Cheesy Spicy Sausage Dip

This Cheesy Spicy Sausage Dip is a spicy, cheesy, tomato-based dip that’s delicious with tortilla chips or pita bread.

Ordering an appetizer at a restaurant is one of my favorite things. Partly because I love that it signifies that I’m going to be staying a while, relaxing, enjoying myself and partly because it’s a reminder that I’ve come so far from the days when I constantly worried about whether or not the food was going to “make me fat.” Today, if I see something on the menu that I can’t take my eyes off of, I order it. Simple as that.

That’s what happened to me about a year or so ago in a smoke-filled bar in my neighborhood called The Squirrel Hill Cafe (also known as The Squirrel Cage).

After sitting down and ordering some beers with the fiance, I opened the food menu and was immediately intrigued by the “Hot Sausage Dip” on the appetizer list. Maybe it’s just me, but I had NEVER heard of sausage dip before. What the hell could that be? All I knew was that I liked spicy food and had to give it a shot.

You guys, I fell in love.

It was a spicy, cheesy, tomato-based dip that was thick enough to eat with tortilla chips and pita bread but a little too thick to be used as a marinara or pasta sauce, despite what it looked like at first glance.

All I knew was that the two main ingredients were a spicy Italian sausage and diced tomatoes. After ordering it my fair share of times, I thought I’d take a shot at recreating it in my own kitchen.

I’m not sure how close to the real thing this recipe actually is, but it sure is damn good.

Since I used canned diced tomatoes, the trick to making it really flavorful and getting rid of that strange “canned” taste that we’ve probably all experienced is adding a ton of herbs and spices and simmering the heck out of it. After about an hour of simmering on the stove top covered with a lid, it’s important to uncover the lid and let it cook to reduce the liquid just a tad bit to get the thickness just right.

Whether or not this is anywhere close to the Hot Sausage Dip from The Squirrel Cage doesn’t really matter because I made this recipe for a little NBA All-Star watching party I hosted and it was an absolute hit.

(Will, this is for you buddy.)