Tailgate Rip ‘n’ Dip with Garlic Rolls

Every party needs a show-stopping dish, and our Tailgate Rip ‘n’ Dip with Garlic Rolls is precisely that. Here, we bake Buffalo chicken and spinach artichoke dips inside a pull-apart garlic knot crust for an appetiser that’s creamy, spicy and garlicky all at once. 

We used our cold-proof pizza dough to create the rolls, because an overnight proof generates better depth of flavour. If you’re in a hurry, don’t worry: This recipe works with a wide range of different pizza doughs. When we baked the rolls in our Ooni Karu 16, we put them in a rectangular Sicilian pan, but any heatproof 8-by-10-inch baking dish will work just as well.  

For the dips, we went with game night classics: spinach artichoke and Buffalo chicken. 

We stuck with tried-and-true ingredients for the spinach artichoke dip, using canned artichoke hearts, fresh spinach, cream cheese, sour cream and Parmesan cheese. As they say, if it ain’t broke…

We used rotisserie chicken for convenience when making the Buffalo chicken dip,  but in a pinch, you can use cooked chicken breasts. The one thing you can’t compromise on in this dish is the Frank’s Red Hot Original Cayenne Pepper sauce. Frank’s is “the key ingredient every red-blooded American food obsessive knows is used to make Buffalo sauce,” Arthur Bovino writes in “Buffalo Everything: A Guide to Eating in the ‘Nickel City.’” Instead of making our own Buffalo sauce here (Buffalo sauce includes butter, so it’s a bit different from hot sauce), we went to Frank’s for the bottled version. However, if you have your own special recipe, don’t be afraid to use it. 

When combined with salty, buttery garlic rolls, spinach artichoke and Buffalo dips are pretty addictive. Why not make a couple of Tailgate Rip ‘n’ Dips for your next get-together? Fair warning, though: They’ll disappear almost as soon as you take them out of the oven. 

Tailgate Rip ‘n’ Dip with Garlic Rolls