High Protein Healthy Queso Dip for Your Next Party
This high-protein healthy queso dip is perfect for your next game day tailgate or watch party.
Ingredients
Instructions
STEP 1:
Place the cottage cheese into a blender or food processor. Blend until the cheese is completely smooth and has a consistency similar to yogurt.
STEP 2:
Pour the cottage cheese into a medium microwave-safe bowl.
STEP 3:
Add Mexican blend shredded cheese, pico de gallo, ground cumin, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, and crushed red pepper to the bowl with the blended cottage cheese.
STEP 4:
Mix well and heat in the microwave in 30-second increments. In between each set of 30 seconds mix thoroughly. Continue until the queso is hot and ready to serve.
STEP 5:
Serve with chips or your choice of crudite.
This high-protein queso dip is perfect for your next game day, tailgate, or watch party. As a Penn state student I frequent tailgates almost every weekend in the fall, and everyone knows the best thing about tailgates: the food. The problem with most food at tailgates is that it’s super high in fat, has lots of carbs, and is super caloric.
One of my favorite things to dig into at a tailgate is queso, but typical queso isn’t great for you, so I developed this high protein lower calorie healthy queso dip.
This healthy queso dip follows the trend of cottage cheese in everything, which I am a huge supporter of. Cottage cheese is lower calorie and super high in protein so it’s a great substitute for a standard cheddar cheese in this healthy queso dip.
To make this healthy queso dip super college friendly I used basic simple ingredients that you could pick up at your local college grocery store. My favorite grocery store to visit when I’m at school is Trader Joe’s because everything is prepared so nicely, it’s super fresh and has great prices.
For this healthy queso dip, I used Trader Joe’s Pico de Gallo in place of tomatoes, jalapeños, onions, and other fresh vegetables, because it was an easy alternative that tasted just as good. As a college student, I cannot recommend Trader Joe’s products enough.
The key to making this healthy queso dip silky smooth is blending the cottage cheese in either a blender or food processor. It only takes a couple of seconds and makes a world of difference.
With football games starting up this weekend, I’ll be sure to bring this healthy queso dip to all the tailgates I visit. This dip is such a great alternative to typical queso because it’s completely guilt free and helps get in all your protein for the day.
When I was first coming up with this recipe, I was skeptical about it tasting as good as or even similar to regular queso, but like so many other cottage cheese recipes it fully impressed me. When eating this, you would never know that it was mostly cottage cheese and you’d be shocked to learn that you weren’t consuming full fat delicious cheesy queso.
The blended cottage cheese does such a good job of mimicking that classic Velveeta flavor that we see in so many standard quesos. It’s cheesy, it’s gooey, and it has a nice stretch when you pull your chip out of the dip. It is everything you could ever want in a queso.
ALSO READ: 14 Best Trader Joes Products for Students