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Queso con Seafood By Liz Thorpe I’ve written before about the assumed biases that I, as a “cheese person,” am often saddled with. People immediately think that knowing and writing and caring about cheese means I only like “fancy” (read: expensive/imported/rarified) cheeses. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cheese first spoke to my nerdy, academic side when I realized that it was a living cultural artifact. Each cheese is the product of a specific time, place, geography and unique set of constraints. Each cheese has an origin story and, when you learn why a cheese is the way it is — why it tastes a certain way, or is made a certain way — you gain a special window into a past world. I love all cheeses because each is a singular portal. Also, I love tasty and delicious things, and many tasty, delicious things might also be called junk food rather than refined food. T his crossroads of cultural artifact and compulsive snackability brings me to the literal melting pot that is queso. The word queso simply means cheese in Spanish, and then there are numerous Hispanic cheeses that have queso in their name, such as queso fresco (fresh cheese) . But to Americans, queso is a molten river of seasoned melted cheese for dipping, often flavored with pepper, tomato and spices. We have Texas to thank for queso, where this cheese dip originated in the early 20th century. Tex Mex queso was likely a best attempt at reproducing the Mexican dish queso fundido , or melted/molten cheese . Queso fundido is made with a variety of cheeses not often found outside of Mexico, and it’s typically seasoned with onion and tomato salsa. All are mild, neutral-tasting cow milk cheeses with relatively high moisture and excellent meltability — cheeses like Asadero, Mennonite or Chihuahua. Americans didn’t have these cheeses, and so used available ingredients to emulate queso fundido. Here, we were inadvertently helped by the technological innovations that created processed cheese. Standard-issue Tex Mex queso uses a block of Velveeta (invented in 1918) melted and blended with a can of RO-TEL diced tomatoes

and green chiles. Velveeta has the advantage of being non-refrigerated and shelf stable, meaning it could be easily kept on hand. It was quickly joined by American cheese (as in Kraft American Cheese) as a popular base for queso. Both Velveeta and American cheese share sodium phosphate as an ingredient, which is key to great queso. This emulsifying agent ensures that, when heated, the disparate elements of cheese (fat, protein and water) stay

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