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April 2, 2010

If you live in the U.S., you've probably have had quesadillas before. Shred some cheese, put it between two tortillas, warm it up, and there you have it, quesadillas. Most Americans usually use just boring factory cheddar. We put 3 cheeses to the test to see what one we liked best for quesadillas: Cheddar, Asadero, and Queso Quesadilla. We also made a quesadilla with a mixture of the three cheeses.

The Cheeses

Cheddar

The Cheddar we chose was Tillamook Medium Cheddar. As far as factory-made Cheddars go, Tillamook is pretty high-quality stuff. If we were going to put factory cheddar up against Hispanic cheeses in a quesadilla contest, it would only be fair to use good factory cheddar instead of some generic store brand.

The cheddar in our experiment performed as expected. It was easy to grate and melted well.

Asadero

The package of Asadero that we bought said it was "sliced" Asadero. However, the slices didn't come apart very well, and I used it on my cheese grater as if it were a full, unsliced block of cheese. It shredded very well. It also melted well. It became really gooey when melted, but did not get greasy at all. It had kind of a salty, earthy taste to it that made its presence known without being too strong.

Queso Quesadilla

Right out of the package the cheese was wet and sweaty, but the inside of the cheese is was not moist. When I tried to grate Queso Quesadilla, it crumbled. What I had left after grating was a mixture of grated cheese and cheese crumbs. Like the other cheeses, Queso Quesadilla melted well, but separated and became somewhat greasy. While the other two cheeses stuck to the tortillas, the greasiness of the Queso Quesadilla did not allow the cheese and the tortillas to stick together very well.

What we liked

Without telling my wife and 11-year-old neice which one was which, we tried each of the quesadillas.

We liked the flavor of the Queso Quesadilla, but not the texture. My wife, not knowing at the time which was which, pointed to the plate of quesadillas made from Queso Quesadilla, and said, "This one isn't a very good quesadilla cheese." That's ironic, since Queso Quesadilla means "quesadilla cheese" in Spanish.

The Asadero was a bit too gooey and almost, but not quite, rubbery. The flavor was good, but the texture was not.

The Cheddar quesadilla seemed pretty bland when compared to the other cheeses, even though it was a medium Cheddar instead of a mild one.

Our overall favorite was the blended cheese quesadilla. The mixture of the cheeses kept the Queso Quesadilla from being too greasy and the Asadero too rubbery. If judging only on flavor, the Queso Quesadilla was best, but the mixture of cheeses created a better quesadilla.