar that grows sweeter as it grows more dense!
Easy Peanut Butter Dip with Balsamic Vinegar
The balsamic vinegar in this dip really makes the dish. Which balsamic vinegar should you use? The Fustini’s brand is amazing!! It is so sweet and tangy and honestly you can eat it plain, drizzled on salad.
Fustini’s has their own little shop. If you are like me and love specialty food items for Christmas, you may find it in your stocking! My mother in law first introduced me to Fustini’s. If you are not lucky enough to have a local Fustini’s shop, you can substitute it for Seggiano Super Dense Classic Balsamic Glaze (pictured above). The similar item can be found here.
History of Balsamic Vinegar
Balsamic vinegar hails from Italy. You can find two types, traditional or commercial (Ho et al., 2017). Traditional use artisanal production methods, similar to wine and have a long history of the grapes from which they are produced.
Balsamic Vinegar and Your Gut Health
Balsamic vinegar is REALLY GOOD for your health! It can help prevent bad cholesterol from forming in your body. It is a natural probiotic helps your digestion, and can actually help you lose or maintain your weight! If you’ve ever heard of the Mediterranean diet and its health benefits, you’ve heard of balsamic vinegar. Balsamic vinegar is a primary ingredient in Mediterranean cooking. And, if you follow this blog, you know we do Mediterranean every Monday!
Helps You Maintain Healthy Cholesterol
Consuming balsamic vinegar can prevent your body from storing LDL (low-density lipoprotein), otherwise known as “bad cholesterol” (Iizuka et al., 2010). In a study on people consuming balsamic vinegar doctors found that it inhibited the build up of bad cholesterol.
Results showed that balsamic vinegar contained abundant polyphenols and inhibited LDL oxidation and oxidized LDL-induced foam cell formation by decreasing the expression of scavenger receptors.
Iizuka, 2010
Translation: Balsamic vinegar prevented bad cholesterol from oxidizing and forming in people's bodies. Containing a great deal of antioxidants, balsamic vinegar can help protect your cholesterol levels and health.
Rich in Probiotics and Health Boosting Compounds
The primary ingredient in balsamic vinegar is acetic acid, a probiotic.
Acetic Acid is considered a probiotic because when you consume it, it brings positive effects to your health.
Probiotics are live microorganisms–generally bacteria and/or yeast…The theory with probiotics is that they mimic the effects on our intact microbiota. In other words, just like our healthy gut microbes, these probiotics should optimize our immune system, reduce inflammation, inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria, correct leaky gut and restore gut barrier integrity, reestablish intestinal motility, and even improve mood.
Busiewicz, 2020, p. 141
Other active compounds in balsamic vinegar include:
- carotenoids supporting vitamin A (Misawa et al., 2010)
- phytosterols lowering cholesterol (Di Battista et al., 2018)
- phenolic compounds antioxidants decreasing inflammation (Luna-Guevara et al., 2018)
For more information on healthy probiotics and micro bacteria to support gut health, check out my posts on Lactobacillus rhamnosus and L. reuteri!
Supports Digestion and Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Balsamic vinegar supports digestion and stimulates your appetite while keeping you fuller, longer (Ho et al., 2017). When combined with peanuts, a plant-based protein, containing arachin and conarachin, both known to satisfy your appetite, this dip is perfect for a lunch date, Saturday night in, or your next pot-luck!
Pro Tip
Artisanal balsamic vinegar can be aged up to 25 years.
Commercial balsamic vinegar also known as balsamic vinegar of Modena must be aged for at least two months and up to three years.
Other Mediterranean Recipes With Balsamic Vinegar
If you want to find other recipes with a Mediterranean flair you can check out Mediterranean Monday recipes! Or, you can also search balsamic vinegar in the search bar and find all recipes that include it, like the sauce free pasta below.
If it’s less about a type of cooking and more about your health you can search for recipes tailored for your health. How about looking to decrease your blood pressure? You can search that too! Just type in blood pressure!
How to Create Sauce Free Pasta that Gets 5 Stars!
This fresh Sauce Free Pasta with Roasted Pepper and Kale recipe will get five stars from everyone sitting at the table. It is super easy and so good for your gut health!
