These Are The Worst Cheeses To Add To A Quesadilla

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that the simplest-looking recipes can also be the ones that are easiest to mess up. And by that we're thinking about just about everything involving eggs from boiled to scrambled, pasta, pancakes - and to that, we might add a perennial favorite of many time-stretched home cooks: the quesadilla.

While it may be true that the quesadilla can be nigh-on impossible to ruin, those of us who have run out of Monterey Jack and thrown in whatever cheese we might have had in the fridge might beg to differ, particularly if we are left with a cold, unfeeling quesadilla, instead of the comforting, ooey-gooey cheese delight most of us will always make room for.

As The Kitchn points out, it doesn't take much to make a good quesadilla – all we need are tortillas, cheese, protein extras if you're using them, a bit of butter or oil to crisp up your tortilla, and a warm pan to cook it all in. But because, as the outlet also points out, melted cheese is meant to be the ingredient that holds everything together, there are cheeses that aren't up to the task when it comes to playing captain for Team Quesadilla, no matter how tasty they are when they fly solo.

The difference between a good quesadilla and a disappointing one will come down to the kind of cheese you use. The Food Network has a list of cheeses that work well with a quesadilla, and these include the OG Mexican cheeses quesadilla (yes, there is a cheese, and it lends its name to the food rather than the other way around), the northern Mexican Chihuahua cheese, and the southern Oaxaca – which bears more than a passing resemblance to Italian mozzarella. Closer to home we have Monterey Jack, which is the go-to of any Tex-Mex kitchen worth its salt.

But as the Food Network also points out, there are cheeses that are best avoided, and these cheese share one quality: they are aged and, as a result, have lost their moisture and are harder and more difficult – if not impossible – to melt. To this list the Food Network adds Manchego and Parmesan.

There is one more thing: there is such a thing as too much of a good thing- so when you use high-moisture cheeses like brie and Camembert (which doesn't sound too authentically Mexican to us, but it's your quesadilla), you need to watch your cooking times carefully, so your fusion quesadilla doesn't end up being too soggy.