This Week’s Recipe: Slow-Cooker Spinach Artichoke Dip

When I invited some friends over for a board game night, I needed to make sure I had plenty of food on hand—enter this slow-cooker artichoke dip recipe, which, if I’m honest, I only used as a guide.

Instead of adding frozen spinach, I used fresh spinach which I blitz down to the size of glitter (or just a hair bigger — I hate stringing spinach). Next, I used frozen artichoke hearts I thawed in the microwave and used the food processor to quickly chop them into smaller chunks (though nowhere near as small as the spinach). And by swapping these two ingredients, I didn’t need to worry about excess water or oil in the finished dip.

Next, I used twice as much mozzarella and parm (because I like cheese). Then, I diced up some celery, fresh parsley, and doubled the amount of black pepper to help build flavor because I can’t have garlic or onion. I also used a teaspoon and a half of gochugaru rather than regular red pepper flakes, as I like their flavor better. I also cut the amount of salt (because I used extra cheese) to 1/4 tsp and used celery salt rather than table — again, to add some flavor.

Our guests polished it off in less than 45 minutes.

Agatha Christie: Honestly, I can’t see any of Christie’s detectives embracing a crockpot — except perhaps Inspector Japp, who might use one to cook up a stew while he’s on shift investigating a murder.