Queso is a Spanish word that translates to “cheese” in English.

Is queso spicy? As with salsa, there's a range of spice-levels available for queso. It's possible to buy or make very mild queso that doesn't have any more heat than a block of cheese. It's also possible to get super spicy queso that can melt your taste buds off.

Cheese, as well as the Spanish queso and German Kaese and a few other cheese words, all can be traced to the Latin word for cheese, caseus. Going back a little further, the earliest known proto-Indo-European root is *kwat-, a term that refers to the process of making cheese as it means “to ferment, to become sour.”