First of all I must make the disclaimer that this is quite possibly the most pre-prepared food you will ever seen in a single one of my blog postings. With that out of the way I have to say that Mexican Layered Dip is one of my favourite dips. It is very easy to change around the layers and depending what you add to it, it can be substantial enough for a meal.
First layer: since I like my protein I took some ground turkey and sauteed it in a pan along with salt, pepper, cumin, ground coriander and ancho chili powder.
Once that was cooked I added in a can of refried beans. They weren't home made but at least they're made in Mexico. So I get points for that, right?
I also put in a few dashes of hot sauce. My Mom and sister went down to Mexico earlier this year and they said that this brand was really popular there.
Second layer: the sour cream layer. I didn't want plain sour cream so I grabbed some jalapenos that were kicking around the bottom of my veggie drawer and chopped them up. Yes, I leave the seeds in but I like to live dangerously like that.
Since I actually didn't have any sour cream I ended up using yogurt cheese, which is yogurt which has been strained to make it super thick. For more flavour I added a generous amount of lime juice along with salt and pepper.
Third layer: I think I almost cried tears of culinary joy the day they started selling guacamole in my supermarket. I love this brand since it don't have any preservatives or weird ingredients. It's basically guacamole, cilantro, salt and pepper. For some bizarre reason it doesn't have any lime or lemon juice which I find odd and I always stir some in. I used to buy avocados but half of the time they were either over or under ripe or completely bruised. Guacamole in a container is much easier.
Fourth layer: I didn't have my usual salsa so I rummaged around in my pantry and found some taco sauce.
Fifth layer: chopped green onions. Pretty self explanatory.
Sixth layer: I declined to go the route of buying pre-sliced black olives since they are always tasteless and I pitted some kalamata olives. Tasty but rather messy. The seventh layer was grated strong white cheddar but I forgot to take a picture.
Here is the fully assembled dip. My only round glass dish was unavailable so I ended up using a glass loaf pan since I wanted to take pictures of the layers.
I think I must have taken ten pictures trying to get a good shot of a tortilla chip with dip on it. I love the taste of the different layers all melding together but once you scoop the dip it is not longer very photogenic.
Please give this recipe a try. It is dead simple and really good. It is also one of the few foolproof ways to put avocado in a dish and not have it oxidize. This is a great party dip and really quick to make. It is good cold and can be prepared ahead of time. Unless you loathe Mexican food it would be hard to think of anyone that would not like this.
