It's Queso Fundido Day!

[Music] welcome back to my kitchen today it's about queso fundido and i want to clear up what might be a little confusion for some people queso fundido in mexico is all about melted cheese just plain melted cheese in the united states we have this stuff that we call queso dip and that's not queso fundido that is actually something that's a little bit more like a fondue if you will there's a lot of liquid in it and it is a dip that you can put chips into when it's just melted cheese true queso fundido in mexican style you really can't dip chips into it in a very easy way instead you make that into soft tacos and that's the direction that we're going to go now if you go to a northern style mexican restaurant they will almost always have queso fundido on the menu and they because they cook over coals they will have a place in the coals that they'll just nest a little earthenware vessels and put the cheese in there and just let it slowly melt they have special cheeses through the north that melt in a very beautiful way when you find these places that do northern style food all through the mexican republic they too will be making queso fundido but queso fondito is actually sort of jumped out beyond the northern restaurants and is popular amongst lots of people now in the traditional way of thinking about queso fondito it would just be plain melted cheese nothing added to it maybe some roasted poblano or other green chili made with caramelized onions in terrajas or maybe some chorizo spring sprinkled over the top of it or maybe both the rajas and the chorizo which is really my favorite way of doing the classic one so today's recipe will focus on four different options that you could have for making a queso fundido and i've got the different ingredients out here in front of me you could do one with the roasted poblano rajas you could put corn in your queso fundido you could put a handful of sliced spinach in there or where i'm going to start right here because it's absolutely one of my favorite things is a mushroom queso fundido so i have a couple of different kinds you can make it with any kind of mushroom that you like or can lay your hands on my favorite combination here is to use shiitake mushrooms and oyster mushrooms which are widely available across the united states these days the shiitakes have a really tough stem you can use that or not use that today i'm not going to use it because it's so woody that it doesn't do well with melted cheese so i'm going to just take the tops here and slice them about a quarter of an inch across the oyster mushrooms usually come in kind of small clumps but i also want to give those a kind of rough chop here sort of in those quarter inch pieces this can be fairly random but you just want to get them all into about the same size pieces here in my style before i start cooking anything i heat my pan so i've got a pan here on the heat at about a medium high heat for these guys and i'm going to put some oil in there this is olive oil you can use vegetable oil for it and because i want these to cook quickly they you immediately once that oil goes in there in a hot pan we'll see it start to give off a little bit of smoke and then immediately put the mushrooms into the pan and what you'll notice is that they're not going to leech out a whole lot of water this is a thing that a lot of people have trouble with they put their mushrooms into a pan that's not hot enough and immediately they just release all the water in them and they start to stew rather than brown that's the importance of the hot pan here and enough oil to coat the bottom because these mushrooms will absorb oil and i say stir these regularly as they brown over the next two or three minutes um when i say stir in my style of cooking because i come out of a professional kitchen this is what i mean by stir is to toss them in the pan so that they continuously are coated with the oil but they also are flipping over so that when they're brown on the bottom that flips over to the top and that way it goes super fast for me it's one of the techniques that i really encourage you to practice to master go out in your backyard sometime with a skillet full of dry beans not full full but you know covering the bottom of the pan and just practice that technique of tossing in the pan so that and remember what you're trying to do you're trying to hit it this curved side of the saute pan is made just for that you're trying to get them to hit up against that curved edge and then flip back on themselves like this okay so you can see how they just hit up there and then you're bringing the pan back and catching them like that now i've talked about the technique of tossing long enough that my mushrooms now are are done so i'm going to scrape them into on a plate here so that we can continue on with this but i want to leave as much of the oil as possible back in the pan another reason that i really love oyster mushrooms and especially shiitake mushrooms is that they are they don't absorb as much fat as a button mushroom will so i will have a good amount of that fat left in the pan but if your mushrooms don't have have absorbed a lot and you don't have very much in your pan like that then you want to have enough in there to coat the bottom so add a little bit more if that is necessary for you now the next thing that we're going to put in there is the onions and i'm going to cut that across in about one quarter inch slices and put that into the pan too yeah i got a little piece of the root on there but i want these to be able to break apart nicely and we're going to use that same sort of tossing