Cottage Cheese Clam Dip with Coconut Oil Fried Pork Rinds

I have only had clam dip I think twice in my life and it was strangely addicting. I don’t know why it’s memory has returned to me lately, but it has, French onion dip too. Being the skilled food hacker I have become I was determined to have myself some clam dip and make sure I didn’t regret it.

My latest food practice is removing the lactic acid from my Greek yogurt and cottage cheese by straining it out through a coffee filter set in a metal sieve over a bowl. I let this strain for a couple of days and a lot of liquid comes out of it and make the cottage cheese and yogurt not only less tangy, but much thicker almost like cream cheese.

To make my new invention, the clam dip, I used a half cup of each the strained full-fat cottage cheese and the Greek yogurt. I added a 6.5–ounce can of drained minced clams to the bowl and one tablespoon of the drained off clam liquid. I added in the zest of one lemon and 2 teaspoons of the lemon juice, 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, about 3 tablespoons of finely minced green onion, and a half teaspoon of Old Bay Seasoning. Wrap this up and refrigerate it overnight.

It is important to use minced clams for this and though I had a can of chopped clams I further chopped them really fine before using them. You can also add a clove of chopped garlic to this dip, but I opted to keep mine light. If it were a party I probably would have added it, but not for an early lunch! I also added salt to this dip, a citrus salt. My other salt option that sounded good was a smoked salt or a black garlic salt that I had.

For my dippers I heated up some refined coconut oil and fried pork rinds in it to displace the bad fats that are in pork rinds, the unsaturated kind. Since frying my pork rinds like this I can’t eat them right out of the bag anymore. They are so not worthwhile to eat them any other way now. They are so light and puffy and make crackling noises on the plate! An alternative to using pork rinds for this dip would be some olive oil fried potato chips.

Making this dip without cream cheese and using sour cream and cottage cheese instead saved me a lot of fat, 56 grams worth, and added in a more protein 8 grams worth. Canned clams might not look like much looking at the back of the can, but one cup of canned clams has 298mcg of vitamin B12 which according to the USDA is 1242% of ones recommended daily requirements.

Clams are small, chewy shellfish that are packed with nutrients. This mollusk is a lean source of protein and contains very high concentrations of vitamin B12. You can get over 7,000% of the DV in 20 small clams (190 grams).” https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-b12-foods#clams