The 2-Ingredient Pasta Salad Dressing I Wish I'd Tried Sooner (No Mayo or Olive Oil!)
My latest update is also low effort and a little unexpected. Castello's whipped dip has become my new go-to dressing. After swirling into your next pasta salad, it could very well become yours, too.
What's So Great About Castello Garlic & Herb Soft Whipped Dip?
fIf you ask me, Castello created a tub filled with spreadable luxury. Similar to a Gournay cheese or its French-inspired cousin Alouette, the soft cheese is seasoned with a mix of herbs and spices. In this case of Castello's Garlic & Herb Whipped Dip, it's dried parsley, basil, and garlic, along with garlic powder — for extra potency — salt, white pepper, and horse radish.
Castello Garlic & Herbs Whipped Dip With Cream Cheese Spread
Instacart
$3
Buy Now
There's a brightness from parsley, a deep basil undertone, and a light tang that's reminiscent of a good crème fraîche. Best of all, it's whipped, which, texturally, incorporates a ton of air into the mix, making it light and fluffy rather than heavy or dense.
What's the Best Way to Enjoy Castello Garlic & Herb Whipped Dip?
The easiest way to enjoy this dip, without a doubt, is simply atop your thin crackers or alongside a summer crudite platter — after all, this is the season for it. (The light nature of the cheese can sometimes get lost against the weight of a cracker with more heft or flatbread.) These days, it's most often paired with pasta.
To serve four, simply combine 2 to 2.5 ounces of the cheese with a splash of milk (or buttermilk, if you have it, to really play on the spread's natural tanginess) and a half cup of pasta water and voilà — you've got a dressing for your pasta salad. Of course, this works wonderfully with chilled pasta. If you're looking for a dinner refresh, simmer the whipped cheese in a pan with roasted vegetables and blistered cherry tomatoes and a few tablespoons of pasta water (for 3 to 5 minutes). It evokes notes of a creamy vodka sauce.
Don't stop at crackers, crudite, or pasta, though. It's equally powerful as a sandwich spread (try it on a roasted veggie panini with heaps of eggplant and zucchini) or when dolloped onto a bowl of creamy soup or even a baked potato.
Buy: Castello Garlic & Herb Soft Whipped Dip, $4.19 for 5.3 ounces at Instacart
Got a 1-ingredient upgrade to share? Tell us about it in the comments below.
The Weekly Checkout
Sign up for The Weekly Checkout to get the most up-to-date grocery news, tips, and highlights.
Subscribe to The Kitchn!
Further Reading
We Used Our New 'Room Plan' Tool to Give This Living Room 3 Distinct Styles — See How, Then Try It Yourself
The Design Changemakers to Know in 2025
Create Your Own 3D Room Plan with Our New Tool
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
Ripe tomatoes and brie meld into this luscious, no-cook pasta sauce
This column comes from the Eat Voraciously newsletter. Sign up here to get one weeknight dinner recipe, tips for substitutions, techniques and more in your inbox Monday through Thursday. Years ago, to celebrate summer tomatoes, The Post held an annual contest called Top Tomato, where readers were invited to submit their best tomato recipes. (This was before my time here.) This recipe for Pasta With Fresh Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Brie comes from Patrice Kehoe, whose creamy tomato pasta with just the right amount of garlic flavor earned her a spot among the finalists. While browsing our recipe archives earlier this year, I came across it and left the browser tab open because it caught my eye. It reminded me of a recipe I'd made years ago out of 'The Silver Palate Cookbook' by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins with Michael McLaughlin. Get the recipe: Pasta With Fresh Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Brie If you're not familiar with this cookbook, which was first published the year I was born, all you need to know is that the Silver Palate was a very popular shop specializing in prepared foods — akin to a traiteur — in New York City for many years until it closed in 1993. Rosso and Lukins were the brains behind the operation. They each published cookbooks of their own, and others together, but it's 'The Silver Palate Cookbook' that's best-known and still in print. Chicken Marbella is easily the most famous recipe to come out of the book. But in a chapter titled 'Summer Pasta,' Rosso and Lukins included a recipe for linguine with tomatoes and basil. If you were skimming, you would think that was all there was to it: linguine, tomatoes and basil. And, done well (with enough olive oil, salt and pepper), linguine, tomatoes and basil is a pretty perfect meal. But no. After the '4 ripe large tomatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes' and before the '1 cup cleaned fresh basil leaves, cut into strips,' there is '1 pound Brie cheese, rind removed, torn into irregular pieces.' When I saw that, it stopped me in my tracks. Brie? In pasta? 'We first had this uncooked pasta sauce when we were guests in a beautiful home on Sardinia,' Rosso and Lukins write in the recipe's headnote. 