2-Ingredient Microwave Cheese Sauce Comes Together In No Time At All

Whether you're sprinkling feta over a Greek salad or melting cheddar over a hamburger, cheese is always a welcome addition. Sauce is an especially decadent celebration of cheese, with iconic recipes like beer cheese (which is not the same as pub cheese) for soft pretzels and creamy queso to accompany chips and margaritas. That said, most types of cheese don't just melt into a uniformly creamy sauce, especially in the microwave, so a two-ingredient microwave cheese sauce that comes together in a minute or two is a modern miracle. American cheese and half-and-half are the two ingredients you can microwave to achieve the cheese sauce of your dreams.

American cheese may be an ultra-processed, but its composition and additives are what make a microwave cheese sauce possible. Made of a blend of different meltable cheeses, American cheese also contains the emulsifier sodium citrate. This emulsifier is the secret ingredient for meltability, preventing cheese's oils and proteins from separating during the heating process. It's no wonder that American cheese made it on our list of the 14 best cheeses for your grilled cheese sandwich. Half-and-half provides more dairy richness as well as the liquid volume needed to turn American cheese into a sauce. To make the sauce requires little more than tearing a couple of Kraft American cheese singles into quarters, placing them in a microwavable bowl with 1-2 tablespoons of half-and-half, and nuking the mixture for one minute, pausing to give it a stir halfway through.

A quick, one-minute cheese sauce is rich and savory without any additions. You can use it for dipping veggies like steamed cauliflower and broccoli. It'd also be the perfect addition to leftover steak; you could chop up the steak, place it in a sandwich roll, and finish it with cheese sauce for a homemade Philly cheesesteak. For a completely microwavable loaded baked potato, you can nuke a russet potato, a half-cup of this no-bean Hormel canned chili, and the cheese sauce, layering the ingredients in the same order your microwave them.

While two ingredients are all you need for this cheese sauce, additional seasonings like spices, powdered aromatics, and dried herbs will take it to the next level. Stir in some cayenne and onion powder for a spicy kick. Mustard powder and a dash of Worcestershire sauce would bring heat and umami depth. Of course, you could also swap half-and-half for a quarter cup of Rotel tomatoes and chiles to make an individual portion of queso. If you want to make cheese sauce for a crowd, you can certainly double, triple, or quadruple the recipe. Adding larger quantities of the ingredients will increase cooking times, but the steps are still the same; a cheese sauce using an entire package of singles would take anywhere between 5 and 8 minutes in the microwave, stirring halfway through.