💚 Green Goddess Cashew Dip 💚

just honestly a very delicious thing

I love a cashew. I love them roasted and salted and shoved into my mouth by the handful, I love them roasted and salted and blitzed into my smoothies LIKE SO, I love them candied, I love them stir-fried. And I love, love them soaked and blended into something creamy.

Soaked cashews have a similar reputation to, say, chia pudding—a beautiful blank slate that gets a bad rap because of its frequent use towards a dietary goal. But a soaked and blended cashew can be silky and nutty and sweet, and it can be the basis of a dip that you can let sit out, say perhaps at a pool party, without people freaking out about warm mayonnaise.

As a former vegan who used to soak and blend cashews—I even used to make soaked BUCKWHEAT PUDDING, which I actually remember being quite delicious, and maybe I should try it again—in my vitamix religiously, I have a soft spot in my heart for this sort of health food-adjacent schmoo, and wanted to turn it into a dip that felt rich and exciting and summery. I wanted something green and vibrant that still required a spoonful of nutritional yeast¹.

I tested this for Fran and Phil (and Mess Hall Editor-at-Large, Jackson) last week, and found it passed an important test: that even in an imperfect iteration, it was devoured. I was kicking myself, as I kept pushing CHOP and BLEND and CHOP and BLEND on the miniature cuisinart food processor I found on the street five years ago, for not soaking my cashews longer. Nobody wants a grainy dip, I huffed, this is awful, this is not blending, and then after enough splashes of water and olive oil, look at that, we had a dip, and everyone went crazy for it. It wasn’t even that grainy after all. It was gone in an hour.

Of course as part of POOL PARTY MONTH I envisioned this as something you could set out on a table and not worry about its spoiling. It is perfect with some crudité and a plate full of plain Ruffles, my preferred party chip because they’re generously salted, hefty enough to carry a dip, and flavorful enough to sit on their own. But it’s delicious eaten inside too, in the cool waft of a window unit.

Green Goddess Cashew Dip