Quick and Easy Nacho Cheese Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What cheese is best to melt for nachos? ›

Choose a combination of cheeses for both flavor and meltability. A Monterey Jack cheese will have the oozy-melty quality sought after in the best nachos, while a standard sharp cheddar will offer a little tang.

Ingredients: Nacho sauce is typically made with a combination of melted cheese, tomatoes, and spices, while cheese dip is usually made with a blend of melted cheese and milk or cream. Consistency: Nacho sauce is usually thicker and more paste-like in consistency, while cheese dip is typically thinner and more pourable.

Keep Your Nacho Cheese Warm and Creamy

It is best to keep your nacho cheese warm in a small crockpot or slow cooker, or on low heat on the stove. Stir it regularly, as it can begin to clump and harden if even heat is not applied. Stir in a bit of milk if it starts to lose its creaminess.

To avoid a nacho nightmare, I toughen the chips up with a quick pre-bake in a 350°F oven, and then sprinkle a protective layer of the shredded cheese on them to create a buffer between the chips and the rest of the toppings. The cheese will melt slightly.

Nacho cheese doritos attempt to recreate, in a shelf-stable dry powder form, the taste of queso, which in this context means the smooth, flows mix of evaporated milk, cheese, diced red peppers and sometimes onion powder.

Heavy cream has a lot of fat content which helps thicken the nacho cheese sauce so no flour or roux is needed. Up next is the cheese. We are keeping it simple and only using sharp cheddar. It has the bright yellow/orange color that is key to making this look just like Taco Bell's.

Is the nacho cheese in cinemas actually cheese? The nacho cheese they pump onto tortillas comes from a can and contains only a small percentage of real cheese. It is mostly water, milk and oil thickened with corn starch. The cheese lends flavor to the sauce but accounts for little of the total volume.

For dips, you'll want to use a tablespoon of cornstarch per pound of cheese, then add at least five ounces of evaporated milk. After that, you can use more evaporated milk to thin out your dip as much as you need.

When making cheese sauces and cheese-based soups, be sure to add the cheese slowly over low heat, or your sauce could become grainy. Reheat cheese sauces and soups low and slow to maintain the smooth texture.

Making a slurry with cornstarch and cold milk is how you will thicken your queso. A traditional slurry is a 1:1 liquid to cornstarch ratio, but for our queso purposes I used 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of milk.

Will bagged shredded cheese melt? ›

Pre-shredded cheese contains ingredients like potato starch and natamycin to keep the shreds from clumping together in the bag. That means that sometimes, pre-shredded cheese won't melt as easily as it would if you grated a cheese block yourself!

If you want to speed up the melting a little more, try grating the cheese instead of cranking the temperature—the thin and uniform shape will melt faster and more evenly. Add Booze! Wine is more than just a flavoring agent—it's also good for keeping cheese from getting stringy or seizing up as it melts.

To help keep your cheese stringy, shred it to expose more surface area so the cheese will melt more quickly, bring it up to room temperature before heating so it doesn't require as much heat energy to melt, and use low, gentle heat.

You can use any shredded, melty cheese, such as cheddar, Monterrey jack, Pepper jack, or mozzarella. I like using a Mexican blend because you get a mix of everything. I opt for pre-shredded cheese because it's one less step, but if you prefer to grate the cheese yourself, that works.

Here's the how to melt cheese the slow and steady way: use low heat—introduce a double-boiler, even—to avoid overcooking. If you want to speed up the melting a little more, try grating the cheese instead of cranking the temperature—the thin and uniform shape will melt faster and more evenly.

Limiting the number of ingredients baked with the chips is the key to crispiness. Top chips with no more than two or three toppings. Choose from items such as black beans, refried beans, chopped grilled chicken, seasoned ground beef (browned and drained), or chopped jalapenos.

Pretty much any cheeses you want could be used to make nacho cheese sauce. Preferably cheese that melts smoothly - mozzarella is a good component, along with some sharp cheddar, a little gruyere, etc. Some people like to grate in a harder cheese for some extra flavor.