I’m on vacation for the holidays, and plan to spend much of the next few weeks in the kitchen. This will result in more posts about food and fewer posts about Power BI. You’ve been warned.

This is my favorite cheese sauce. The recipe is adapted from one originally published by Modernist Cuisine, and made much better by the application of chilies.

Please note that the recipe uses proportions by weight, rather than specific amounts. You can easily scale the recipe up or down so long as the proportion is the same, but you will need an accurate kitchen scale for this one.

Ingredients

• 100% extra sharp orange cheddar cheese
• 94% jalapeno juice
• 4% sodium citrate

Procedure

• Juice 10-50 jalapeno chili peppers and weigh the juice.
• Grate an equal weight of cheddar cheese.
• In a saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the juice and sodium citrate and bring to a boil.
• Gradually add grated cheddar to the liquid, blending with an immersion blender to incorporate each batch of cheese before adding more.
• That’s it. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.

Storage

Store in an airtight container and refrigerate.

Applications

• Dip tortilla chips into the cheese sauce and eat them. Eat all of them!!
• Use on nachos.
• Use on chili cheese fries, with homemade french fries and green chili sauce from El Patio De Albuquerque.

Notes

• If you really love spicy food, you may be tempted to use habaneros or another spicier chili to start with. Don’t do that. Start with jalapenos and scale the heat up as appropriate by adding a few spicier chilies to the mix. Trust me on this one.
• Alternately you can scale down the heat by replacing some of the liquid with water. Do what is right for you.
• So long as you keep the same proportions, you can use any liquid and any cheese you want. The possibilities are limitless.
• You can also use jalapeno juice in other recipes where you want to add flavor and heat. My other favorite application is in yeast breads, where you can replace the water with chili juice. I’ve made this recipe multiple times with great results using this technique.