OK, by now I am sure you have seen the internets all up in a tizzy over Dana Perino’s “queso”:
I made queso pic.twitter.com/WXLFNcZlfU
— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) February 3, 2019
Yeah, that looks horrible. It is basically a rip-off of the recipe Chili’s uses for their “queso” and all the queso purists out there are having a field day on this. I have seen a couple articles where people recreated the recipe she used and it isn’t bad but that pic she posted looks horrible. Maybe it had been sitting in the crockpot for a couple hours, maybe it was at a bad temperature.
Either way, that looks horrible and I wouldn’t want to serve that to anyone. The effort is commendable but the execution was a fail. Now, how about we make some good, simple queso?
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The simplest queso is velveeta and a can of Rotel. I would never turn that down if I saw it at a party and would dip anything I could get my hands on in it. But do you want something almost as easy but quite a bit tastier?
For the Super Bowl I made a batch of soft pretzels and was looking for a good cheese sauce for them. Last year I made a beer cheese sauce that had the problem common to most cheese sauces: The sauce broke. Basically the fat in the cheese and the water in the liquid failed to properly incorporate. The sauce still tasted good but the appearance and texture weren’t quite what I wanted.
After a bit of looking and searching I came across the magical solution: Sodium Citrate. The geniuses at Modernist Cuisine had a recipe for a 3 ingredient queso dip that used sodium citrate and I was intrigued. Along with the sodium citrate the other ingredients are just water (or beer) and cheese.
Basically sodium citrate is a sodium salt of citric acid and it allows the proteins in the cheese to become more soluble and it lowers the pH of the sauce. This allows the cheese to more easily incorporate with the liquid, helps the fat and water stay emulsified, and the result is an awesome, silky queso sauce.
I would guess most of you don’t have sodium citrate in your cupboard but you can easily order it on Amazon. It is less than $8 for 12 ozs which will probably make you 30 batches of this sauce.
Want to know how simple this is?
- Mix 11 grams of sodium citrate about 2/3 cup of water or beer. I used water for my batch. If you like a thinner queso use more water. Use less for thicker.
- When the sodium citrate is dissolved (pretty much instantly) bring the water to a simmer.
- Add in 285 grams (about 4 cups) of cheese. The recipe says add it a spoon at a time until melted but I went a bit quicker than that and it turned out great. I used half pepper jack and half extra sharp cheddar. Stir while you are adding the cheese and when it is melted (only took me about a minute or two) the sauce is ready.
If you are a math person and like weighing everything the sodium citrate will be about 4% of the weight of the cheese and the water will be around 60%. I have taken that down to 50% but that starts to get a bit too thick.
Your queso will keep well in the fridge too so you can make it ahead and just reheat as needed. I usually do a 2 pound block of pepper jack and a 2 pound block of sharp cheddar at a time and eat it over the next week or two. I didn’t get a ton of great pictures but here is what it looks like. Nice and smooth.
That’s it. Just three ingredients: water, sodium citrate, and cheese. If you want to add some chopped jalapenos or hot sauce or anything like that feel free but they aren’t necessary.
This queso is great with soft pretzels and excellent on tortilla chips. And I may have dipped a few chicken wings in this and poured it on a plate of carne asada.
Save yourself the Twitter humiliation of posting some nasty looking queso and make some of this for your next party.
