26 Dips and Spreads to Smear on Chips or Your Body

When you want to have a chill evening with friends, you don't want to chain yourself to the stove, serving multiple courses and getting fussy with garnishes and plating. You want good music in the background and strong drinks being passed around in Solo cups (heck no, you are not washing wine glasses tonight, thanks).

Most importantly, you want easy, crowd-pleasing party food that can also be eaten with one hand while the other gesticulates as you re-tell for the 100th time that really hilarious bad-date story that everyone loves. Basically, you want dips. Bowls and bowls of dips. The easiest way to entertain is to cover your coffee table with anything that can be scooped and thrown together with a platter of crudités or a bag of tortilla chips.

These homemade dips are so good that we don't really care what we're using for the actual dipping, so long as it is a stable vehicle for getting the dip from the bowl to our mouths. Go ahead and get scoopin'.

We don't want to brag or anything, but this is probably the best Buffalo chicken dip recipe you'll ever try. Serve it with celery sticks because we all need our green vegetables.

Cashew cream, navy beans, and nutritional yeast team up to recreate the creamy, cheesy texture you love about artichoke dip, but the vegan way.

Just as you do for a good baba ganoush, roasting the red peppers and eggplant until they're soft and charred is the key to the deep, smoky flavor in this easy vegetable dip.

Get your chips ready because tomatillos and avocados have joined forces to make the ultimate green summer dip.

Swap silken tofu in for the standard eggs, and you’ve got the perfect vegan mayo to use in all the dips and spreads of your dreams. Or, ya know, just dip your fries in it—it’s that good.

Don’t act like you haven’t taken down an entire bottle of Hidden Valley with some baby carrots while watching TV. Make your own ranch dressing from scratch and feel a little more virtuous about it next time.

If our other ranch recipe is too involved for you, this version is pared down, using Hellman’s, buttermilk, and dried onion and garlic powder for the classic ranch flavor you know and love.

The walnut- and red pepper-based dip known as muhammara gets a nice pop of acid from pomegranate molasses, which—if you aren’t familiar with it yet—will soon become one of your favorite pantry staples.

When chef Courtney McBroom visited the MUNCHIES Test Kitchen, she said, “The only possible way to screw this up is by not using ripe tomatoes.” For the best salsa ever, get the plumpest, juiciest tomatoes you can find.

Homeownership and retirement funds are for Boomers. If Millennials are going down, we'll go down swinging: with as much avocado toast and as many scoops of guacamole as we can get.

With frozen artichoke hearts and jarred olives and roasted red peppers, this artichoke tapenade is the kind of snack you can always whip together for any last-minute gatherings.

Mango salsa is so very early aughts. If you want to put fruit in your salsa, try some ripe avocados and a sweet papaya, and your snack won't feel so stuck in time.

This creamy queso gets a little kick from a salmorejo salsa studded with Serrano peppers that gets mixed in just before serving.

This easy queso is so good that you'll want to eat it with anything: a spoon, a ladle, a cup, or—not that we recommend it—your bare hands. Don't stress over homemade tortilla chips or store-bought; people will love it regardless.

Texas loves its queso, and if you want to make this Lone Star State-approved version of your favorite cheesy dip, skip the real cheese and go for the super processed cheese "product," like Easy Melt "Party Cheese" from Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B.

Who said chickpeas had to have a hold on the beans-turned-into-dip market? Whiz up some white cannellini beans with feta and garlic, and you'll blow through that bag of pita chips in no time.

North Carolina-based chef Ashley Christensen’s pimento cheese uses a good-quality aged Cheddar (a whole dang pound of it) and a from-scratch cider vinegar mayonnaise to bind it all together.

Jerusalem hummus typically refers to hummus that is garnished with hot, spiced ground beef and pine nuts, according to chef Michael Solomonov of the acclaimed Israeli cuisine restaurant Zahav. But even without the beef, this hummus is some of the best you’ll ever have.

Fondue use white wine and a bit of kirsch to thin the melted cheese, but this concoction keeps it real with the cheap light lager you've probably already got in the fridge. Beer cheese is fondue for the masses, if you will.

You’ll have to pry the tub of dehydrated Lipton’s onion soup mix packet and sour cream from our cold, dead hands, but we’ll admit that this homemade onion dip is damn good, too.

Roasted garlic doesn't have quite as pungent a kick as the raw stuff, but we've gotta acknowledge that yes, this roasted garlic dip will probably give you some garlic breath. That said, if everyone around you is also eating it, does it really matter?

After all the effort you’re going to put into making this seven-layer dip, you should most definitely serve it in a glass parfait dish so everyone can see your meticulous layers of dip goodness.

This cheesy black bean dip has all the flavors you love from seven-layer dip, but without all the effort of actually assembling seven different layers.

Brandade is a surprisingly delicious combination of pureed salt cod and potatoes, and it's the perfect creamy, salty dip for radishes or snap peas.

If you have the patience to clean and cook raw artichokes, more power to you. But this three-cheese artichoke dip works just as well with the canned ones, and it's tasty as hell.

MUNCHIES culinary director Farideh Sadeghin hails from Maryland, as you might guess from this recipe. As she'll tell you, eat blue crabs in any form possible, including this cheesy crab dip with lots of Old Bay seasoning.

San Antonio-based chef Rico Torres gets his tomatillos nice and charred in a 450°F oven before blending them together into a smoky salsa with cilantro and serrano peppers.

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