By Christina Morales, The New York Times
Sofia Head grew up watching her grandfather lead the carne asadas, her family cookouts, in Monterrey, Mexico. He manned a charcoal grill for hours, cooking carne asada for dozens of relatives. One of her favorite dishes was his queso fundido: melted Chihuahua cheese in a cast-iron skillet that he left on his grill until the queso’s edges became crisp and the center was bubbly.
“We couldn’t have a carne asada without the queso fundido,” said Head, who holds smaller carne asadas at her home in Fort Worth, Texas, where she’ll occasionally make the side dish with diced jalapeños and chorizo.
Queso fundido is a popular appetizer at many Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in the United States. The gooey cheese is served in its cast-iron skillet with tortillas or chips. Its roots go back to the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, said Carlos Yescas, who studies and writes about Mexican cheese. The revolutionaries gathered in the central part of the country, near Mexico City, where they made easy meals like queso fundido.
Their travels throughout the country, aided by Mexico’s train system, helped spread queso fundido to northern Mexico and South Texas, where today it is normally served with chorizo on top and a red chile salsa and corn tortillas on the side, Yescas said.
In the early 20th century, revolutionaries made the queso fundio with adobera, a white cheese similar to mozzarella that was typically made in central Mexico. Similar cheeses — such as quesillo (also known as Oaxaca cheese) in the south, and Chihuahua or Monterey Jack in the north — were also used later as the dish spread across the country.
The dish’s ubiquitous serving style, in cast-iron skillets, also stems from this time period, when iron was used for trains and utensils.
At Guelaguetza, her family’s restaurant in Los Angeles, Bricia Lopez uses quesillo, a cheese she ate as a child. It’s typically served as an appetizer, with chorizo or mushrooms seasoned with the Mexican herb epazote.
She said that in Oaxaca, the epazote is commonly paired with cheese. In queso fresco there, she said that there are specks of the herb throughout.
“I’ve been having epazote and cheese my entire life,” Lopez said. “It’s herbaceous, it’s bright. It really works well with the fat content of the cheese. It’s one of those herbs that just makes sense.”
In Edinburg, Texas, near the Mexican border, Miguel Cobos’ childhood included frequent get-togethers with his extended family (as many as 75 people) for carne asadas in the United States and in Monterrey, where his father lives. The men make dishes like carne asada, tostadas, roasted goat called cabrito (on special occasions) and the queso fundido served with tortillas.
“The weekend is when we spend time with each other, and we cook together,” said Cobos, an owner of Vaquero Taquero, a Mexican restaurant with two locations in Austin, Texas. “And carne asadas are the go-to activity.”
Queso fundido is just one element of a great carne asada — along with very cold beer and sometimes wine, said Adrian Herrera, a Mexican chef and judge on “MasterChef Mexico” who lives in Monterrey.
“Carne asada is a lifestyle,” he said.
Recipe: Mushroom Queso Fundido
Recipe from Bricia Lopez
Adapted by Christina Morales
Sizzling and gooey, queso fundido topped with chorizo is a staple on Mexican restaurant menus across the country. But the dish likely stems from home cooks along North Mexico and South Texas. Depending on where you go, different cheeses like Monterey Jack, Chihuahua or Oaxaca cheeses are used. Bricia Lopez, an author of “Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling (Abrams, 2023)” and “Oaxaca: Home Cooking From the Heart of Mexico” (Abrams Books, 2019), and an owner at Guelaguetza, in Los Angeles, was inspired by the salsa de queso and quesillo she grew up eating at her family’s restaurant to create her version of queso fundido, which uses the Oaxaca cheese to create a great cheese pull. She also tops it with mushrooms and epazote (see Tips), a fresh herb she grew up eating with cheese.
Yield: 6 servings
Total time: About 1 hour
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from 1 to 2 limes)
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 garlic clove, grated
- 4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh epazote (see Tips)
- Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
- Pinch crushed red pepper
- 8 ounces cremini mushrooms, quartered
- 1 pound/455 grams queso Oaxaca, shredded by hand into bite-size pieces (see Tips for alternative cheese options)
- Fresh corn tortillas or tortilla chips, for serving
Preparation
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the lime juice, olive oil, vinegar and garlic with 3 tablespoons of the epazote; season the mixture with salt, pepper and crushed red pepper. Add the mushrooms and toss to coat. Set aside to marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.
3. In a medium cast-iron pan, add the shredded Oaxaca cheese and the remaining tablespoon epazote. Stir to combine and bake for about 20 minutes, until the cheese is fully melted.
4. While the cheese is melting, add the mushrooms and their marinade to another cast-iron or nonstick pan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are deeply bronzed and nearly crispy on the edges, about 15 minutes.
5. Gently spoon the mushroom mixture in the center of the melted cheese. Serve the queso immediately, directly from the pan, with tortillas or tortilla chips.
Tips
— Fresh epazote has hints of basil, mint and oregano, with floral and citrus notes. It can be found dried online and in many Mexican grocery stores. If you have to substitute the ingredient, use 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh basil leaves and 1 teaspoon of dried oregano.
— Though Mexican cheeses such as Oaxaca cheese are essential to queso fundido for both texture and taste, you could substitute a fresh ball of mozzarella in this dish, adding 1 teaspoon sea salt. Others use Monterey Jack or Chihuahua cheese as the base.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.