This soft creamy melt in your mouth feta mixed with the roasted red peppers and the brine of the olives makes this baked feta dip amazing! Seriously, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. I even got Phil to like it and he’s a known feta hater. Now he gets excited when I say I want to make this again!
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I actually made this recipe for the first time WAY back in October, thinking if I could perfect it fast enough I would be able to promote this as a Thanksgiving appetizer. But life happened, my photos weren’t coming out how I wanted, and I kept wanting to do a reshoot. Sometimes the best food can still look somewhat unappetizing. That, or I’m just being too hard on myself lol.
Side note, I did make it for Thanksgiving though, and it didn’t last long on the table. The very first time I made this, a few weeks prior to Thanksgiving, I was offering my parents some so they could taste it. They had just finished eating dinner and weren’t too thrilled with the idea of eating more. However, once they dipped their first cracker into the creamy baked feta dip, it was like they hadn’t eaten all day. We were literally fighting over who got the next bite. It was kind of insane.
Baked Feta Dip: The Brine is KEY
But not every time I made this was a hit. One of the times I set out to photograph this recipe (one of my many reshoots lol) our grocery store had no more feta. At least, they had no feta that was in a brine. So, thinking that it was exactly the same, I went up to the deli and got a dry chunk of feta. I WAS WRONG. You live and you learn, right? It was very upsetting but the dry feta turned into an absolutely BRICK after baking. No amount of olive oil would have helped me there.
I was so excited to eat it after taking my photos, and we planned on eating it for lunch. Sadly it was absolutely inedible. The feta dried up and no cracker could even get through it. So we did what any person would do. Throw it out?? No! We fished all the garlic and roasted red peppers out of this baked feta dip and ate those on the crackers instead! Still gotta eat lunch, am I right?
So learn from my mistake, and if you’re going to make this baked feta dip…USE THE FETA THAT’S IN THE BRINE. You’ll be sorry if you don’t, I know I was. (It was very upsetting having the throw away that whole block of cheese…as a cheese lover, it felt WRONG.)
This Baked Feta Dip is Marry Me Good
When the baked feta dip did come out good (every other time I used the feta in the brine, that is,) it was so delicious. Like I said earlier, my parents and I were fighting over it, and my boyfriend, the known feta hater, actually LOVED IT. So much so, as a joke he asked me to marry him after trying it for the first time.
But the joke doesn’t stop there. He asked me to make it again the very next day! That weekend we had planned to see some friends that we hadn’t seen in a long time. And Phil was so excited for me to make this for them too. So we went back out to the grocery store and picked up all the ingredients again. And the next morning we made this baked feta dip again. I secretly think he just wanted me to make this again and used our friends as an excuse!
We secured the baked feta dip in the car, using saran wrap, cardboard boxes, and a dish towel (might as well have put it in a car seat honestly.) And off we went to show off my new recipe to our friends, Alex and Yas. Alex was a little iffy on it, I was unaware that he didn’t like olives (even though Yas forced him to try some anyway.) And Yas loved it so much she ALSO asked me to marry her (as a joke.) So take it from me, this baked feta dip is so good you might get a few marriage proposals if you make it.
Equipment:
So since there’s no mixing and there’s really no prep involved, the equipment is very simple. Which means less clean up as well, so that’s a HUGE bonus for me. So really all you’ll need is a square baking dish like this 8×8 glass Pyrex dish. We have two and they are definitely some of my favorites – clean, simple, and gets the job done. Plus they are super easy to clean! (Which obviously if you know me, it my favorite part about them.) And that’s really it! The dip gets assembled in the dish you’ll me baking it in, and usually we just eat it right out of the baking dish too! And it’s usually fresh out on the oven and we burn out tongues, but that’s not the point!
Other Recipes You Might Like:
If you like this baked feta dip, and you’re like me and like things extra cheesy, you might like some of these recipes as well:
- Baked Feta Pasta with Zucchini and Sausage
- Instant Pot Spinach and Artichoke Risotto
- Easy Cheesy Taco Stuffed Peppers
- Roasted Asparagus and Leek Tart
- Caramelized Onion, Fig, and Goat Cheese Tarts
Soft and Creamy Baked Feta Dip
Ingredients
- 8 oz feta cheese in brine
- 2 cans diced tomatoes one drained
- 15 oz jar roasted red peppers chopped
- 12 cloves garlic
- 1 cup Kalamata olives
- 1 tsp oregano
- 2 – 3 fresh sprigs thyme
- salt & black pepper to taste
- 2 Tbsps olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°
- In a 9×9 baking dish, add diced tomatoes (one can drained), and roasted red peppers. Add whole cloves of garlic, nestling them into the tomatoes and peppers. Place feta in the middle of the dish. Sprinkle olives around feta.
- Add oregano, black pepper, salt, and thyme. Drizzle with olive oil. Cook for 40 minutes.
- Serve with crackers or fresh bread.
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