It can be a topping, a dip, a sauce, take your pick!
As the weather gets chilly, we often crave comfort food (which in our case is often made of cheese). Preferably the warm, melty kind we can put in a crock pot.
Sometimes the weather just calls for beer cheese.
To some of you, that's gonna sound... funny. People who grew up in certain parts of the U.S. are going to get it immediately, but the rest of us are going to have to think on it for a minute or so. We grew up in places where it wasn't a common thing, and moved to yet other places where it was also uncommon, so our household didn't get to try it until recently - but it is definitely a recipe worth sharing. We had to venture out of state to find it, but once we returned, the experimenting began.
There's a halfway decent chance you have most of the ingredients on hand, too.
Ingredients:
1 16 ounce brick Velveeta (or store brand equivalent)
1/2 brick (4 ounces) cream cheese (Neufchatel will work, but not as well)
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream (please do not sub half & half)
3/4 cup Guinness Nitro Stout
2 Tbsp coarse stone ground mustard
Tools:
measuring cup(s), measuring spoon(s), knife, spoon, cutting board, crock pot or heavy-bottomed saucepan with lid, serving dish (if not leaving in the crock pot)
Unbox and unwrap your cream cheese, leaving it on the foil. Place the foil on the cutting board and use the knife to gently divide the cream cheese brick in half. Try not to cut the foil, as you'll want to keep it. Slide one half off the foil and nudge the other half to the center of the foil. Re-wrap the half you won't need today and put it back into the fridge for some bagels later. Cut the half that's left on the cutting board into smaller pieces (this helps it melt faster and more evenly) and dump the pieces into the crock pot or sauce pan.
If you're using a crock pot, turn the heat on low and cover it. If you're using a sauce pan on the stove, turn the burner on as low as it will allow, but don't put the lid on it quite yet.
Take your sixteen ounces of Velveeta (we would not advise using the jalapeno one, but you're certainly welcome to experiment if you wish), and turn it out of its protective foil onto the same cutting board. Like you did with the cream cheese, take your knife and cut it into smaller pieces, then add it to your pot. Crock pot users, please make sure you cover the crock pot again, as that's the only way it retains heat effectively. Sauce pan users, please use a spoon to give everything a nice stir before placing the lid, and then turn the burner up to medium-low.
Now comes the waiting game. If you used a crock pot, you're probably okay to walk away and do something else for a few minutes. Crock pots are designed to heat gently and avoid scorching.
If you're working with a sauce pan, please be sure to watch carefully and stir often. You'll need to be a little more involved in the process to minimize the likelihood of burnt cheese accidents.
It's going to look funny and blob-y for a while as the chunks of cheese melt down. Make sure you've stirred them enough to encourage them to combine. Once you have it mostly melted and all one color, you can add in your heavy cream.
You may need to stand there with the measuring cup inverted over the pan for a minute or so, as the cream is often not in a big hurry to get to where you need it. Once most of it has dripped into the pot/pan, set the cup aside and grab your spoon again. The cream will simply rest on top of the cheeses if you leave it alone, so give it another thorough stir to make sure it gets mixed in properly.
After you've mixed in the cream, it's time to add the beer. We used Guinness because darker beers make for richer flavor in the recipe - but it's also what we keep on hand. You can pretty much use any dark beer you have, but we prefer Guinness, and it's also likely to be the beer you'll see used if you order beer cheese in a chain restaurant.
Adding in the beer is going to be an ugly and kind of gross looking step. The beer will foam on contact and turn the top layer of cheese into a bubbly, brown, goopy mess. Ignore this and push on, stirring until it's incorporated. It's worth it, we promise. You'll know when it's incorporated fully because the cheese itself will have darkened about two shades, and there will be no dark or foamy pockets left.
Now comes the mustard. We used Plochman's brand stone ground mustard because it's super coarse and chunky, and it's a really LOUD mustard flavor, but even just the Great Value brand will add significant taste and texture. On a slight tangent, Plochman's also offers a craft beer mustard made with pale ale - so if you're looking for more beer flavor and less mustard flavor without sacrificing the bite, you can definitely look into that. (No, Plochman's is not giving us any money for this - they just make really good mustard. We promise.)
Mixing the mustard in is going to take some time. It naturally wants to keep to itself in little chunks, but you'll want to break it up so every bite of your beer cheese has enough, but none of them are overtaken by it. Just keep stirring until it looks like it's even. And then stir it a little more, just to be sure.
Once you're satisfied with the distribution and mustard to cheese ratio, grab a pretzel or a cracker and scoop a little beer cheese onto it try it. This is a vital step - very, very important. You can't serve it to your friends or family without quality control, after all. And no one knows better than you if it will need your own special touch - a little white pepper or cayenne? A dash of hot sauce? A sprinkling of Parmesan? Garnish with parsley? Run with it. It's yours now.
Serve it as a dip with pretzels, crackers, or pita chips; use it as a spread on a sandwich or burger, sauce your chicken wings with it, work it into a meatloaf... We've even eaten it as a sauce over pinto beans. Once you've tried it, you'll have a dozen other uses for it right away. Trust us.
Adding cream to the beer cheese.
Now it’s officially beer cheese, we’ve added the beer!
And now we have added the mustard and the beer cheese is complete!