Cream of mushroom soup in your queso? Expert says it’s ‘tradition’
Days after Super Bowl LIII and we’re still talking about it. Not the game. The queso.
Fox News anchor Dana Perino’s widely derided attempt at game-day queso became the talk of the Texan foodie universe. And her cheese dip didn’t just make headlines because the match up between the victorious New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams was such a snooze. It was that die-hard queso fans have never encountered a queso quite like the one Perino posted on Twitter Sunday.
Her photo of a slow-cooker vat of brown, oleaginous sludge was called many things on social media; perhaps the kindest and most respectable description was “deeply unsettling.” The caption for her Twitter photo, “I made queso,” has become a viral sensation with all manner of snarky photos of nasty concoctions labeled the same way — think cigarette butts in a wet ashtray.
Perino, the “The Daily Briefing” anchor and co-host of “The
Five,” is taking the high road over the queso backlash and remains tickled by the fuss her viscous brown goo created.
“I’m totally amused,” she told the Chronicle on Tuesday. “It gave people a chance to have some fun. I think the consensus was the game was pretty boring and people were looking for something to talk about.”
Perino said she found a recipe online that was supposed to be similar to the national franchise Chili’s Grill & Bar’s skillet queso.
The recipe included Velveeta and Ro-Tel diced tomatoes. Perfect. Diced jalapeños, fresh tomato and cilantro. Good so far. But where Perino’s queso took a left turn was the inclusion of cream cheese, bacon, sausage and heavy cream. Oh, and a can of cream of mushroom soup.
Many were aghast at that last ingredient. But not Lisa Fain, the James Beard Award-winning food blogger (HomesickTexan.com) and author of the definitive history of queso, “Queso! Regional Recipes for the World’s Favorite Chile-Cheese Dip.”
Fain, a seventh-generation Texan, said that a can of cream of mushroom soup was a traditional addition to queso recipes in the ’50s and ’60s. “It’s something people have done before, so it’s not unusual,” Fain said. “I’m thinking her queso probably tasted pretty good.”
But it looked awful. “I understand why people were horrified,” said Fain, whose queso cookbook was published in 2017. “It looks like she went really heavy on the sausage. It’s that brown color. When you stir it, it turns brown. It did not look appetizing.”
Fain also contends that from the picture, Perino’s queso also might have been a little greasy.
Perino is the first to admit she’s no cook, although she tries a lot of Crock-Pot recipes. Nor is she a queso expert: “By no means did I mean to suggest I was actually good at making queso,” she said. “I think if I had said I made chile con carne queso, it would have taken the edge off the vitriol.”
What made Perino’s epic fail interesting was her close connection to a famous queso-loving clan.
From 2007 to 2009, Perino served as White House press secretary for George W. Bush, whose father, president George H.W. Bush, was a huge fan of Tex-Mex cuisine. Perino said she even attended Bush family Taco Sundays in Kennebunkport, Maine. “There was always TexMex food there,” she said.
But none of that Texas proud, queso-loving know-how rubbed off on her. And even if it did, she knows how finicky and territorial Texans can be about chile con queso. “I understand when it comes to Texas and queso it’s a very high bar.”
Fain says there’s an upside to the “I made queso” social-media frenzy. “It shows that queso has arrived nationwide,” she said. “It’s not a niche thing anymore. It’s a mainstream thing.”
Perino, who admits she may never live down her queso controversy, knows now to stop when the cheese hits the fan. Instead of reprising her queso at future game-day spreads, she has a simpler solution: “What I’m going to do from now on is bring wine.”