Go to the Recipe: Nacho Cheese
Anyone try it with Velveeta? 😂
Able to use an immersion blender instead of regular blender?
This might be 7 years too late but look up Cooper brand american cheese. Thats your sharp american. My local grocery store delis here in dc have it (it is a deli cheese btw) but i have to call and ask around. I think land o lakes makes a sharp american but i havent seen in years
@A'ne When this was posted 11 years ago, the same thing was asked. Ben Johnson, employed at the time by Chefsteps responded:
Ben Johnson_Works at ChefSteps_11 yr ago
You can do it stove top. The one thing you need to be very careful with using this method however, is keeping your temperature low enough that you don't compromise the bag. I have lost more than one zip lock to too high of heat when doing the stove top method. Its totally possible, just make sure keep an eye on the temp. I would shoot for keeping it under 80 °C.
Hi. Can this be made without a sous vide tool?
If the bag stays warm it will be fine to blend.
I've made this several times and love it. QUestion: Can it sit in the bag for a while, before being blended and served? Or does it need to be pulled after fifteen minutes?
It's a slightly heaping 1/8 tsp. You could also go to 2 g and be fine removing a touch. A good trick for light things on cheaper scales is to tare scale, pop a small dish on, and then add amount to that to see a clear increase.
My cheapo food scale only does whole numbers, no decimal points. Any suggestions for the 1.5g of SHMP?
This is soooo good! Yes mix the salts in the milk. I used Lactose Free milk from whole foods. Essentially lactose free!
There is no equivallent. These type of ingredients should be measured by weight as a small discrepancy can alter results in a bad way.
Any results from your experiment?
Adding a touch of starch will help with fluidity but the melting salts are key to resist granularity. Alongside a touch of acid or wine as stated below.
If you do a redux of white wine, and season with that it should help. But you won't quite have the same melty results.
What if you don't have the Sodium hexametaphosphate, SHMP? Can you simply omit?
Surely Breville has the resources and you have the clout to do my research for me?
You can reduce the Kosher salt, that will not change the effects of the other melting salts. And you can simply reduce the amount of milk if you want it to be thicker.
Lovely Queso! Love it as is but a bit salty once I get a salty chip into it. How will adjusting that amount of salt affect the other sodium additions. Also on that note how would I make this thicker, just reduce amount of milk or would I need to adjust the sodium citrate and SHMP qty as well?
A simple exchange is all you need to do. As long as the cheese is melty to begin with like the Oaxaca or Cheddar or Jack.
So if I wanted to use a different kind of cheese for example Oaxaca, do I just exchanged evenly with the amount of cheese in this recipe or do I need to worry about different elements needing to be increased such as sodium citrate
Not too sure here Max D. A jar and following standard canning procedures can be a gamble. The high heat may not work to your advantage. It should keep for up to week fresh made anyways and reheat using joule.
I put this in a chocolate fountain at a coworker's retirement party.
Any recommendations for canning this stuff?
Xavier... the recipe can scale as large as you want!.. The only restricting factor would be the equipment you have to blend it up!
This is amazing, how many times can you double the batch to make a bigger amount. Got a cinco de mayo party coming up and would like to use this.
What is 0.42 oz, 0.14 oz and 0.05 oz equivalent to in teaspoons?
Thank you, Kyl!
Hi Bonnie! So glad the recipe is working so well for you. I would say that one week in the fridge after It has been cooled down would be the safest shelf life for this item. You most likely are turning runny as the batch is slowly turning. Syneresis will also start to happen after about a week. Hope that helps!
Having this dip in the fridge to provide a quick, hugely flavorful nibble during the day is awesome. I've tried over and over to make the perfect queso and until this recipe, I can honestly say none were this successful. My question is - we didn't consume it all at once. For a little while it needed to be warmed to be dippy - after a couple of weeks, the texture is quite runny. It's still GREAT, just curious about why this is so. I suspect it is the two "sodium" additives, but I'm not smart enough to understand why. Thank you for this rockin' recipe!
When measuring by weight, the kind of salt doesn't make a difference. It's when measuring by volume--teaspoons, etc--that the shape of the salt will have an impact (regular table salt has a smaller grind than kosher salt, which means it is more dense--more salt in a teaspoon of table salt than a teaspoon of kosher salt). While a volumetric teaspoon of each kind of salt might have a different amount of "saltiness," by weight, 1.5 grams of table salt, 1.5 grams of sea salt, and 1.5 grams of kosher salt all have the same amount of salt in them.
I made this today and it was great! My only question is on the salt - regular or kosher? After reading the reviews about the saltiness - I just used 1 1/2 grams of sea salt as a guess, but I would still like to know. Thanks!
volume an weights are not equal and as precise. If you measure stuff by eye you are not being sure you are precise. Take a cup of flour 5 times and weigh them and you probably get 5 different results.
