Is there a world beyond Kiwi Onion Dip?

The Spinoff Daily, Friday December 23

Dec 23

Ahiahi mārie, welcome to the last Spinoff Daily of 2022(!) – in partnership with the Brain Drink, Ārepa.

Today on The Spinoff, a guide to supporting the neurodivergent children in your life this Christmas, the 12 classic clouds coming to a sky near you this summer, and – for when you get tired of cloudgazing – the best of free-to-air telly this holidays.

But first… Everybody knows the classic taste of Maggi onion soup mixed with Nestlé reduced cream – but how do their other 10 soup flavours perform as dips?

For 60 years New Zealanders have been mixing packets of Maggi onion soup mix into bowls full of Nestlé reduced cream (sometimes adding a squeeze of lemon juice or splash of vinegar) and chilling them in the fridge for a couple of hours before serving it as an accompaniment for chips, carrots or celery sticks.

It’s a simple, crowd-pleasing recipe from which we’ve never had any reason to stray. But today there are 10 other Maggi soup flavours which, in theory, could be made into dips by following the exact same formula. What if one of them is even better than Kiwi Onion Dip?

We made them and tasted them to find out. Here they are ranked from worst to best.

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Twelve classic clouds coming to a sky near you this summer

The best shows to watch on free-to-air TV this Christmas

How to support neurodivergent children – and their parents – this Christmas Emily Writes Weekly

Auckland is the world’s greatest city – when everyone leaves it

Chris Schulz celebrates the joys of staying put over the holiday season.

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That’s it from us for 2022 – for the next couple of weeks we’ll mostly be resharing some of our favourite stories of the year as part of our Summer Reads series thanks to Native Sparkling. The Daily will be back in your inbox once we return with new things to read in January. Happy holidays!