In a frankly, really disgusting video, a woman showed that something was very wrong with the queso she ordered.
Branded as a sports bar, Buffalo Wild Wings sells plenty of the classics, including chicken wings, beer, and nachos.
But it seems one location went really off-book with its nacho cheese preparation.
Why does the Buffalo Wild Wings queso look like that?
Kim Barnett (@tornandtrendy_clothing) was out enjoying a meal with a friend at Buffalo Wild Wings. She shares what happened in a viral TikTok with more than 1.5 million views,
Barnett and her friend ordered nachos and queso to split, but even their server was skeptical when she put it down, Barnett shares.
“The waitress tells us before she puts the queso down that it looks watery because they just made it…. It looks watery because it’s water,” the text overlay on the image reads.
Barnett’s caption indicate she knows this trick because she has service industry experience. “Buffalo wild wings fail… I worked in the restaurant business for too long,” she shares.
Usually, when you dip a chip in queso, you can see the thickness of the spread. But Barnett’s chip dips in with no resistance.
As she pulls the chip up, trying to scoop what should be a more viscous queso, the yellow concoction slides down the chip like water.
In a comment, Barnett adds that they couldn’t have just made the queso since it wasn’t even hot.
The Daily Dot scoured the internet for answers about why this may have happened. But we didn’t find anyone whose queso turned out quite like that.
It’s possible the cooks used too much liquid when thinning out the queso. It’s also possible the cheese isn’t the best quality. To fix it, they needed to add a thickening agent, like a cornstarch slurry, and lots more cheese.
Commenters react
“My line cooks told me that when it’s basically empty they just add water to the container instead of getting a new one and heating it,” a top comment read.
“It comes in frozen not made in store. When it’s hot it’s VERY thin but cools pretty quickly,” a person said. Though Barnett responded, saying the queso never thickened up.
“Good soup,” another joked, riffing on a viral TikTok sound.
“The fact she said that is a dead giveaway they def watered it down.. cause why just randomly say that?” another commenter pointed out.
The Queso Qommandments
The Bon Appétit test kitchen is known for trying to perfect recipes. Heck, they have an entire series called “Making Perfect,” in which they tackle several culinary challenges, from the perfect pizza to the perfect Thanksgiving meal.
Tackling her own challenge, star chef, author, and media personality Sohla El-Waylly set out to make a delicious homemade queso that, in terms of difficulty, is just a step above opening a queso jar.
“You could be totally hammered halfway through the Super Bowl and still manage to make this homemade queso recipe,” she wrote.
As she tackled 15-20 iterations of the recipe, she learned two queso qommandments:
- American cheese is nonnegotiable: El-Waylly tried it without any form of processed cheese (think Velveeta and American) and was left with a “dip that was lumpy, grainy, and, after just a minute off heat, broken, with a shiny, greasy top-layer.”
Unlike other cheeses, American cheese is designed for meltability and provides the perfect cheese dip stabilizer with which other cheeses can be blended. - Cornstarch is a must: A cornstarch slurry is typically used to thicken soups, sauces, and gravies. In this case, it works by absorbing some of the water in the cheeses and preventing fats and proteins from grouping together to form grease and stringy clumps.
Alternatively, you could start with a béchamel sauce, but this is easier, according to El-Waylly.
@tornandtrendy_clothing Buffalo wild wings fail… I worked in the restaurant business for too long #buffalowildwings #madisonalabama #bww ♬ original sound – Kim Barnett
The Daily Dot reached out to Barnett via Instagram and TikTok direct message and to Buffalo Wild Wings via email.
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