Maybe you need to make sure that you dissolve the salts in the milk before proceeding with the recipe, to help with dispersion of the salts
@Joan B. If you are complaining about liquids being measured in grams, and not everything, that's even more ridiculous than folks just complaining about no volunteerism in general. It's really not complicated. Put the bowl on the scale, zero the scale, pour the liquid into the bowl until the number matches, and done. Not that complicated.
300 grams of the milk I buy may occupy a different volume than 300 grams of the milk you buy.
I can't get the texture smooth and creamy. I use Tillamook cheddar ...i was successful twice with the exact same recipe. Can someone help me?
Why are liquids measured in GRAMS and not Millilitres. Makes no sense.
Wow... 🙄
The joule is great and all, but setting it up to melt cheese is so unnecessary unless you’re explicitly prepping a bunch of pre-portioned bags. I make modernist cheese sauce all the time in the microwave. Takes about five minutes start to finish; I imagine you could just blend the jalapeños with the water or beer in the first step before melting the cheese without much effect to the flavor.
This is old, but that’s why he uses evaporated milk in his recipe. The additives in this recipe means you can just use regular milk. Personally I prefer the texture of what I call modernist cheese sauce to the starch thickened sauces (also, fewer carbs, which may be a concern for some).
I don't know how tightly the comments section is monitored so I am just going to come out and say it... Boner alert!!! Not only is this recipe fantastic as laid out, hands down best queso you'll ever eat - here's why it's even more amazing: There's a restaurant in Kansas City, KS/MO, jack fiorellas smokestack, that has a dish called cheesey corn bake. This is ooey, gooey, cheesey, corny, garlicky , smoked ham flecked amazingness. They used to publish the recipe and it called for something called "sharp american cheese" which, try as I have for nearly 25 years, cannot find (I don't think it exists in actuality). Tonight, whilst making a batch of build-your-own nachos for our family to eat, I whipped up a batch of the above queso, sans jalapenos for the kids palattes, sans the extra kosher salt for my heart. Nacho night also serves a dual purpose in our house - use up leftovers. There happened to be some corn in the fridge. Oh my! I slipped a quick sprinkle of granulated garlic, onion powder and cheese met corn by fate, chance, or someother divine intervention. I'll post the recipe once I make a full batch. I might be crying right now... Might be.
Preach! So sad that such a great site and community got completely murdered.
I do this recipe all the time without the SHMP. I am going to have to make it with some SHMP to see if there is a notable difference, but I am struggling to see what it would be. Then again, I also make this straight on the stove, bring liquid to simmer with sodium citrate, toss in grated cheese, stir, party! Takes about 5 minutes and have never had it fail. My only complaint is that as it cools the teacher is awkward. Would the SHMP help with that?
btw, those salts are far cheaper (for the 400g packages anyway) on amazon than on modernist pantry.
Oh I've got some pickled jalapeno peppers I canned a couple years ago. They still look good and the seal is intact. I'll have to try this out, much better than Queso I assume.
Holy cow. Literally - this is what cows were made for. This is the cheese sauce of my dreams.
This turned out great. It took me back to snack shack nachos of my childhood (but way better). I cut the salt in half (per recommendation). I cooked it on the stovetop and hit it with an immersion blender. Came out really smooth. Great recipe.
The only updates they do is to shill their machine. Kinda why I stopped coming here for ideas.
Also the lack of replies to comments has been crap for a years.
The forums are garbage as well. No support there.
The community is junky, as I'm the first to reply to your comment from 4 months ago.
Hawks for life.
Is there any reason why I can't dispense this from a whipping siphon/ reserve it in a 65-70c water bath?
Can you guys update this recipe with different melty cheese types and combinations much like you have done with your cheese-slice recipe? I make this dip regularly during the NFL season for family and friends and id like to elevate it to the next level. Go 'Hawks!
SHMP is a sequestrant which means "to withdraw from use". It prevents oxidation of fat, i.e. a preservative.
I was just wondering if adding cooked chorizo post blend would break the emulsion? Thanks for any input.
I don't mean to be dense, but what does SHMP do for the cheese sauce when it binds to the calcium ions?
Can't get enough of these details!
Not the chemicals, the regular salt just to be clear.
Came out awesome every time after the first time. Then I cut the salt and jalapenos in half and now I make double batches; I just can't make enough of it.
Excellent! So glad to hear it!
Made this yesterday. AMAZINGLY good.
Sodium citrate allows the proteins in the cheese sauce to become more soluble while lowering the pH of the sauce, which creates a smooth emulsion without curdling. Though citric acid will also lower the pH, it will not work on proteins as sodium citrate does. Using citric acid will result in a soupy or grainy texture instead of a silky emulsion.
Sodium hexametaphosphate is a sequestrant that binds with calcium ions.
What's the benefit of adding the Hex with the citrate??
Awesome recipe and method; I can't wait to try it out! Quick question: Kenji also has a couple of cheese sauce recipes, and he specifically uses evaporated milk over regular milk because he says the concentration of milk proteins helps to further stabilize the sauce. Have you guys ever tried using evaporated milk in your recipe? His recipe is different, though. He uses cornstarch, not the combination of sodium citrate and hexametaphosphate.
