Fresh, clean and milky-sweet, queso fresco quietly transforms any dish

Published June 13, 2022

This deceptively simple farmer’s cheese is a must have in any Mexican kitchen

By Janet Blaser

My first exposure to this soft, fresh cheese was in East Indian cooking, where paneer is used in a myriad of innovative ways in a host of vegetarian recipes. I learned to love its fresh, milky-sweet taste, and when I moved to Mexico, discovering queso fresco was a delicious surprise.

While you can easily make it yourself (see recipe below), if you’re in Mexico, you can find lovely fresh-made queso fresco at mercados and small tiendas everywhere. Sold in different-sized rounds, often with imprints of the baskets or strainers they were set in, in its original form, this delicate cheese is soft and moist.

I’d avoid buying it packaged in bigger grocery stores; when it’s commercially made and sold, all the qualities you’re looking for are lost. Lorena, the bubbly proprietress at my favorite tiendita, gets deliveries from a small dairy in the nearby foothills three times a week. It’s a little too salty for my taste, so I put the little round in a covered glass container of water overnight in the fridge and then the saltiness is rinsed away.

Queso fresco is a simple farmer’s cheese; you just curdle the milk with a mild acid like lemon juice or white vinegar, and there you have it. At that point, the curds (remember Little Miss Muffet eating her curds and whey?) will separate from the whey, and you can either eat them fresh and soft or drain and press the curd into a more solid form that can be cut into cubes or slabs. It’s not complicated at all, and the trickiest thing is not burning the milk as you heat it to the right temperature.

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