How To Amp Up Your Next Jar Of Store-Bought Queso

Store-bought queso is a convenience our ancestors could never have imagined. The unnaturally yellow dip with a pudding-like consistency is salty, savory, and perfect for topping nachos or dipping air-fried taquitos (and it goes great with all the snacks for Super Bowl Sunday). However, when you unscrew the lid and inhale all that cheesy goodness, does it ever feel like maybe it's missing...something?

In fact, it is. Raid your pantry for your very best smoked paprika, because it's going in and getting all mixed up in your jar of queso. Smoked paprika — which has quite a different flavor profile from regular or sweet paprika — is made of chili peppers that were dried over oak wood that was smoking, then got ground down into a fine dust. That extra step of having the chilies hang around over smoking wood gives the paprika a deep, rich flavor that may or may not be spicy (depending on what type of peppers were used).

Smoked paprika is typically an ingredient in homemade queso, but for some reason it gets left out of many commercially produced jars. By incorporating it into your store-bought queso, you're adding a smoldering, slightly spicy depth to not only your cheese, but whatever you top it on.

Smoked paprika isn't the only ingredient you can add to your store-bought queso to kick it up a notch; mix in your favorite store-bought or homemade salsa (consider this homemade salsa verde recipe) for your own take on tasty salsa con queso. It is so easy to make, yet so delicious, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner, and the best part is that there are so many different salsas out there (go on, break out of your salsa rut), from sweet and fruity, to hot and smoky, and each one will bring something new to your queso every time you make it.

Or make your queso heartier by mixing ground or chopped up meat, for a semi-homemade take on queso fundido. You can go traditional by breaking up Mexican chorizo in a hot skillet, or use ground pork, ground beef, even ground chicken if that's what you have on hand. Just make sure if you're not using chorizo, you season the meat with spices like smoked paprika, onion and garlic powder, cumin, etc.