This Christmas, I “made” two things, and I put the word “made” in quotes because both things were essentially made by machines. For instance, this dip, like many dips, is largely taken care of by a food processor. Can you fry up bacon? Can you drain and rinse a can of beans? Fantastic, you are halfway to having made this.

The recipe came from Fork Knife Swoon. She used navy beans; I used cannellini beans, since I just kind of like them, and anyway I didn’t see any navy beans at the store (at least, no store brand ones!). It’s possible that navy beans are creamier, because while this was reasonably creamy when I first made it, it needed a stir when I opened it up on Christmas day as an appetizer. It was also more of a spread than a dip at that point, which is fine and it meant I got to use the intense knife you see in the photo below.

Cannellini and Bacon Dip

Ingredients
1 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
4 slices bacon
1 clove garlic
juice from half a lemon
1 tbsp parsley
3 tbsp olive oil
pepper

Method
Cook the bacon as you normally would and set it aside to drain on paper towels.
Put the beans, garlic, lemon juice, and parsley into a food processor and break up the (hopefully now cooled) bacon into manageable chunks and throw that in too.
Process until it’s combined – you may need to scrape it down a bit.
Drizzle in the olive oil while running the processor, until you reach a decent consistency. Like I said before, it’s probably going to stay reasonably thick, so keep that in mind when you’re thinking about when to stop.
Season to taste with pepper.

Serve with something robust for dipping, like vegetables, or something you can spread it on. It’s thick enough that you couldn’t dip a feeble little potato chip in it, and a tortilla chip might even snap off in it, but you could spread it on pita… in fact, I’m going to put it in a sandwich tomorrow, I think. This is becoming a bit of a tradition with me, but it’s a good one!