Ramp and Cream Cheese Camp Dip
Wild leeks, shelf-stable cream cheese, and bacon bits, stirred cold in the bag.
- calories
- 210
- weight
- 2 oz
- cal / oz
- 105
- protein
- 5 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 10 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Lunch
- No cook
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Day hike
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Cream cheese | 4 oz | half a block; shelf-stable foil-wrapped style if you have no cooler |
|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | dropper bottle |
| Ramps or wild leeks | 1/3 cup chopped | bulbs and leaves both; ordinary leek or freeze-dried chives work |
| Bacon bits | 2 tbsp | the shelf-stable jarred kind |
| Salt and pepper | to taste |
Method
- Let the cream cheese sit out until it gives under a thumb. Cold, it will not take the oil.
- Chop the ramps fine. Bulbs go in first, leaves after, or the leaves bruise into paste.
- Work the oil into the cream cheese in the bag until it turns glossy and loose.
- Fold in the ramps and bacon bits. Salt and pepper, then taste.
- Give it twenty minutes before eating. The ramp flavor needs time to move into the fat.
Ramps are a short-season plant and they are strong. Fat is what makes them usable in quantity: the cream cheese holds the sulfur compounds and spreads them across a whole cracker instead of hitting you all at once. The olive oil is not filler either, it thins the block enough to spread without a knife or a bowl.
The home version calls for a fridge, and this one does not. Softened cream cheese is fine at ambient temperature for a day, and shelf-stable cream cheese or the powdered kind carries it further. Bacon bits are already dry and salty, so they do not add moisture to something you want to keep for a couple of days. Harvest ramps by cutting one leaf and leaving the bulb; patches are slow to recover.
Packing
Mix at the trailhead or in camp in a quart freezer bag, then squeeze it out of a snipped corner onto crackers. Nothing to wash. If you are dehydrating the ramps at home, do the bulbs and leaves separately; they dry at different rates.
Variations
- Freeze-dried chives plus a pinch of garlic powder stand in when ramps are out of season.
- Powdered cream cheese rehydrated with a little cold water makes this fully shelf-stable for a multi-day trip.
- Stir in a spoonful of powdered milk if the dip splits on you.
https://www.huntingpa.com/threads/ramp-dip-recipe.6129