Queso Fundido is a delicious dish of spicy sausage and melted cheese. It makes for a great, freezer-friendly taco filling that your whole crowd will love.
I feel like I can say I’ve now achieved “mature woman” status. I’ve got recipes that I’ve been making for over 20 years. How is that possible? If memory serves me correctly, this recipe for Queso Fundido is one of those old standby recipes for me.
According to Wikipedia, Queso Fundido is
a dish of hot melted cheese and spicy chorizo that is often served flambé. Often compared to cheese fondue, it is a party dish; it is popular at cookouts and in restaurants as an appetizer.
My rendition of it has a few tweaks to it. First, I don’t care for chorizo, so I use hot Italian sausage. Bonus: it’s more readily available. My version is also more sausage than cheese, and we serve it as a main dish around here. Party on, my friends!
Queso Fundido is super easy to make. One of the things that I love about it is that it’s super freezer-friendly. You can cook up a vat of sausage, divide it among pie plates, sprinkle on your cheese, wrap, cool, and freeze. Voila! You’ve got one of the most amazing taco fillings all ready and waiting in your freezer!
How to make this good and cheap:
Here are some of the strategies you can use to make this recipe more economical:
- Stock up on ingredients when they are on sale. When I find regular kitchen staples on sale, I buy a lot. I’m currently using a price book to track prices and that’s saving me money. For this recipe, keeping an eye on the price of bulk Italian sausage is helpful. You can also use the kind in the casings, just bulk is easier. My target price is currently $3.99 or less per package.
- Buying in bulk – I buy my pepper jack cheese in big ginormous hunks at Costco. It offers the best unit price in my neighborhood. If you don’t go through big blocks of cheese very fast, shred it all at one time and then freeze the shredded cheese in 2-cup portions or make a lot of Queso Fundido. Shredded cheese freezes and thaws beautifully.
How I make this recipe easy:
This recipe really couldn’t be easier than it is, but having the right kitchen tools can really make your time in the kitchen more enjoyable. Over time, I’ve honed my collection so that they are perfect for my needs.
- food processor for shredding cheese
- a great skillet – I have two of these
- USA pie plates – no need to grease these pans – they are awesome!
- heavy-duty aluminum foil – great for wrapping freezer meals when your dish doesn’t come with a lid.
- 1 pound bulk hot Italian sausage
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 2 cups shredded pepper jack cheese
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- corn tortillas preferably homemade
- salsa and sour cream for serving
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a pie plate with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a large skillet, brown the sausage and onion, breaking up the meat with the back of a spoon. Drain and spoon the mixture into an 8-inch pie dish. Cover the mixture with cheese.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. Serve with corn tortillas, sour cream, and salsa.
To freeze: cool meat mixture completely before topping with cheese. Wrap in foil and place inside ziploc freezer bag. Label, chill, and freeze. Thaw before proceeding with the baking directions.
Originally published May 18, 2009.
Preparing Artichokes
Chihuahua Beer Chili Recipe
Instant Oatmeal Packets: How to Make Your Own
Make Your Own Pan Pizza
78 Ways to Enjoy Fall Produce (Ultimate Recipe Swap)
this sounds so yummy and easy!
Sounds good. The pepper jack could be a good complement to the chorizo. We tried chorizo for the first time yesterday, on pizza (it was an Emeril recipe). It’s spicy, but great and not too greasy, we thought. Though I will warn you it may be too much for the kids!
Oooh! That does sounds absolutely fantastic!
Thanks for sharing!
🙂
This sounds really delicious, adding it to my list of gotta-rey-that recipes!
This sounds good. I think we might try it with Jennie-O Hot Turkey Italian Sausage.
Ooo sounds great! Any chance you can post a picture for us??
I don’t get it. It sounds like a dip. Do you dip the tortillas? or are you rolling it up? Sounds yummy but I just can’t figure out how you serve it 🙂
It’s a taco filling, but you could certainly eat it as a dip.
Sounds yummy! My husband was eyeballing it and likes it.
Can you just buy a bag of corn tortillas and freeze them on top of this (after it’s cooled?) I like to keep all the meals components together but honestly, I haven’t ever frozen tortillas
@April Driggers, you certainly could. At our house, hubs insists on making the tortillas fresh rt before serving. Thankful that he insists on doing it himself. 😉
@Jessica Fisher,
OOOH I’d LOVE if he’d do that but if we want them fresh, we run down the street and buy them at one of the stores (there are three within about a 10 mile radius) that make them fresh there (one of the perks of living in Texas). 🙂 I don’t know if I’d have the patience to make my own because they’d have to be PERFECTLY round! Ha!
I was clicking around and only thought “hmmm, I should make this” after seeing the picture here (http://lifeasmom.com/2010/10/freezer-cooking-recipes-you-can-count-on.html). Maybe you could update this post with the photo? Looks and sounds very tasty!!
Thanks for a great suggestion. I didn’t start taking (decent) photos until 2011, so yeah, a photo was necessary.
This looks really good. We raise our own beef so I think I am going to try this with ground meat and homemade taco seasoning.
I’m not a fan of the chorizo either. I tried this at a restaurant with shrimp so if you ever get a good deal on shrimp, you should totally try it. It was so good! I never thought about freezing it so I’ll be adding this to my freezer list.
This would be so good with Cevapci! It’s an Eastern European sausage. Yum, I’m going to try these with your recipe and with the cevapci, too. Thanks!
We loved this concept. I will admit to chickening out over the sausage since we don’t do spicy– stuck to a milder turkey breakfast sausage since I had that browned from my red beans/rice over the weekend. I also threw in some freshly prepared black beans to stretch the filling (you know about 14yo boys). Will definitely do again, and make it a double for a freezer meal!
Sounds like it was a hit. I’m so glad.
This sounds like such a great easy recipe! About how many would you say this serves? I have 4 kidlets and 2 grownups to feed. Thanks!! 🙂
I usually feed my family one pan with rice and beans and a big stack of homemade tortillas on the side. So, that feeds 8 — if you’ve got the sides.
My (Mexican-American) in-laws use chorizo more for flavor than as an actual dish by itself. They use it in eggs or pinto beans!
I’m so excited to try this recipe! I am so bored with my normal freezer meals and am on the hunt for some inspiration. So glad I found your recipes. Just wondering if you think it would work to add some whole grain rice to the filling before freezing? I’ve been wondering about freezing rice. Thank you!
I’ve never added rice to this dish. We prefer just meat and cheese with rice on the side.
I’ve made this recipe twice (with chorizo), and we LOVE IT! Hubby likes to eat it on flour tortillas with lettuce and tomatoes, just like beef tacos. I usually just have a little of the sausage and some sour cream on a tortilla – delicious!
It’s definitely one of our favorites, too.
This is one of my “Oh, no! Didn’t do a meal plan what am I going to fix tonight kindof meal.” But last night I had a twist in that I am in week 2 of low carb diet(I had to drool over the Red Velvet Pancakes I made the boys this morning).
Soooo, I took a green pepper, cut it in two, blanched it, and then stuffed it with this filling and baked it! (It’s also nice with mushrooms although gives a different flavor). So, not as fun as on tortillas but I still got to enjoy the meal without having to totally prepare something different for myself. 🙂 Yum.
You always come up with such great alternatives. I need to have you help me test recipes for the next book. 🙂
That would be fun. Thought the adaptation might be an idea for you getting through the next 30 days–I guess you’d have to drop the cheese but . . .
I had that on my plan until I called Sprouts today and found out that they put sugar in their sausage. It would be perfect except for that….
OMGOODNESS Jessica! I’ve wanted to try this for years. Before reading this recipe on your site I’d never heard of queso fundido. We had this for dinner tonight, using a nasty organic Italian sausage from Abundant Harvest Organics. We didn’t like the sausage on our pizza and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, since it’s organic and a little pricey for my tastes. Anyhoo, I am so glad I froze it instead of getting rid of it because I was able to try this recipe. It was delicious cooked with onion, coated in cheese, wrapped in a corn tortilla along with fresh salsa (your recipe using fresh tomatoes instead of canned). All I can say is OMG again (Hmmmm I just realized OMG backwards is GMO LOL- though not something to laugh about really). So, so good. And I can’t believe such a simple recipe could taste so amazing. Thanks for telling us how to make this! Bye now!
I’m so glad you enjoyed it — and that you were able to salvage the sausage. I’ve used many different kinds and we always like this. I don’t recommend chorizo, though. I didn’t like it with that.
after scouring the web endlessly a million times looking for new dinner ideas each night, I decided to try weekly meal plans. The first one I tried included this recipe. I was skeptical, because I am not a big pork fan – I just don’t like the flavor. But I sucked it up and made this because I knew my husband would love it. And to my surprise- it was amazing!!!! He asked for it again and I am more than willing!
YAY! So glad to hear it. This is one of my favorites, too.
This sounds delicious! If I do it as a freezer-meal, could I reheat in a slow cooker? We have a lot of evenings that we need to come home to “ready to go” dinner, and I’d love to try this one.
Also, have you ever tried with homemade sausage? I rarely buy sausage, but use I cook ground beef or turkey with a sausage seasoning mix and use in place of purchased sausage.
Thank you!
I’ve never tried it in the slow cooker since it reheats in about 15-20 minutes. I think the cheese might get funny cooking for so long, but maybe you could heat the meat and add the cheese near the end?
I’ve not tried it with homemade sausage because we like this dish really spicy and I’ve yet to master spicy homemade sausage.
My husband’s stamp of approval on a meal goes something like this, “Hon, you could make this once a week!” This recipe got that stamp!
Woohoo! Yay!
This was easy and delicious and used some bulk sausage from the freezer! Win, win, win! Thank you. Served with l.o. herby rice, broccoli and salad.
So glad you liked it!