Jalapeno poppers are delicious on their own and even better with a tasty dip. If you’re looking for some ideas for delicious sauces, you’ve come to the right place.
Jalapeno poppers are commonly paired with cream-based sauces like blue cheese dip, acid-based sauces like lemon mayo dip, and spicy dips for the heat seekers, such as sriracha mayo dip.
Why do these dips and sauces work, and what about dips for bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers? Find out the answers below! We’ve divided these sauce ideas into three categories: cream or cheese-based, acid-based, and spicy dips.
Cream or Cheese Based Dips
Cream or cheese-based sauces help balance the heat of jalapenos.
Blue Cheese Dip
This dip is for people who like their dips creamy, cheesy, and flavorful. It is made with sour cream, mayo, and blue cheese. Some recipes add lemon juice and garlic, but these ingredients are optional.
Check out this Blue Cheese Dip video!
Ranch with a Touch of Lime
Ranch dressing tastes great with poppers. You can directly dip them in the dressing or add a little squeeze of lime to add a layer of flavor!
Guacamole Dip
Although not really a cream, avocados are cream-like when mashed.
We recommend a guacamole dip if your jalapeno poppers don’t contain a lot of cheese. Guacamole is a versatile dip, so you can also customize it to your liking.
Here’s a guacamole video recipe you can recreate!
Acid-Based Dips
Acid-based sauces like lemon, lime, and vinegar cut through the fried and already cheesy jalapeno poppers. People also prefer these dips because they add lightness as well as sweet and salty notes.
Lemon Mayo Dip
Although this dip calls for mayonnaise, the dip becomes more acid-based because of the lemon or lime, which adds freshness. You can also add lemon zest to elevate this dip.
Check this recipe out!
Lime Cilantro Dip
This dipping sauce is made with sour cream, fresh lime juice, cilantro or parsley, green onions or spring onions, garlic, and salt. You can also add other ingredients to your liking, as shown in this video.
The sour cream and fresh lime juice add the acidity that so many people enjoy with poppers. The cilantro, green onion, and garlic add freshness and extra flavor to the dip.
Marinara Dip
It might not sound like the right fit for poppers, but if you are a tomato lover, try a marinara sauce!
Marinara sauce is versatile and actually tastes great as a dipping sauce for jalapeno poppers. You can buy a pre-made version or easily make it in the kitchen since it doesn’t require many ingredients.
All you need are your favorite type of tomatoes, olive oil, oregano, basil (fresh or dried), chopped garlic, and a few chili flakes. Sugar and balsamic vinegar are optional additions, as you can see in this video.
Combine everything in a pan and simmer on medium-low heat for 45 minutes. Season with salt to taste.
Raspberry Dip
If you love a fruitier note, you might want to consider a raspberry dip. You’ll need raspberries (fresh or frozen), sugar, water, cornstarch, vanilla extract, and a little squeeze of lemon. The sweet-and-sour flavor pairs well with jalapeno poppers!
Spicy Dips
If the heat of your poppers isn’t quite enough and you want to pack in more spiciness, check out these sauce ideas!
Sweet Chili Sauce
Sweet chili sauce is one of the most common sauces for dipping classic jalapeno poppers, as well as other fried appetizer recipes and snacks like Thai chicken wings, Filipino lumpia, shrimp tempura, or coconut shrimp.
You can buy sweet chili sauce or make it at home. You’ll need rice vinegar or cane vinegar, water, chili flakes or minced chili pepper of choice (add more or less based on your spice tolerance), garlic, ginger, and cornstarch.
It’s sweet, sour, salty, and spicy — a great blast of flavor! Check out this recipe.
Sriracha and Mayo Dip
This sriracha and may dip is perhaps the simplest jalapeno popper dipping sauce because you only need sriracha sauce and mayonnaise. You can also add other ingredients to increase the heat even more, as you’ll see in this spicy sriracha mayo dip.
Honey Mustard Sauce
This sauce isn’t too spicy, but the mustard gives it a kick. The sauce is tangy from the mustard and sweet due to the honey. You’ll just need mustard (yellow, Dijon, or both), honey, mayo, grated garlic, and salt.
You can also add sour cream as this recipe does!
Dips for Bacon-Wrapped Jalapeno Poppers
Considering jalapeno poppers contain cheese (and sometimes ground meat) and are fried, wrapping them with bacon makes them even heavier on the grease and cholesterol content – and also even more irresistible.
We recommend acid-based sauces like the ones above to cut through the grease and add freshness to this amplified version of jalapeno peppers.
Jalapeno poppers are crispy, spicy, cheesy, and perfect in every bite, but they taste even better with a delicious dip. Make them pop even more with these dip ideas!
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