Skillet Cheese Dip with Beef and Sausage
A cast iron pan of melted cheese, browned meat, and canned chiles. Camp appetizer that eats like dinner.
- calories
- 420
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 70
- protein
- 24 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Grill grate
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Lean ground beef | 1 lb | |
|---|---|---|
| Italian sausage | 1 lb | casings off if links |
| Velveeta | 1 lb | cubed at home so it melts evenly |
| Monterey jack cheese | 1 lb | shredded or cut small |
| Canned diced tomatoes with green chiles | 1 can (10 oz) | do not drain |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down to coals. Set the skillet on a grate over the coals, not over flames.
- Brown the beef and sausage together, breaking the meat apart as it cooks. Ten minutes or so.
- Pour off most of the fat. Leave a spoonful behind.
- Add the cubed Velveeta, the jack, and the whole can of tomatoes with its liquid.
- Stir often as the cheese goes. It scorches on the bottom if you walk away. Pull the pan to the cool edge of the grate if it gets ahead of you.
- Serve straight from the skillet while it is loose. It stiffens as it cools; a minute back over coals brings it around.
Two pounds of cheese and two pounds of meat is a lot of skillet, which is the point: this feeds a full site and holds up while people wander over. Velveeta is doing the structural work. It emulsifies instead of breaking, so the dip stays pourable over uneven campfire heat where a pan of pure jack would split into oil and curds. The jack is there for flavor the processed cheese does not have.
Brown the meat at home if you can. It is the messy, greasy, fat-disposal part of the job, and doing it in a kitchen means camp is fifteen minutes of stirring instead of forty of scrubbing. Everything here needs a cooler, so this is a car-camping recipe and not a pack-it-in one. Coals, not flames — the bottom of a cast iron pan full of cheese scorches faster than you expect.
Packing
Brown both meats at home, cool them, and pack in a zip bag in the cooler. Cube the Velveeta and bag it with the jack. At camp this becomes one pan and two bags.
Variations
- Swap in a can of black or kidney beans for half the meat.
- Chunky salsa stands in for the tomatoes and chiles.
- Chili powder or a hot taco seasoning packet if the can is too mild.
https://campfirefoodie.com/skillet-rotel-dip-recipe-with-ground-beef-sausage