Queso

My wife and I often joke as we walk past the Ro-tel or Velveeta in the supermarket as this recipe was one of my Mom's favorites for a crowd. Then we pick up a can and a box.

My Arizonan great-grandmother's recipe uses half processed American and half sharp cheddar. (Plus minced onion and garlic, tomatoes, diced green chiles, and a dash of Worcestershire.) Give it a try with supplemental "real" cheese and see what you think!

Texan here. This ain’t queso. Divide up the velveeta (or whatever extra melt you have), and split cheese portion three ways - extra melt, shredded cheddar and jack, milk. Double boiler. Add jalapeño and rotel. Texans don’t just eat a melted block of velveeta. That’s nacho cheese. Nacho cheese isn’t queso. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

My aunt brought this recipe to Virginia from Houston in the 1960s when her husband worked at the Johnson Space Center. It was a regular with the astronaut crowd. We always added some chopped jalapeños, from a jar. It may be junk food, but it’s as nostalgic for us as any special family recipe.

Double the Rotel and add a splash or two of Shiner Bock or other beer. Skip the water. Add the tomatoes and juice from the first can, but use a slotted spoon to add the tomatoes from the second can, keeping the juice to add only as much as you need.

Velveeta contains an emulsifier that keeps the fat in the melted cheese from coalescing and releasing oil. This is why you can't use, say, just cheddar cheese. But you can add a little sodium citrate to your block of cheddar and it acts as an emulsifier to prevent this. I had a delicious queso at a local restaurant but they did not add Velveeta or sodium citrate and moments after arriving at the table the dish was coated with oil oozing from the cheese and had become stringy and tough.

A Friday night treat with margaritas. We call this Arkansas fondue. We add a good amount of cumin.

We make this with fresh chopped onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, browned ground beef and browned Jimmy Dean pork sausage. Serve it with big Fritos scoops corn chips. It is difficult to stop scooping up this delicious, retro and quirky dip.

First thing to go at any party. No matter how much you make, it’s never enough. And in its own weird way, it’s vegetarian and probably GF.

Here in New Orleans, we add a pound of coarsely chopped crawfish tails, and a big pinch of "Tony's" (Tony Chachere's Creole spice) along with some scallions, and another big pinch of garlic powder.

I love these ideas for add-ins, but I have to say, it’s simply perfect made from just the can and the box. I once threw caution to the wind and brought it to a gathering of our wine tasting group, and everyone laughed at me, kindly, but still. By the end of a night of aged cabs and pinots, it was as gone as gone can be and a few people wistfully asked if there was any more. I honestly believe this queso goes with anything and everything!

I grew up on this stuff. It's also good with a little cooked, crumbled, drained Jimmy Dean sausage or chorizo. If you buy the spicy Ro-tel, no need for any extra jalapenos. Skip all the other optional add-ins-- there is no need to fancy this up.

Processed cheese versions of queso seem like an Americanized version of it, at least to me...I never saw such a beast while travelling through Mexico. Our favorite is super simple, 2 ingredients, 1 step: --1 wheel of Queso Fresco --a few tablespoons of Hatch Green Chiles (chopped or in salsa form) Heat the queso fresco, add the green chiles, voila - fresh queso happiness.

I grew up in Houston. My mom spent Sundays preparing casseroles and things (with instructions!) that a boy could toss into the oven that week about 5 o'clock, so family dinner was ready when she and dad got home from work. Fridays were for takeout—usually fajitas or classic Americanized Chinese. About once a month, though, Friday night dinner was this: Velveeta, Ro-Tel, tortilla chips. Setting the oven during the week was my introduction to cooking. Velveeta on Fridays was my intro to living.

You can make Mac and cheese from this recipe also Make bechamel if you want fancy... but melted velveeta and Rotel plus cooked macaroni do fine