Best Dipping Sauces For Artichokes ⋆ 16 Options You Should Try ⋆

Roasted, boiled, or steamed artichokes in summer and fall are a delicious starter or snack. But what sauce to serve your artichokes up with? As it turns out, you have plenty of different options! You just have to choose one that has the kind of flavors you (or your guests) enjoy. So let us now look at your options!

So, what are the best dipping sauces for artichokes? The best dipping sauces for artichokes include mayo and Greek yogurt-based sauces. Often these sauces are flavored with lemon, garlic, fresh herbs, balsamic vinegar, and/or mustard. Some sauces call for capers, others for something more unusual, such as chipotle sauce or curry. Alternatively, olive oil-based sauces pair well too. Often the olive oil is combined with balsamic vinegar or lemon, as well as fresh herbs and spices. 

Note: the above are dipping sauces for artichokes, not a dipping sauce made of artichokes (which is a popular dipping sauce for other foods). 

With this all in mind, below you’ll find a list of great dipping sauces for artichokes, as well as some tips regarding the best and worst sauces to pair them with! 

The Best Dipping Sauces For Artichokes

Artichokes are often served with melted butter flavored with fresh herbs, lemon, and/or garlic. 

But you can also serve them with any one of or several of the following dipping sauces.

Lemon Butter Sauce

Melted butter is delicious when combined with artichokes. And it can be even more delicious if you flavor the butter with lemon and roasted garlic.

Those are actually the only ingredients needed for this sauce–butter, lemon juice, and roasted garlic! You can add salt and pepper, too, if desired. 

Don’t have time to roast the garlic? Boil the cloves (with the skin on) for a couple of minutes and then cool them and remove the skin.

After that, you can mash them up. 

You can even add raw minced garlic straight into the melted butter if you want a really potent sauce!

Don’t like garlic? Omit it! A plain lemon and butter sauce works just fine!

Garlic Butter Sauce

If you like garlic but aren’t a fan of lemon, you can stick to melted butter and garlic sauce.

See the notes in the sauce above about the garlic!

Herb Butter Sauce

This sauce only calls for two ingredients–melted butter and dried parsley OR freshly chopped chives.

So if you like your melted butter but perhaps aren’t so fond of the garlic and lemon juice used in the above recipes, this could be the way to go.  

Dill Yogurt Sauce

Dill works well with artichokes, as does a creamy yogurt sauce! 

For this sauce, you’ll need Greek yogurt, dillweed, lemon juice, garlic salt (or salt and garlic powder), and possibly some water to thin the sauce (if desired). 

Of course, you can use fresh garlic instead of garlic powder or garlic salt, if you like. For a milder taste, boil the garlic first (as described above).

If you want a “rounder” taste for the sauce, you can go half-and-half with Greek yogurt and mayo. You can also swap the Greek yogurt with sour cream if you like.

Balsamic Vinaigrette

If you like dipping your artichoke in a sauce that uses olive oil as a base, then this vinaigrette is a good option. 

Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and fresh herbs, if desired (basil, parsley, and/or chives) are the ingredients that are needed. 

Mayo Sauce

Like it creamy? Then a mayo sauce is a great dipping sauce for your artichokes. 

This recipe calls for mayo combined with balsamic vinegar, tarragon, minced garlic, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce.

Tarragon-Chive Dipping Sauce

This sauce is a variation on a theme of the previous sauce. It calls for fewer ingredients, is super simple to make, and has a very fresh flavor. 

So, what are the ingredients it calls for? 

They are mayo, tarragon, lemon juice, and chives. The herbs should be fresh. 

If you think using just mayo makes the sauce too heavy or fatty, use half Greek yogurt (or sour cream) and half mayo. 

Balsamic Mayo Dipping Sauce

This is one of the easiest sauces to make on this list (and that says a lot as all the sauces here are pretty darn easy to make!).

All you need is mayo and balsamic vinegar. Easy peasy lemon squeezy (though you don’t even have to squeeze a lemon for this one!).   

I’ve also seen sauces that call for white balsamic vinegar, mayo, salt, and freshly ground pepper. You can experiment with what you like best. 

Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce

Honey mustard sauce is perhaps not the first thing you think of when thinking of dipping sauces for artichokes, but when honey and mustard are combined with some mayonnaise and lemon juice, you end up with a really nice dipping sauce!  

You can swap the honey with some agave nectar if you prefer. 

Greek Yogurt and Lemon Dipping Sauce

This sauce contains lemon juice, grated garlic, Greek yogurt (and/or mayo, if you like), Dijon mustard, and some freshly ground black pepper.  

