The Only Gooey Queso Recipe You Need

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The Only Gooey Queso Recipe You Need

Queso ain't hard. The basic recipe goes like this: Melt some cheese, eat it. But Bäco Mercat's Josef Centeno spices it up in all the right places without getting too fancy.
Baco-mercat-queso

In the canon of Tex-Mex cuisine, no dish is more beloved than queso. No, not chile con carne, and not even fajitas.

It's the bastard child of queso flameado from south of the border, and the precursor to that yellow sludge that your pour over nachos at midseason baseball games.

This queso, by chef Josef Centeno of LA's Bäco Mercat, goes back to first principles: get some cheese, melt it, eat it.

RECIPE: Queso

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Now, Centeno's not Texan, nor is the inventively Spanish-ish Bäco Mercat. Who cares? The man knows how to do a queso correctly.

First, don't buy jarred stuff. Make fresh salsa with plum tomatoes, onion, garlic, and serrano chilies.

Then, make yourself a little roux on the stovetop, and then add milk. What you're making here is what the French would call sauce béchamel, but you don't have to tell your Tex-Mex friends that.

Dump in the cheese, stir it all up, and eat it with tortilla chips and your salsa. Finally: Give zero fucks. Queso doesn't need a reason.