From football games to holidays, there’s always a reason to throw a party! This means lots of appetizers, like crackers, chips, veggies, and dips. Many of the traditional dips out there are high in calories, high in fat and highly likely to put you in a food coma. Our friend Tanya Anurag from tanyas.bowlsandbrushes sent us her recipe for Cloud 9® Tomato Dip

Cloud 9 Tomatoes Pack

Dips are a great way to add flavor and variety to meals. They are also a great way to get kids and adults alike to eat more veggies! Dips are also a great addition to an appetizer menu because they are easy to pair with several different finger foods. Grabbing a premade dip from the store can be convenient, but it can also be dangerous. While the little nutrition label on the container may tell you that it’s low in calories, if you look closely, that count is almost always for a tiny amount. Let’s be honest, not too many people at a gathering measure out two tablespoons of dip and walks away. This misleading calorie information is because most premade dips are loaded with fat to make them taste better.

There is another way to make food taste great, without adding more fat and calories. Use great ingredients!

Tanya’s dip is loaded with flavor from the spices she has paired with our Cloud 9® Bite-Sized Fruity Tomatoes, making it a balance of tangy, sweet and spicy. Each of the spices imparts a different flavor to the dip. The best thing about this recipe is that if you can’t find a spice listed, you can always omit it, or you can add your own spice blends that you think would pair well with these premium tomatoes.

WHAT MAKES THESE TOMATOES SO SPECIAL?

Process

The blast of fruity sweetness in every award-winning Cloud 9® tomato is a testament to our devoted team of growers and their passion for excellence. Every single tomato has been hand-selected and carefully evaluated to ensure it meets the highest standard.

They are sustainably grown in a greenhouse environment to produce the best results. We use precise climate, irrigation, plant nutrition and lighting controls to grow the sweetest tomatoes possible. We use state-of-the-art growing technology to control the specific nutrients each plant receives even before the first flowers blossom.

Our Cloud 9® Bite-Sized Fruity Tomatoes are also world renowned, having won the 2021 International Taste Institute’s Superior Taste Award and the 2021 ChefsBest® Excellence Award.

MAKING CLOUD 9 TOMATO DIP

tomatoes process

The most important part of getting the maximum flavor into this dip is found within the first step of this recipe: toasting your spices. There is a scientific basis behind this practice. Toasting heats the volatile flavor compounds in your spices, which makes them change shape and recombine to form new, more complex flavors and aromas. Be sure to only toast whole spices though. Ground spices have a greater surface area, making them more prone to burning and changing the flavor in an unpleasant way.

To toast the spices for Tanya’s recipe, heat oil in a large pan. She suggests adding the spices in the following order: fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, fennel seeds and nigella seeds. The cumin and mustard seeds should crackle in the pan and the fenugreek and fennel seeds should start to change color.

Once the fennel seeds turn golden brown, add the tomatoes. Toss the tomatoes well to coat them with the oil you were toasting your seeds with. Then add your dried spices, turmeric, and cayenne pepper, plus salt to taste. Cover the pan and let the mixture cook for two to three minutes. At this point, the tomatoes should start to soften. Gently press them with a spatula, add some sugar and give the mixture a good stir. Cook for two more minutes. Let the mixture cool a little before serving.

Tanya serves her dip with buttered toasts, naan bread and parathas, but you can serve it with crackers, chips and other delicious crunchy items, like our Aurora Bites Mini Sweet Peppers or our Poco Bites® Cocktail Cucumbers!

For Tanya’s full Cloud 9 Tomato Dip recipe, click here.

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