One thing my wife and I both love, is the cheese sauce at the Mexican restaurant chain El Vaquero. It’s something that we’ve been curious to see if we could replicate, or at the very least approximate at home. We heard that El Vacquero uses something called “Chihuahua cheese”, which is available at GFS (Gordon Food Supply) stores, and, even though there’s actually a GFS closer to us than an El Vaquero, we still haven’t gone to test that theory.
In case you’ve never been to El Vacquero (or most Mexican restaurants in general), their cheese is a smooth, drippy-yet-not-runny white variation that is not strong, nor spicy, yet somehow manages to pack in a ton of flavor. I’m no cheese connoisseur, so the fact that there’s a cheese that even I’m obsessed with speaks volumes to just how good it is; the fact my wife, who is a huge fan of cheeses in general, is similarly obsessed with this stuff tells you that it appeals to just about everyone.
In the meantime, I saw Aldi would be carrying a “dipping cheese” themselves, and that got our collective mouths’ salivating. Could this be the answer we’ve been looking for? After all, it is branded under their “Casa Mamita” brand, which is the banner used to label their Mexican products, so I knew this particular cheese was going to be in the same vein. A quick toss in the microwave only got our hopes up more, as it has almost the same not-too-thin-but-not-too-thick consistency from our favorite Mexican cheese; it’s very consistent with the same thickness as a “queso” dip.
The taste itself wasn’t exactly what we were looking for–how could it reach the lofty heights of taste as perfected by a popular chain Mexican restaurant–but it’s still pretty good in its own right. This one is a mix of monterey jack and cheddar cheeses, and in taste also reminded me a lot of salsa con queso but without the salsa. It’s light in flavor, and goes down way too easily…my wife and I combined to devour the whole container in just two sittings. But in our defense, the container is also somewhat small. At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves.
Overall: 6.5/10. If you want some salsa con queso, sans salsa, this is right down your alley. My wife and I were honestly kind of hoping for something more along the lines of the cheese they serve at El Vacquero, which is addicting, to say the least. While it certainly doesn’t come close to that, it’s still pretty good in its own right, and we downed it in a couple sittings. Not sure that I would pay full price for a tub (we got it at a discount when they were trying to get rid of it; it typically retails for $2.29), but for an occasional snack, this gets the job done.
