What is Feta Cheese Dip?
Feta cheese dip is a flavorful and creamy dip that features crumbled feta cheese as its star ingredient. To prepare it, crumbled feta is typically blended with ingredients like Greek yogurt or cream cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and various seasonings and herbs. The result is a smooth and tangy dip with a rich and briny flavor profile. Feta cheese dip is often enjoyed with pita bread, crackers, or fresh vegetables as a delicious appetizer or snack. Its creamy texture and the saltiness of feta cheese make it a favorite among those who appreciate Mediterranean and Greek flavors. It can also serve as a delightful accompaniment to grilled meats or as a spread for sandwiches and wraps.
What does Feta Cheese Dip Taste Like?
Salty is one of the five main tastes. It has a satisfying and addictive quality with hints of sourness. Salty foods include cheeses, cured meats, chips, and olives. It is used in almost every dish and prepared food. Salt is added to enhance flavor and offer a distinctly salty taste.
Sour is one of the five main tastes. It is tart and bright, sometimes with a mouth-puckering quality. Sour is a naturally occurring flavor found in many foods, including citrus, vinegar, various dairy products, and certain fruits. Sour is used to enhance a dish or drink and is used as both a main and complimentary flavor.
Spicy is a flavor that brings heat and fire to food by creating a burning sensation in the mouth or sinuses. Spicy flavors come from hot peppers, horseradish, and wasabi. Spicy adds a kick and sometimes complexity to a dish and releases endorphins, creating a mildly addictive quality.
Ingredients
Feta cheese is a brined cheese. Traditional feta is made from goat's and sheep's milk, though some cheese makers particularly in the US, use cow's milk. This does not give the same tangy and rich flavor. Feta is a white cheese that comes in a saltwater brine. It is soft and crumbly with a flavor that is salty, tangy, creamy and bright. Feta is key ingredient in spanakopita, also called spinach pie.
Cherry tomatoes are small bite-sized tomatoes that grow on tomato plants. They are a variety of tomato enjoyed for their small size, about the size of a cherry. These tomatoes are round with smooth shiny skins. When you bite into the thin skin, the soft center of the tomato bursts into a juicy sweet and tart flavor. Cherry tomatoes are often served in salads, though can be found cooked with meats, veggies and starches.
The cucumber is a vine-growing vegetable with a shiny, smooth green skin and a long round body. Cucumbers vary in size depending on when they were picked and the variety of the vegetable. They can be a few inches, or over a foot long and are wide like a zucchini. Though smooth, they skin may be ridged, or have sparse and tiny rough spots. The flesh is a pale white green with a soft yet firm and crunchy texture that is full of water. Seeds run down the middle of the cucumber. This vegetable has a refreshing and mildly green and watery taste. Cucumbers are best eaten raw.
Lemon juice is made from the flesh of the pulpy yellow lemon fruit. The juice is squeezed from the flesh of the lemon and is a pale yellow color. The flavor is very sour and bright. Lemon juice is used in multiple cuisines around the world to brighten and enhance the flavors of the other ingredients. Lemon juice is used to make lemonade and goes well on fish. It has many uses.
Dill is an herb used in a variety of international cuisines. This plant is best fresh for its flavor is strongest then. Dill has frills growing off of the main stalk. The plant is green and aromatic. The flavor is grassy and bright with hints of anise, celery, and parsley. It works well as a garnish for specific dishes and is added to vegetables, grains, fish, and meat for flavor.
Greek yogurt is a dairy product made from milk fermented with healthy bacteria to thicken it into the product we know. With Greek yogurt and extra step is taken to strain all excess whey, creating a richer and creamier product. Greek yogurt is off white, or white in color and has a gentle tangy and milky flavor. The texture is thick and creamy without tasting very fatty. Greek yogurt can be eaten plain or incorporated as an ingredient into a dish.
Cream cheese is a popular American dairy product. It is a fresh cheese with a mild flavor that can be slightly tangy. It has a high fat content, as it is made from cream and milk. Cream cheese is white and has a thick and spreadable consistency. It is served on bread, bagels and other baked goods and is popular in desserts and dips.
Extra virgin olive oil is an extremely popular cooking oil and used raw to drizzle onto a multitude of dishes or mixed into salad dressings. Olives are crushed in a mill and pressed to extract the oil. The color of extra-virgin olive oil is usually a golden-green. The flavor can be mild or sharp, though the sign of a good oil means a bite to the flavor and a spiciness.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
Lemon zest is used in dishes to brighten the flavors and add a lemon flavor that is floral, citrusy, and anything but sour. Lemon zest comes from the yellow skin of the lemon. When using zest, none of the white pith underneath should be used, as it tastes bitter. The skin is shaved off in tiny pieces and this is what is called lemon zest, which also refers to the small size. The zest contains aromatic lemon oil and not juice. The small size of the zest makes it easy to incorporate into dishes such as pasta or into a cake batter.
Red chili flakes are usually made from cayenne peppers that have been dried and ground into small red flakes. The seeds are included and add much heat. The flavor is spicy and can be used as a topping for savory dishes such as pizza, meats and veggies.
