Drive three hours south out of Anchorage, through two mountain passes, down a highway dotted with rural churches and the occasional moose, and you’ll arrive in Kenai, a seaside town world famous for its salmon fishing. But in Alaska, the area is also known for a specialty made at the 50-year-old butcher shop called Echo Lake Meats.
On the package, the dip is labeled “World Famous Jalapeño Cheese Spread,” but in Kenai and the neighboring town of Soldotna, people refer to it as “Echo Lake cheese dip.” To everyone else in the state, it’s just “Kenai dip.”
“You find very few people of any age bracket that haven’t had it or don’t love it,” said Erick Watkins, who owns the shop with his wife, Holli.
Recipe: Kenai Dip (Smoky Jalapeño Cheese Dip)
Even Mr. Watkins doesn’t know the exact proportions of the half-century-old recipe — that knowledge resides with just one of his longtime employees — but the basics are Cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, jalapeño and liquid smoke. A mouth-tingling, mayo-forward cousin of pimento cheese, it travels well and is usually served with sturdy tortilla chips or crackers.
Salmon may be Alaska’s most renowned dish, but in the coolers of the people fishing for salmon, you very likely to find Kenai dip. In midsummer, when the sockeye run thick in the Kenai (pronounced KEEN-eye) River, Echo Lake sells 500 pounds of it per day.
Beyond his shop, Mr. Watkins sells the dip at gas stations, small groceries, by mail subscription and in a chilled vending machines, including ones at the Anchorage airport and soon in the break room of a nearby oil refinery. The demand doesn’t let up, he said.
“It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re having a party, or grab it for a get-together after church, or we got a potluck, or it’s my mom’s, my aunt’s, my uncle’s birthday, they want the cheese, or my kids are coming home for college, they said you better have the cheese,’” he said.
Alaskans eat lots of home-smoked fish and meat, so Kenai dip fits right into the preferred flavor profile. Self-described “cheese mules” cart it from Kenai in bulk to Anchorage and beyond. Restaurants smear it on “Kenai burgers.” Home cooks trade bootleg recipes.
Alaska is also awash in Kenai dip dupes. The deli departments of most grocery stores, from small international markets in Anchorage to big chains, offer a housemade version. They are likely reaching more customers than the original, but Mr. Watkins doesn’t mind.
“It creates more energy and more curiosity,” he said. “Like, ‘Man, this knockoff is good, and I know it’s a knockoff because I know the story. I have got to try the real thing.’”
Echo Lake’s version uses sharp Cheddar that’s aged in-house and put through a grinder instead of grated. Store versions hew toward the classic home-kitchen recipes, using grated cheese and canned jalapeño brine, giving it a looser consistency.
The 22 Carrs-Safeway stores in Alaska have been selling their version for about 30 years, according to Sara Osborne, the public affairs director for Albertsons, the parent company. At present, they’re moving between 2,200 to 6,600 pounds a week. Albertsons also recently introduced the dip in its stores in Washington.
Charlie’s Produce, a Seattle-based wholesaler, sells another 800 to 1,000 pounds of its dip a week in Alaska at Fred Meyer, Walmart and a number of rural grocers, according to Rob Moriarty, production manager in Anchorage. Rosa Kim, a business partner at Charlie’s, recently made her version of the dip for old friends back home in Washington, D.C., and used it to stuff meatballs for subs.
“They were like, ‘This is some country stuff,’ when I told them what I was putting in it, and then they ate it,” Ms. Kim said. “Then they were like, ‘I am dying for this. Tell me what this is.’”
The chef Maya Wilson lived in the Kenai area for years as she developed “The Alaska from Scratch Cookbook,” which features recipes for both her version of the dip and a Kenai-style cheeseburger. She uses fresh-grated cheese (pre-grated cheese is treated with starches that mess with dip texture, she said), smoked paprika, garlic salt and canned or jarred jalapeños. It’s good, but she remains partial to the heat and texture of the original, which, despite many attempts, no one has been able to perfectly reproduce.
“I’m still very loyal to Echo Lake,” she said.
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