Not long ago, I wrote about how good the new PC plant-based queso style cauliflower dip is. I still haven’t tried to make my own vegan queso with cauliflower. What I have done is try a recipe off the President’s Choice website, which I’ve never done before. It’s using their plant-based queso, of course, and a few other things that my husband I like in all Mexican dishes.
The Vegan Southwest Queso-Style Dip
This recipe is so simple. All you need is some black beans, jalapeno, onion, tomato, cilantro, and the plant-based queso from President’s Choice.
First, you put black beans, the queso dip, and jalapenos into an oven-ready dish. I mixed the beans with some taco seasoning because that’s how I always do beans in Mexican dishes.
How Do You Cook Vegan Queso In A Heat Wave?
There is a heatwave going on here. We are in a stretch of 40˚C days with nights coming in around 20˚C.
I don’t do heat well.
We didn’t want to cook too much inside. But I still wanted to try the recipe, badly. We could have done it on the BBQ, but it was so hot outside that the thought of standing in front of a BBQ didn’t go over well in my head.
So, we used the air fryer. We thought it would produce the least amount of heat. The dish came out great in the air fryer. I cooked it at 200 ˚C for 10 minutes and it came out perfect. The queso sauce was browned on top! And the jalapenos were cooked.
Getting it out of the air fryer with the oven gloves was a little tight, but I managed to do it.
Then I threw on some tomatoes and red onions (we didn’t have any green onions and my husband and I both like red onions raw anyway). I also threw on some dried cilantro that I had dried a few weeks ago (a lot of stems got dried too, but they taste just fine).
And that’s it.
We had it with nachos.
The PC vegan queso cheese was not hard like it was on the nachos in my other review of it. It got browned on top in the air fryer, but once we started eating it, it was extremely creamy in the dish.
So creamy that it was hard to scoop up if we put the dip on our plate.
But it was really good.
We had some leftover queso dip the next day and I threw some of my vegan sour cream and some Frank’s hot sauce on there, and it was amazing.
We Think The Air Fryer Did Heat Up The House A Bit
As an extra note, we do think the air fryer heated up the house a bit. Usually, we can keep it pretty good in our house because we don’t have any south-facing windows. But it was so hot that evening and night, and we think using the air fryer contributed to it. Thankfully we were able to cool the house down a bit between the hours of 4 am and 6 am!
Heatwaves suck!
But, the vegan queso dip was worth it. That dip was so good and exactly what I needed that night. I’ll be having it again soon. I recommend trying.
Update July 22nd, 2022 – I still make this dip to this day. Exactly the same way. It’s my go-to dip for road trips and snacks and I like it hot or cold. I tend to add garlic in, but other than that, this dip has been a keeper as is. I don’t use the PC Southwest Queso-Style Dip in any other recipe, though.
