Rosemary White Bean Dip

This is a yummy bean dip made out of white beans. It has no "weird" ingredients so maybe Toby would even eat it! Heehee.

Ingredients:

2 cups white beans (canned are fine)
3 TB extra virgin olive oil
2 TB red wine vinegar
2 ts dried rosemary
salt and pepper



Steps:

1. SOAK THE BEANS (you can skip this if using canned beans)

Put a cup or so of beans into a bowl and fill with cold water. Let it sit overnight, or up to 24 hours. The longer you let them sit the more water they'll absorb and the less time you'll have to cook them on the stove; I've found that the beans don't soak up any more water after the 24 hour mark so I try not to go past that time. Plus you don't want them to start fermenting!

Unsoaked beans:


Soaked beans. They poof up a lot!


Take your soaked beans, rinse them a couple times under cold water, and put them in a pot with fresh water (not the water from the bowl). Simmer them until soft. This might take anywhere from 20 to 35 minutes depending on how long you let them soak.

2. MAKE THE DIP

Put 2 cups of the beans, the olive oil, and the vinegar into the food processor or blender and puree. If the dip is too thick to blend properly, you can add more liquid to thin it out. Add it slowly because a little bit of liquid can make a big difference. Adding more oil will make it taste richer. The vinegar will tart it up (so you should like that since you're such a tart!) and if you want to keep it tasting the same, add water. When it's pureed nice and smooth, take the dip out of the blender and stir in the rosemary and the salt and pepper to taste. Let it sit in the fridge for a few hours to soften the rosemary and blend the flavors. We usually eat it with bread or ricecakes but you could put it on pita bread like hummus too. It looks more or less like this when it's done: