Sriracha Sausage Queso Dip

Sriracha Sausage Queso Dip? Sriracha and Queso? Isn’t that a strange combination? Asian and Latin fare in one dish? Well, yes and no. Sure the ingredients come from the opposite sides of the planet, but they have a word for combining such disparate ingredients. It’s called fusion. Well, then I added sweet Italian sausage to it to form an Asian/Latin/Italian fusion, so maybe a little strange. Or as dad calls it, fusion confusion. By the way, special thanks to my dad (who also writes here) who helped out a great deal in coming up with the idea for the recipe, rounding up ingredients and helping with the photoshoot.

Whether you call it Sriracha Sausage Queso Dip or fusion confusion, it’s a new twist on the boring nachos served at millions of households for the the big game. You know the nachos I’m talking about – the wimpy, thin cheese that if you’re lucky might have some tomatoes or maybe some green chilies. Well this isn’t that boring dip. This is a big, bold queso dip that will be the MVP of the appetizers table at your big game party.

Sriracha Sausage Queso Dip Ingredients:

• 1 lb oaxaca queso
• 1/2 lb quesadilla queso
• 1/2 cup whipping cream (or heavy whipping cream or milk)
• 4 oz can green chillies, sauce drained
• 3 tbsp sriracha sauce
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 lb Johnsonville sweet Italian sausage

I know what most of you are thinking right now. Oaxaca cheese? That there will be little chance you can pronounce that queso (or cheese) and even less that you will be able to purchase it. Not true on either count. It’s pronounced “wacaca” and you can find it in just about any Latin market. Okay, okay. I realize not everyone wants to go find a Latin market, and some of you have no access to one. If not, use the blanco variety of that cheese block that doesn’t need to be refrigerated. I decided to go authentic to try to use ingredients from three continents.

Start by grating your cheese and dropping it into a pot over medium low heat:

Drain the chilies and add them along with the whipping cream and stir:

And keep stirring. Leave this too long without stirring and the cheese will burn to the bottom of the pot. It’s almost a two person job.

Next up brown the sausage in another pan. I used Johnsonville Sweet Italian bulk sausage for this and was pleasantly surprised by how little fat I lost when I cooked it through. Less than 2 ounces of fat could be drained off into a measuring cup:

Now on to combine the cheese, sausage and sriracha:

Put in 3 tablespoons of sriracha:

And a couple tablespoons of butter and mix together:

Now we have the savory and the heat, let’s add some savory sweet:

Now stir together all that deliciousness:

Transfer to a crock pot or a bowl and hunker down to watch the big game:

This was a very well balanced dip. The heat from green chilies hit the taste buds right away (but not too hot, just some warmth), followed a few seconds later by some zing from the sriracha, but then there’s the sweet sausage to counter the heat. I had initially planned on using Johnsonville chorizo, but felt that if I put enough sriracha in to be able to taste it over the chorizo then 90% of the population who tried that dip would think it was way too hot. I absolutely love hot food, but three types of heat would’ve been too much. The Johnsonville sweet Italian sausage was a perfect complement to the rest of the ingredients in this dip.

Oh, and the other beautiful thing about this dip is you can make it the day before and put it in the removable pot from your crock pot and put it in the fridge overnight. It warms up nicely the next day and the flavors become even more pronounced. And this is where I would normally give a shout out to the team I’m rooting for, but I don’t want to risk getting in trouble so, “Go, uh, team, and beat that, uh, other team and with the, uh game, with the ball and the fans and stuff!”

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below or send me an email. I respond to emails much faster.

Full disclosure – Johnsonville compensated me to do this post, but as always, I don’t promote anything I wouldn’t use myself and this dip came out fantastic with that sweet Italian sausage rounding things together beautifully.

Also, you can follow us on our GrillinFools Facebook page and Instagram.

Print Recipe

Sriracha Sausage Queso Dip

A new twist on an old favorite. Sriracha infused queso dip loaded with sweet Italian sausage - Sriracha Sausage Queso Dip

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Total Time50 minutes mins

Course: Appetizer, Finger Food

Cuisine: American, American Fare, Finger Food, Mexican, South American, Southwest

Keyword: Nacho Cheese, Nachos, Queso, Sriracha

Servings: 6 People

Ingredients

• 1 lb oaxaca queso
• ½ lb quesadilla queso
• ½ cup whipping cream or heavy whipping cream or milk
• 4 oz green chilli sauce drained
• 3 tbsp sriracha sauce
• 2 tbsp salted butter
• 1 lb Johnsonville sweet Italian sausage

Instructions

• Grate the cheese and add it a pot set to medium low
• Add the cream and drained green chillies and stir frequently
• Begin browning the Johnsonville sweet Italian sausage in another pan
• Add the sriracha and butter to the cheese and mix together well, continually stirring
• Once the sausage is browned, drain the fat off and add the sausage to the rest of the ingredients
• Transfer to a crockpot to serve

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

See Full Bio

BBQ Grilling

Related Posts

Pull Apart Cheesy Sausage Bread

Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

Epic Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABT’s)

BBQ Moink Balls

This article was initially published on: February 2, 2016