I recently moved to New Zealand and to my shock there is no (real) queso here. Not even on the Mexican restaurant menus. There's one in a store not near me that isn't made with dairy cheese… it doesn't look like queso. Went to a restaurant the other day that had "queso" on fries… it was a melted white cheese, but the texture was wrong (kind of gritty) and the flavor wasn't right (almost like a mildly sweet cheese?, no spices).
I am going to make queso at home. Problem is, we don't have American cheese here, like most recipes call for, the next most common cheese called for is Monteray Jack, also not available here (as far as I can tell/at least not in my grocery store).
Attempt 1 of 1 so far: 1 cup milk, 2 tsp sodium citrate, ~ 4 oz Edam cheese, ~ 4 oz colby cheese, a spoon full of jalapeño juice and a slice of jalapeño (the jalapeño piece I tried was quite spicy, and I actually don't like spicy-hot foods, I just want flavor). The cheese flavor was really strong so I grabbed an Italian/mozzarella mix and threw that in with a little more sodium citrate to help get it smooth… that didn't really help or hurt in any form. Didn't add any additional spices as recipe didn't call for it (the jalapeño was an addition that also didn't benefit the recipe, next time I'll use more).
The cheese flavor was too strong for queso. I think Edam might need to go entirely, but the Colby wasn't much milder than the Edam was. So I'm not sure if I need to try a different main cheese entirely? It seems like American cheese is made with mainly Colby, so I'm not sure if I need a higher milk or fat ratio in order to get colby to taste more like American?
Texture wise it was almost perfect, when it got cold is when it got more plastic, so I think it probably needed a little more milk to thin it out some.
by Ahtnamas555