Sauces & dressings · Creamy sauces & dips

Lemony white bean dip

Name: Lemony white bean dip
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: 1 can (400 g) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed; 1 lemon lemon, zest and juice; 2 cloves garlic; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1/4 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 3 tbsp water; 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

Cannellini beans blended with lemon, garlic and good oil into something smoother than it has any right to be. Ten minutes, one tin, and the fibre and legume protein mean it holds you the way a dip normally doesn't.

Time: 10 min (10 prep + 0 cook)
Servings: 6
Per serving: 126 kcal
Protein: 5 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1 can (400 g) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed400 g
1 lemon lemon, zest and juice40 g
2 cloves garlic6 g
2 tbsp olive oil30 g
1/4 tsp salt2 g
1/2 tsp black pepper1 g
3 tbsp water40 g

To finish

2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped8 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Blend the beans, lemon zest and juice, garlic, salt and pepper until thick and smooth.
With the blender running, pour in the olive oil, then loosen with the water a spoonful at a time until it drops off a spoon rather than clinging to it.
Taste for lemon and salt — beans take more of both than you expect.
Spread into a bowl, scatter the parsley over and add a last thread of oil. Keeps 4 days.

How is this different from hummus?

No tahini, so it is lighter and much more lemon-forward, and white beans blend smoother than chickpeas without any peeling. It also carries roughly half the calories of a typical hummus spoon for spoon.

Why this score

moderately filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

16% of kcal

71% water

28 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 756 kcal goes into the pot, 527 g of ingredients comes out as ~527 g of food → 143 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 143
Protein: (16%); 6 g
Fat: (41%); 7 g
Carbohydrates: (43%); 16 g
of which sugar: <1 g
Fiber: 4 g
Sodium: 273 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More sauces & dressings

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.