Plastic Cheese is basically liquid gold.

Magic Kingdom
Here at Disney Food Blog, we are passionate about all things Disney foods. We spend every day trying the best snacks, meals, and hacks to make sure what you spend your money on in the theme parks is truly worth it! One way we know we might be too obsessed? We just realized you can make one of our favorite snacks at home.
Plastic Cheese is pretty much a staple here at DisneyFoodBlog. It’s a tried and true AJ favorite that our entire team will rally behind her over because it really does make everything so much better.

REAL plastic cheese
If you don’t know what we mean by plastic cheese, it’s the golden, plastic-looking cheese that you get with your corn dog nuggets and your Mickey pretzels. We like to test it on pretty much everything.

Crunchy Corn Dog Nuggets with Cheesy Goodness
This cheese has slowly made its way through Disney World and you can even find it at spots like Backlot Express in Hollywood Studios. As Disney dining tends to change, plastic cheese is one of the only things that has remained untouched. Well, we just discovered we can bring our love for plastic cheese home!

Look at that golden sauce!
If you’re anything like us, we’ve tried to melt cheese down before and it never looks quite as good as what Disney makes and we finally discovered why! We were missing a key ingredient of sodium citrate. I mean, how simple is that! Now that might sound a little scary but it’s just because it’s unfamiliar. You can make it at home or even buy it in stores.

©Amazon
Sodium citrate is essentially just a food additive that you can find in a lot of different foods to help make it silky and melty. It’s even in Velveeta! The sodium citrate just helps prevent the cheese from becoming a solid which makes it nice and liquidy even as the cheese begins to heat up. Is liquidy even a word? Well, it is now.

Plastic cheese, yum!
What we love about this is we can bring some of our favorite Disney magic home with us and we learned a bit of science today, too! You can just call us EPCOT thanks to all of this edutainment. (Educational entertainment in case you’re a bit confused.)

Corn dog nugget with lots of plastic cheese!
Now that I know how to make creamy plastic cheese at home, I heard a rumor that AJ is coming over so I kinda need to go scrub my entire house while the cheese melts. Do you guys know how to make corn dog nuggets at home yet? We gotta figure that out ASAP! In the meantime, don’t forget to keep following DisneyFoodBlog for all of your Disney snack hacks.
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Would you ever try this at home? Tell us in the comments!
What kind of cheese do you use?
Here’s a very basic recipe:
1 cup liquid (milk, beer, water, etc.)
2 tsp sodium citrate
8oz shredded cheese – softer cheese like cheddar or Colby-jack preferred
pinch of salt
1. Heat liquid in a sauce pot on medium-low heat until whisps of steam begin to appear from the surface of the liquid.
2. Stir in sodium citrate with a whisk to dissolve and allow the liquid mixture to simmer (bubbles form around the outer surface.
3. Turn off heat and begin to stir in cheese one small handful at a time, whisking until the cheese has fully melted. Repeat the process until all the cheese is incorporated. If the sauce begins to look clumpy, turn on a low flame under the pan to help incorporate the melted cheese. Be patient, this step can take a bit of time.
Notes:
– Add turmeric to bring out the color – about a teaspoon at a time until desired color is reached
– For a classic Nacho sauce add about 4 Tbs of pickled jalapeno juice to the liquid
@Lori I’ve used bagged shredded cheddar, Monterey Jack and oaxaca cheese.