What's The Deal With TikTok's Cottage Cheese Queso?

Lovers of Tex-Mex cuisine are fully aware of queso's appeal when it comes to nachos, tacos, or burritos. The great minds over at TikTok have discovered a healthy hack for making queso at home using an unlikely ingredient: cottage cheese. In one video making the rounds on the social media platform, the simple queso recipe is lauded as "BUSSIN!" according to the creator, who says, "I will be putting this on everything!"

In the short clip, the woman takes one cup of cottage cheese and adds it to a blender canister. Next, she adds three to five tablespoons of nutritional yeast, which is followed by one tablespoon of fajita seasoning. The mixture gets blended for about ten seconds, at which point it develops a delightfully creamy texture. Many people in the comments call out the use of nutritional yeast, with one person proclaiming, "I put nutritional yeast on EVERYTHING." So what makes this surprising ingredient so vital to tasty queso?

Nutritional yeast is virtually the same as the yeast used in bread recipes. The key difference is that nutritional yeast is not activated, so it won't make bread rise. Nutritional yeast is chock-full of nutrition, as illustrated by its name, as it contains good portions of fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals. However, this ingredient excels most in the flavor department thanks to its ability to boost "umami" in recipes (umami is a rich flavor often described as being savory).

Nutritional yeast has been in the spotlight over the last few years as more and more people discover its many impressive qualities. It's a healthy ingredient and it's ideal for people looking to avoid gluten, dairy, and animal-based food products. And because its flavor hews close to cheese, particularly parmesan, it's perfect for amplifying the mild flavor of cottage cheese when making queso. The careful selection of ingredients in this easy queso ensure that the recipe is as delicious as it is good for you.

Consider your average storebought queso and what it offers in terms of nutrition. A standard 34-ounce jar contains 13 servings, and each serving offers 2.5 grams of fat and 40 calories, with a whopping 280 milligrams of sodium. Storebought queso offers little when it comes to nutrition, other than one gram of protein and dietary fiber, respectively.

Now, compare the storebought brand to TikTok cottage cheese queso. Cottage cheese servings amount to a half cup, which offers 2.5 grams of fat and 100 calories (consider that the serving size for storebought queso only equals about 2.6 grams). Cottage cheese does offer more sodium per serving at 360 milligrams, but keep in mind that's for the entire half-cup serving as compared to the much smaller serving size for queso. Cottage cheese also offers an impressive 13 grams of protein, and you'll get extra protein thanks to the addition of nutritional yeast. When you crunch the numbers, cottage cheese queso is a healthier snack overall. And thanks to the unbeatable flavor, it's a worthy substitution when you don't want to sacrifice nutrition nor tastiness when snacking.