White Cheese Dip (Queso Blanco)
Prep: 10 Minutes | Cook: 20 Minutes | Total: 30 Minutes
Makes 12 Servings
Ingredients
1 Can (12 oz) Evaporated Milk
1 lb White American Cheese (cubed)
4 oz can of Diced Jalapeños
1⁄2 Onion, diced
2 Cloves Garlic, minced
1⁄2 t Cumin
1⁄2 t Garlic Powder
Pinch of salt
(Optional) 1⁄8 t Cayenne pepper or 1⁄4 t Chili Powder
Tortilla Chips (Restaurant Style)
Recipe Summary
Prepare ingredients: cube cheese, dice jalapeños, onions, and garlic. Measure out cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, and salt.
Heat evaporated milk
Add cubed cheese and stir to melt evenly
Add jalapeños, onions, and garlic.
Add cumin, garlic powder, cayenne, and salt
Recipe
In a high walled pan or a shallow pot, heat evaporated milk on low heat.
As you start to see small bubbles forming on the evaporated milk, place cubed cheese into the pan with evaporated milk. Frequently stir the cheese to ensure the cheese melts evenly and the milk doesn’t burn.
Once the cheese is melted, add diced jalapenos, onion and garlic. Stir and cook until the onions get soft.
Add cumin, garlic powder, salt, and cayenne or chili powder. Stir until spices are evenly distributed and no clumps remain.
Serve hot with tortilla chips.
Why the Recipe Works
White American cheese is a classic for this dish because it melts easily and creates a dip with viscosity perfect dipping thickness. Buying blocks of white American cheese is ideal in that you can cut the blocks into even sized cubes. This will allow all chunks of the cheese to heat up at similar rates. Using slices of cheese would prevent all pieces of cheese to be exposed to the same heat due to the increased surface area. Slices closer to the bottom of the pan would receive more heat than slices stacked on top. The dip should also be constantly stirred to ensure even melting of the cheese when cooking. You want the cheese to melt at a similar rate to avoid having some cheese burn and some not melted.
Evaporated milk works best because it adds the concentrated proteins necessary to help emulsify the cheese as well as adding a deep dairy flavor to the dip. If you don’t have evaporated milk, whole milk will also work with similar results, but might yield a slightly more grainy dip.
In dairy, spices like cumin, chili powder, and cayenne taste slightly different because some of their flavor molecules are fat soluble. The dairy will mute some of the spiciness from the pepper but will retain the floral notes of the spices. Cumin will also have additional flavor notes and impart a nutty and smoky flavor to the dip
Onions, garlic, and jalapeños add some texture to the dip as well as some flavors to cut through the richness of the dairy. These will add some flavor and texture variance to the dish to make it more appealing
Cooking the dish on low heat will allow you to control how fast the cheese melts. You don’t want the cheese or dairy to burn because you want the dish to be a creamy white on serving. Burning the dairy will also add unwanted burned dairy flavor to the dish.