Auntie Anne's Cheese Dip

Home reconstruction

Commercial cheese sauces stay perfectly smooth for hours at serving temperature. Home ones go grainy in ten minutes. That is not a technique gap, it is a chemistry one, and there are exactly two ways to close it.

What goes wrong

Cheese is fat and water held apart by casein proteins. Heat makes those proteins contract and clump together. Once they clump, the fat they were holding is released, and you get stringy solids in an oily liquid.

Anything you do after that point is damage limitation.

Solution one: sodium citrate

Sodium citrate is what commercial cheese sauce uses, and it works better than anything else available to a home cook.

It is an emulsifying salt. It binds the calcium that holds casein proteins together, which keeps them dispersed instead of letting them clump. The result is a sauce that can be heated, cooled and reheated without ever breaking.

About 3% of the weight of your cheese and liquid combined — so roughly 11 g for this recipe. It is sold as a food additive and it is cheap.

The flavour is faintly citrusy at this dose and effectively undetectable in a cheese sauce.

Solution two: a roux

If you do not want to buy an additive, a flour-and-butter roux works. The starch physically gets between the proteins and slows the clumping.

It is less stable than sodium citrate — it will eventually break if held hot for long — and it gives a slightly thicker, more gravy-like sauce. But it uses ingredients you already have.

Both methods are below. Neither is "the trick" you may have read about involving evaporated milk, which is really a weak version of the same emulsifying principle and works less well than either.

What you need

Sodium citrate version

• 250 ml whole milk or lager
• 11 g sodium citrate
• 350 g mature cheddar, grated
• 1/2 tsp mustard powder
• 1/4 tsp paprika

Roux version

• 3 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp plain flour
• 400 ml whole milk
• 300 g mature cheddar, grated
• 1/2 tsp mustard powder
• 1/4 tsp paprika

Method — sodium citrate

1. 1. Warm the milk in a saucepan and **whisk the sodium citrate in until dissolved.**
2. 2. Keep it below a simmer. Add the grated cheese a handful at a time, whisking each in.
3. 3. Mustard powder and paprika at the end.

Method — roux

1. 1. Melt the butter. Stir in the flour and cook 1 minute to remove the raw taste.
2. 2. Whisk the milk in gradually — a splash at a time at first, or it lumps.
3. 3. Simmer gently until thickened, 3–4 minutes.
4. 4. Take the pan off the heat, then add the cheese a handful at a time.
5. 5. Mustard powder and paprika.

Grate it yourself, either way

Bagged grated cheese is coated in anti-caking starch, which stops the shreds fusing — precisely what you need them to do here. It leaves a slightly gritty texture no matter which method you use.

The mustard powder

Half a teaspoon, and you will not taste mustard. It sharpens the cheese flavour and covers the slightly flat, greasy note that a lot of cheese sauces have.

It is in almost every good cheese sauce recipe for this reason.

Storing

Five days in the fridge. The sodium citrate version reheats perfectly, every time, which is its main practical advantage.

The roux version reheats acceptably with a splash of milk and gentle stirring. Do not let either boil.

Neither freezes well.