method until these get translucent and when those are translucent then i'm going to add some chopped green chili now i typically use the serranos you could use a jalapeno for this or any other kind of hot green chili that you have and while those guys are working over there i'm going to show you my method for doing this if you like it spicy a couple of serranos would be the right amount if you don't want it very spicy then perhaps you would like to have one um i'm going to cut these lengthwise into three strips each one of them into three strips of course if i had a jalapeno here i would be doing it into more strips than that and then get all those guys together if your hands are sensitive you're going to want to do this with latex gloves i'm going to toss these guys over here because they're starting to get to the place where they're looking translucent and that's the moment that i will put the uh green chilies in them and then sort of bunching them all up and keeping my my fingers curved under i will chop across them okay now you have to remember of course if you're doing this like i am bare-handed that your fingers are going to be spicy so don't put your fingers in your eyes now i've chopped this is turning translucent now so our chopped green chili will go in to the pan and then i'm just going to toss that around a little bit now that's what i need to tell you the hot green chili going in there capsaicin is volatile into the air i took a great big breath when i put them in there and i filled my the back of my throat with a lot of that green chili so um you might want to stand back a little bit when you do that okay when the onion is browned uh we'll be ready to go to the next step which is to finish the queso jundido and when you're ready to do that this could be done ahead of time but when you're ready to finish the queso fondito you're gonna want to make sure that you have tortillas ready and hot to to make the little tacos out our beautifully browned onions and the green chili are ready now the next step is to put these mushrooms back into the skillet and we're going to season this mixture lightly with salt you might not think you need to do that but i will tell you these won't taste nearly as good if you don't the next edition is not on my recipe is not a traditional one i'm pouring in a little bit of mexican beer i usually choose a pilsner or a lager for this because they're high in acid and it's actually the acid that we want there this is taking a page out of the playbook of fondue which is done in a high acid white wine and that allows the cheese to become extra creamy and i'm not letting that boil down completely but by the handfuls here i will stir in the cheese adding each handful as the one before it is completely melted well if that doesn't look gooey and good nothing does so you don't want to cook it too much just to melt the cheese really nicely and then i'm going to put that into a serving dish you really want your serving dish to be warm if you have something that you can set over a tea light candle that would be welcome here just to keep it kind of warm but you want to have your tortillas hot and i have mine here heated up in the microwave in my traditional style but i thought i would show you this these were wrapped in a very lightly dampened paper towel and put in in this styrofoam container which is very well sealed and put them into the uh microwave for 45 seconds and they just sort of re-steam and get really beautifully you can see beautifully supple and then you take some of your ooey gooey cheese with the sauteed mushrooms and onions and green chili make a little taco like that so this is all you gotta make it and serve it and eat it right away that's part of the fun of it i know i like it now if you want to take one of the other directions with this recipe of course you saute the onions until they're browned with the green chili and then we have three choices here the roasted poblano or the corn or the spinach for this one i'm going to do this spinach it's just a handful of spinach leaves you could use other greens for this if you wanted to but they're going to take a lot longer to cook and then we have to cook these until they're completely wilted before we add the beer to it now you could leave the beer out you could use white wine if you wanted to for this but it's just it gives it a really lovely texture i think and that's why i like to include it in this okay that's looking good i'm gonna put the beer in here it's about a third of a cup to the cheese and when that comes to a good rolling boil there i can start to add the cheese to it so stir this any kind of melting cheese will work for this but you want one that melts really beautifully in mexico it would be the sort of ubiquitous manchego which has nothing to do with the spanish manchego um here i'm using a mixture of colby and jack that we use in our restaurant that i know melts really really beautifully and as each handful is melted into the pot you'll add the next one a mild cheddar would work there's lots and lots of possibilities for the cheese for this another pan of really beautiful creamy gooeyness let's scrape that into our serving dishes this time i've got flour tortillas which are actually very common in a traditional kitchen to go with our our queso fundido a spoon full of this goodness into a warm flower tortilla but always be very welcome ah that looks so good i'm having a really really good day

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 83,102

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Id: knhtO7le4I0

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021