Last-Minute Guests? Olive Oil Bread Dip Is A Perfect Appetizer

It is that time of year when friends and family are coming in and out of your home on what seems like a daily basis, seemingly eating you out of house and home. Even though you’ve come to expect the monsoon of company moving back and forth in your home, you’re prepared for it all because you’ve got a secret weapon – olive oil bread dip.

Now, there is a good chance that a number of you probably thought we were going to mention a casserole of some kind, but olive oil bread dip is so easy to make, why would you spend time with various “cream of” concentrated soups?

Think about your favorite Italian restaurants. There’s always the amazing pasta dishes and just perfectly sweet but not too sweet desserts, but when you’re first seated, you are brought really fresh Italian bread and some olive oil bread dip. For the most part, you don’t even think twice about; you just dig right in because it’s amazing.

The same should go for your own home, especially when you have last-minute guests popping in for a visit. It may be a family member you haven’t seen in a while or an old college roommate who’s moving to the area & decided to look you up. You want to be a good host, even if it wasn’t planned, but part of being a good host means not being shored up in the kitchen talking over your shoulder while you make snacks.

All you need is a few simple ingredients to make your guests feel like they’ve stepped into an Italian bistro:

• Good Quality Olive Oil
• Salt (larger, more corse crystals have a great depth of flavor and texture to add)
• Pepper (fresh-cracked is the best in this application)
• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• Minced Garlic (again, fresh goes a long way, and you could even use a garlic press if you’re “pressed” for time)

Add your oil to a plate that has a central area that allows for the ingredients to pool together. Next, add your garlic, and take a few moments to stir these two items a bit. Follow this up with your cracked pepper, red pepper flakes, and salt. Stir once again, and you are done. It really is that simple.

The hardest thing about an olive oil bread dip appetizer may be how to deal with the bread part of the equation. You could always try to keep an inexpensive loaf of Italian bread from the grocery store on-hand just in case. Perhaps the best thing you can do, given the time-crunch of a last-minute guest, is have a bread “tube” package in your fridge. In the same way you can pop open a cardboard tube for cookies or crescent rolls, you can also find bread ready to be baked in minutes. This way, you can make your dip, and let it sit while you bake your bread & entertain. The dip will be outstanding!