Chipotle Mayo Dipping Sauce

This is likely a sauce you’d be more prone to make as a dipping sauce for french fries or sweet potato fries.

However, if you like that smoky chipotle flavor, you’ll love this sauce for dipping your artichoke in!

While you can make a chipotle mayo sauce with just chipotle sauce and mayo, this recipe calls for chipotle adobo sauce, one chopped-up chipotle from the adobo sauce, minced garlic, mayo, and salt. 

As always, you can use garlic powder or boiled garlic if raw garlic is too much for your tastebuds. 

Chive-Caper Mayo Sauce

A more traditional artichoke dipping sauce is this one, containing fresh chives, capers, Dijon mustard, mayonnaise, and olive oil.  

Scallion and Mint Dipping Sauce 

A bit of an unusual combo, perhaps, but this sauce containing scallions, mint, and Greek yogurt is a refreshing little sauce to try. 

For this and any other cold sauce on this list, it’s best if you let the sauce sit for a while to let the flavors combine after making it.

If it’s a mayo sauce, you can keep it at room temperature, but for sauces with Greek yogurt or sour cream, you want to place them in the fridge, if possible. 

Curry Dipping Sauce 

Now, this is definitively not a traditional dipping sauce for artichokes. Likely because artichokes don’t come from India.

However, this sauce is easy enough to make–just blend mayonnaise with curry, turmeric, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

If you love your curry, why not?!

Lemon and Thyme Dipping Sauce 

If you would like an olive oil-based sauce, here’s another one for you.

Combine olive oil with lemon juice, thyme, agave nectar (or honey), shallots, and Dijon mustard.

Herby Yogurt Sauce

I’ve already covered a dill and yogurt sauce, but you may not be a fan of dill! If not, try this herby sauce instead. 

Simply combine Greek yogurt with fresh thyme, parsley, and basil. You can also add some minced garlic or garlic powder.

If you want to round out the taste, add a tiny bit of honey and some mayo. 

What Types Of Dipping Sauces Pair Best With Artichokes?

Artichokes pair well with a number of different sauces, giving you plenty to choose from. Among the more common ones are mayo and yogurt sauces flavored with fresh herbs, and/or garlic, and/or lemon. The same flavors are used for melted butter. Adding some mustard or balsamic to the mayo/Greek yogurt sauces is also common. 

I don’t know about you, but when I think about artichokes, I think about France.

Most likely because artichokes are popular in Mediterranean cuisine.

And the Mediterranean is where artichokes originate from (they actually belong to the sunflower family!). 

Perhaps for that very reason, sauces for artichokes often contain herbs popular in the Mediterranean (parsley, thyme, tarragon, and basil), as well as Djon mustard and balsamic vinegar.

Oh, and lots of garlic, of course! 

If you want to go a bit wild, you can experiment with other flavors, such as chipotle and curry, for your yogurt/mayo-based sauces. 

The three bases used for artichoke dipping sauces are olive oil, mayo, and Greek yogurt.

Depending on your mood, you can opt for either one or all three! 

What Sauces To Avoid Serving With Artichokes 

As a general rule, you don’t serve artichokes with sweet sauces or bottled sauces like some form of chili sauce, mustard, or ketchup. Nor would you dip it in plain soy sauce. 

While I’ve come across recipes calling for a sweet raspberry sauce, or a peanut butter and sriracha sauce, those aren’t commonly paired with artichokes.

And thinking of the taste, I can’t say that I’d like to pair them with artichoke!

That said, a raspberry and balsamic vinegar vinaigrette might work well as a dipping sauce for artichokes. That’s a tad more savory.  

You have to experiment to find your way.

One sauce on this list calls for chipotle peppers, another for curry–those aren’t flavors you normally combine with artichokes, but they still work. 

Using soy sauce alone as a dipping sauce for artichokes isn’t recommended, but I’ve seen sauces calling for soy sauce combined with mayonnaise. 

As you want to bring out the flavor of the artichoke, not disguise it, sauces like marinara or ketchup on their own wouldn’t work at all. 

Likewise, you wouldn’t dip your artichoke into a hot sauce! For a hot sauce to work, you’d have to combine it with mayo and go light on the hot sauce!

As a general rule, artichoke dipping sauces aren’t particularly hot and spicy but rather herby and fresh. 

Looking for other sauce recommendations for other delicious finger foods? Then check out my other guides below:

• Best Dipping Sauces For Jalapeño Poppers
• Best Dipping Sauces For Pizza
• Best Sauces For Egg Rolls
• What Sauce To Eat With Mozzarella Sticks
• What Sauce Goes With Sweet Potato Fries?
• What Sauce To Eat With Falafel