Who knew peanut butter went with onions, garlic, and shallots? I served this at a party recently and my friend shared that her grandmother used to make peanut butter onion sandwiches, a passed down recipe that was concocted during the Great Depression.
Inflation Buster
Peanut butter is an inflation buster!
The ingredients in this recipe are all super affordable and available and your local store. Want to make it even more cost effective? Skip the shallots, substitute olive oil for sesame oil, and use balsamic vinegar that has not been aged as long.
Creamy Peanut Butter Dip
Creamy peanut butter dip is the perfect app to throw together in a pinch. If you keep a few tried and true cupboard staple ingredients around, you won’t even have to plan ahead to make this dip. Just pull out your peanut butter, peanuts, balsamic vinegar, and some onions and you’re set to go. Don’t have shallots? You can make this peanut butter dip recipe with or without shallots.
Peanuts are an excellent source of plant based protein! Including roasted peanuts in this recipe gives the fluffy peanut butter mixture a bit of crunch.
Fluffy Peanut Butter Dip
Cooking the peanut dip on the stove with maple syrup and balsamic vinegar perfectly melds all of the ingredients together. You end up with a fluffy peanut butter dip that even your kids will have to try!
Peanut Butter Dip for Pretzels
You can serve peanut butter dip with pretzels or crackers! Just recently I made this peanut butter dip for pretzels and used the pretzel chips we had on hand. They were perfect!
You can find pretzel chips at Costco in a large bag, on Amazon, or at most local grocery stores.
Easy Peanut Butter Dip for Apples
You could serve this peanut butter dip with apples as well! Apples and peanut butter are a crowd pleaser and give you the added plant points to boot! You can make a creamy peanut butter apple dip by adding sliced apples to dip.
Lime juice gives this peanut butter dip recipe the slightest citrus tang to counter the sweet balsamic vinegar. Lime is also an excellent source of antioxidants providing liminoid and flavonoids to your gut!
The Peanut Butter Dip Recipe
This easy peanut butter dip will not break the bank and is so good!! If you love peanut butter like I do, you will definitely NOT be able to have just one cracker. Make creamy peanut butter and surprise your friends, date, love, or all of the above on your next night in!
With roasted peanuts, natural peanut butter and balsamic vinegar with sautéed onion and shallot, this recipe is as original as it is delicious! Best yet, the plant based protein will keep you full until dinner!
Give it a try and post your comments below! And, if you like Kait’s Cupboard share it with your friends and follow me on Instagram and Pinterest!
7 Surprising Ingredients in the Best Peanut Butter Dip Recipe
Equipment
- 1 small skillet
- 1 small pot
- 1 mixing bowl
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- 1 shallot diced
- 4 cloves garlic cloves minced
- 1/2 medium Spanish onion diced into small pieces
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 5 tbsp balsamic vinegar aged and extra dense
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter organic, no sugar
- 2/3 cup roasted peanuts
- 2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp Mediterranean sea salt
- 1 small lime juice of
Instructions
Sauté the Vegetables
- Add olive oil to a small skillet. Sauté over medium heat. Add the shallots and onion. Saute for 1-2 minutes.1 tbsp olive oil, 1 shallot , 1/2 medium Spanish onion
- Add the garlic. Saute another 1 ½ mintues. Remove from heat.4 cloves garlic cloves
- Add the sesame oil. Stir to combine. Set aside.1 tbsp sesame oil
Heat the Sauce
- In a small pot, add the maple syrup. Heat until bubbling.1 tbsp maple syrup
- Add the balsamic vinegar. Cook for 1 minute.5 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- Add the peanut butter. Fold to combine with a rubber spatula.1 cup creamy peanut butter
- Add the roasted peanuts. Remove from heat.2/3 cup roasted peanuts
Mix the Dip
- Place peanut mixture in a medium sized bowl.
- Add onion mixture from the skillet to the bowl. Combine with the rubber spatula or spoon.
- Add salt and lime juice.1 tsp Mediterranean sea salt, 1 small lime
- Sprinkle red pepper flakes. Stir.2 tsp red pepper flakes
- Serve warm with crackers. Enjoy!
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