Cheese Dip

Factual Questions
1

I am hoping that all of you culinary scientist can help answer my question.

When you normally make cheese dip, or queso depending where you live, you take a brick of Velveeta and a can of Rotel tomatoes and nuke it in the microwave and stir it up. After it cools down, the cheese (or cheese food if you prefer) solidifies and if you want to continue eating it you must re-heat it.

I recently learned a different method. First cube the Velveeta and place in a blender. Bring the Rotel to a boil in a sauce pan on the stove and pour over cheese in the blender. Then liquify in the blender. The dip will stay in a liquid form even if you put in the refigerator.

Why will it not harden? Don’t get me wrong, it’s great cause you can even eat it cold, if you want. I am just curious as to what happens when you run it through the blender, some sort of almagamation I would guess. My friends have accused me of adding some sort of chemical substance that prevents it from hardening. :smiley:

2

My WAG is that you’ve created some sort of emulsion of pulverized cheese in Rotel sauce. Since Rotel sauce doesn’t solidify in the cold (unless you froze it), it’ll hold the cheesy bits in suspension.

Using the old fashioned way, you’re not thoroughly mixing the cheese with the Rotel, so the cheese will re-harden. Notice, however, that it doesn’t get as hard as just a block of Velveeta.

3

Sorry. You pretty much lost me with the idea that Velveeta = cheese.