'Such a recipe could only be the result of hot, lazy days and abundant ripe tomatoes and basil. The heat of the pasta warms and brings out the flavors of the sauce in a wonderfully subtle way. Delicious and easy.' Kehoe agreed, and spent years making the pasta as written for her family before she made it her own by calling for roasted garlic instead of fresh. She also reduced the pound of brie to just 6 ounces. Her other major alteration? When she's in a hurry, she skips part of the first step of the original recipe, which says to let the uncooked sauce sit at room temperature for two hours. I agree with Kehoe. Although an hour or two of resting time allows the flavors of the sauce to mingle and intensify, it's not necessary. What is a good idea is to be sure that you use the absolute best summer tomatoes you can find and set the bowl of sauce ingredients near your pot of pasta water, or somewhere warm, to encourage the tomatoes to release their juices and the brie to soften. That way, when the hot pasta hits it, it will swiftly melt and meld into an incomparably luscious sauce that requires no cooking but tastes as if it could have taken all day to make. Bonus: This recipe serves 6 and takes 30 minutes to cook, making it great dinner party fare. (Of course, you can also scale it down.) Pair it with a salad of chicories or arugula and some fresh bread for an easy feast. Get the recipe: Pasta With Fresh Tomato, Roasted Garlic and Brie
New York Times
6 hours ago
- New York Times
It's Hot Outside. Let's Drink.
Hosted by Gilbert Cruz Featuring Sam Sifton and Becky Hughes Produced by Tina Antolini With Alex Barron and Kate LoPresti Edited by Wendy Dorr Engineered by Efim Shapiro Three editors at The Times make one another their go-to cocktails and debate the dos and don'ts of summer drinking. Whether you like beer, wine or pickle juice, they've got something for you to are their recipes, simplified into three steps. Something Classic: Gin and Tonic Fill a highball glass with ice. Add a shot of gin and lime juice to taste. Top with tonic water and mix carefully. Garnish with lime and enjoy. Something Easy: Spaghett Take a long sip (about an ounce) from a bottle of Miller High Life. Add Aperol or Campari, filling the neck of the bottle. Squeeze a lemon wedge into the bottle and enjoy. Something Sweet: Tinto de Verano Fill a highball glass with ice. Add dry red wine, like a Grenache or a Tempranillo, until the glass is about a third of the way full. Slowly add Sprite or a lemon-lime soda of your choosing, filling the rest of the glass. Stir. Garnish with a lemon wheel and enjoy. Gilbert Cruz is the editor of The New York Times Book Review. Sam Sifton is an assistant managing editor at The Times and the founding editor of New York Times Cooking. Becky Hughes is a food editor at The Times and a writer for the Where to Eat: New York City newsletter. The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven't already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's Daughter, 21, Stuns in a Tiny Bikini
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's Daughter, 21, Stuns in a Tiny Bikini originally appeared on Parade. With the summer season well upon us, celebrities are continuing turn up on beaches around the U.S. to soak up the sun. That includes their offspring, such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's daughter Apple Martin. Recently spotted in the Hamptons wearing a tiny bikini and splashing in the waves, Apple, 21, looks all grown up — and a lot like her Academy Award-winning mother, for that matter. TMZ has the photos, which can be seen here. One shows Apple in the ocean off New York, throwing her hands up and having a blast as waves crash around her. Both of Apple's celebrity parents have been in the news of late, following a certain infamous Coldplay concert — where the (married) chief executive officer of Astronomer was caught on a "kiss cam" getting cozy with another woman: the company's human resources chief. Following the concert — and the headlines that spawned from the incident — CEO Andy Byron officially resigned, after if was confirmed he was indeed with Astronomer colleague Kristin Cabot. "As stated previously, Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding," the company's statement, posted to X on July 19, read. "Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met." "Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted," the statement continued. "The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO." And then there's Paltrow, 52. Just a week after Byron, 50, resigned and Cabot, 52, followed suit, the company hired the goop founder — and ex of the Coldplay co-founder, 48 — as its official "temporary spokesperson" during Astronomer's turbulent time. Following the stunning announcement, the company dropped a hilarious video of Paltrow answering commonly asked questions about the future of Astronomer. Watch the laugh-out-loud clip below. Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's Daughter, 21, Stuns in a Tiny Bikini first appeared on Parade on Aug 7, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 7, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
