Tex-Mex Cheese Sauce (Queso Dip)

History & Origin

The yellow cheese sauce is perhaps the most recognisable symbol of Tex-Mex cuisine worldwide. Known in Texas as "queso dip" or simply "queso", this creamy melted cheese sauce has won hearts from American football stadiums to fine dining restaurants that reinterpret it with premium ingredients. Its history begins in San Antonio, Texas, in the early twentieth century, when cooks of Mexican origin began melting American cheese - a US industrial creation - with jalapeño chillies and tomatoes to create a dip to accompany tortilla chips. The most famous variant, known as "Ro-Tel dip", was born in the 1940s when someone discovered that melting Velveeta cheese with a tin of Ro-Tel tomatoes and chillies created the perfect texture for a dip that neither hardened nor separated. Although the homemade version with real Cheddar and evaporated milk is more complex to achieve but incomparably tastier, the queso dip tradition became deeply embedded in Tex-Mex culture as an unmissable element of any gathering. Today cheese sauce is made in more sophisticated versions with Oaxaca cheese, Asadero, roasted poblano chillies or even white truffle in chef-led restaurants. But the classic Cheddar and jalapeño version remains the favourite for its straightforward flavour and its ability to delight any diner, regardless of their gastronomic sophistication.