No need to avoid queso because you don't know what's in it or because you're not eating corn chips- make your own and dip pork rinds!
Ingredients - 4 ounces uncooked ground chorizo or ground beef (optional) - 2 ounces of cream cheese - 4 ounces of shredded cheese (I recommend a mix of cheddar and jack) - 1 tablespoon cream Instructions - In a small pot, cook your chorizo or ground beef over medium heat. - Right as it's finished cooking, add the cream cheese. Cook until it has melted some and then add the cheese and cream. - Stir until everything is mixed and melted. Most queso recipes use flour to keep the cheese thick enough while still liquid. The cream cheese in this recipe keeps the queso thick without becoming solid quickly once removed from heat. If your queso is too thick once everything is melted mix in some more cream. You may need to re-heat it some as it cools to keep it from becoming too hard. If you don't have pre-made chorizo, you can spice your ground beef like taco meet by adding onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, chili powder and some tomato paste. I recommend using a combination of jack and cheddar cheese for this recipe, but either one alone will still make a very traditional queso, and you can experiment with other cheeses for some more creative recipes! Think of all the cheeses that are used to make fondue recipes. Queso can be tricky to re-heat. What I've found works is to take it out of the fridge and start heating on medium low heat. Oil from the cheese will start to separate. Continue to heat until all of the queso is warm and soft, then pour out the excess cheese oil. This is almost impossible to mix back in. Then add cream and stir over the heat until the queso is warmed and the desired consistency.
My favorite thing to dip in queso are pork rinds. Most pork rinds have very simple ingredients but make sure yours are not cooked in sunflower or some other oil. There are some keto version of corn chips, but scrutinize the ingredients on these- it may be very hard to find ones not cooked in seed oils. For a more moderate carb option, Siete brand cassava chips cooked in avocado oil are good also.