Roasted Carrot Dip

This Roasted Carrot Dip with pine nuts, garlic and thyme is an easy and delicious spring spread. It only requires from you less than one hour with most of the time being passive cooking!

Hello everyone. It’s May, can you believe that? I can hardly! And those unstable daily and nightly temperatures don’t help. I mean, when the temperatures still reach round 0 degrees at nights, it’s hard to believe it’s spring. Right?

But that does not mean we cannot enjoy some spring foods. And you will see such recipes on my blog more and more often. Technically, I would say this Roasted Carrot Dip is more a wintery dish, but all these categories are very approximate. Besides, the plates you see in the picture gives us the spring vibe. So that’s good enough to call it spring recipe! LOL

This dip is ridiculously easy to make. The huge portion the cooking time would be roasting the carrots. The active cooking time would be perhaps just around 15 minutes or so.

Roasted Carrot Dip

Even though this dip is easy, the flavour profile is wonderful. First of all, when vegetables get roasted, the flavour becomes more complex, with those lovely smoky notes. This also increase their natural sweetness. For this recipe, I used a touch of honey, but if your carrots are already sweet enough, you can skip it. Maple syrup will work, too.

Other aromatics include roasted garlic, thyme, smoked paprika, and chipotle powder. While pine nuts generally have subtle taste, they add a little of pleasant nutty notes. And of course I would recommend using good quality olive oil for the best result.

As always, you can adjust the recipe to your preferences. For instance, you can swap pine nuts for some tahini paste, so you would get a dip resembling hummus. You can use other nuts instead. Think of roasted almonds or walnuts.

And if you are looking for other dip ideas, you can find more ideas here.

I hope you like this Roasted Carrot Dip, and you will make it this spring and summer. If you try it, let me know in this post or send me an Instagram message or share you photos adding the hashtag #havocinthekitchen.

Cheers!

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Roasted Carrot Dip

Recipe by Ben | Havocinthekitchen

0.0 from 0 votes

Course: Cheese Dips and SpreadsDifficulty: Easy

This Roasted Carrot Dip with pine nuts, garlic and thyme is an easy and delicious spring spread.

Servings

8-10

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

45

minutes

Cook Mode

Keep the screen of your device on

Ingredients

• about 1 and 1/2 lb. carrots – trimmed, peeled, and cut into smaller chunks (~1 and 1/2″)

• 1 whole garlic head

• 1-2 tbsp. honey or maple syrup, optional

• 4-5 tbsp. olive oil, divided

• few whole thyme sprigs

• 1 tbsp. fresh thyme

• 1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted

• 2-3 tbsp. cream cheese

• about 1 tsp. slat or to taste

• 1/2 tbsp. smoked paprika

• 1/8 tsp. chipotle powder

Directions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (20o degrees C).
• On a baking sheet, toss carrots with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt, smoked paprika, and chipotle powder. Arrange the whole thyme sprigs to infuse the carrots. If desired, add honey or maple syrup. Lightly grease the whole garlic with some oil, wrap it in cooking foil, and place onto the same baking dish. Roast until carrots are lightly golden brown on the edges and tender, tossing them once or twice. That should take for about 30 minutes or so. Remove from oven and cool for about 15 minutes. Discard the thyme sprigs.
• You can use as much of the roasted garlic as desired, I would recommend at least 3-4 cloves. Roasted garlic is sweet and not too strong, so it won’t overpower the dish. Simply squeeze the garlic “paste” out its skin. Keep the unused garlic refrigerated.
• In a bowl (If using an immersion blender) or blender’s cup (If using a regular blender), combine the carrots, garlic, pine nuts, 1 tbsp. of thyme, cream cheese, and 2 tbsp. of olive oil.
• Pure until the desired consistency (I prefer a bit chunky). Try and add another spoon of oil and more seasonings if necessary. This dip will be quite thick, so if you prefer it thinner, you can simply add a little of water (Or alternatively, plain yogurt). Quickly run the blender again, to incorporate.
• Serve with a little of extra olive oil, thyme, and pine nuts if desired. Keep the dip in an air-tight container refrigerated up to four days. Enjoy!