Sorry, I guess I am no help to you as I thought they were the same thing and was a melting cheese. Never heard of it as a frying cheese.

Hopefully Lars will see this post, he knows a lot about Mexican cheese.

PS: I have a great recipe for spinach and cheese enchiladas using which ever one is a melting cheese.

Sharon - the only time I ever bought it before was for my very first Virtual Dinner Party - the South American one. IIRC at the time all I did was cut blocks of it and through it on the grill. The package itself says "will not melt."

Spinach and cheese enchiladas sounds good to me, but unfortunately it's tough to get DW to enjoy spinach...

For the best description of Mexican cheeses, visit This Site. Queso Blanco is fine for enchiladas and is more typical of what you will get in enchiladas in Mexico. What you get in the state is a Tex-Mex version that has a softer cheese that is runny when melted. Are you trying to make Mexican enchiladas or Texan enchiladas? I put chicken in my enchiladas but sometimes put Oaxacan cheese on top.

Queso blanco and queso fresco are definitely different, but they are both "fresh" cheeses. The cheese used in Tex-Mex enchiladas is normally a semi-soft cheese, and these are extremely hard to find, even in Los Angeles. The melting (or semi-soft) cheeses are what you use to quesadillas, and I have tried to find Queso Asadero without success. (I haven't found Queso Chihuahua either, but I haven't looked in Latin markets yet.)

In addition to using queso blanco in your enchiladas, you can also use it in migas or on tostados. I make tostados with fried corn tortillas, my bean dip, queso cotija (although blanco can be used), plus whatever else I want to put, such as lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, etc. You can use the same for tacos.

Here's my enchilada recipe, but it does not use cheese. Cheese is not as common in Mexican cooking as it is in Tex-Mex. They do use a lot of "Crema", which you should be able to find.

Lars

Lars - Thanks so much for the links and tips; I'll definitely read up on all of this.

My (ummm, Wisconsin) queso blanco has an expiration date pretty far out, so I'll save it and try it in my next batch.

Just wondering, how did you become the resident expert? Are you of Mexican decent or do you just have a particular interest in their cuisine?

I'm not Mexican, but when I lived in San Francisco, I spent all my winters in Mexico, to get away from the cold and damp - usually most of January and February. I have many friends in Mexico City, and several of them gave me open invitations to visit them whenever I wanted, and I took advantage of that. From Mexico City, I would go by train or bus to other areas of Mexico for side trips, mostly to places like Yucatan, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Vera Cruz, and Acapulco, but also to other colonial towns like Taxco and Guanajuato. One friend in Mexico City has a week-end home in Oaxtepec, not far from Cuernavaca, and so I sometimes go there on week-ends. Michelle cooks when she is out of town on week-ends, but in the city, her servant does the cooking. Most of the food I've had in Mexico was prepared by servants or cooks.

Since I grew up in Texas, I was surrounded by Tex-Mex food, since that was the predominant cuisine when I was a child. It's always been very easy to get Mexican ingredients in Texas.

Lars