Homemade (somewhat) Healthy Nachos

As a Nacho critic extraordinaire, there are questions I get asked a lot:  “What are the best Nachos?”,  ”What are the worst Nachos?”  “Why are you so handsome?”  But out of all the question I get asked, the one that has bothered me the most is ”Why don’t you make your own Nachos?”  It bothers me because I really don’t have an answer.  I have never made my own Nachos, and one would think that with all my Nacho knowledge I would be able to make some tasty ones.  I think the main reason is that it’s a lot of work.  Really.  I don’t try to think of myself as lazy, but if I am hungry and want Nachos I want them NOW.  I don’t feel like taking the time to dice and slice tomatoes and onion for the guacamole, or melt the cheese for my Nachos.  It’s also very expensive to buy all the ingredients to make your own Nachos compared to going to El Pollo Loco and ordering a number 5 with extra pico de gallo and avocado salsa for $6.  This isn’t a review more than it is a step by step photo gallery of making some Nachos from beginning to end.  If you’ve ever wondered how much work actually goes into making t heaven, then continue reading!

I want to thank the discovery of a new product that encouraged to make these Nachos.  You see, Postal (who you should know by now if you’ve read my previous reviews) is on a special food plan which does not allow him to eat certain foods, including tortilla chips.  As crazy as this might sound he is allowed to eat corn chips, but only one tortilla worth.  This explains why he follows me on my journey but never gets to rejoice (or regret) with me on each of my Nachoxpeditions.  That is until I discovered these:

Healthy and Tasty

 What you see here are one of the new revolutions in Nachos, brown rice crisps (chips).  Ok, maybe they’re not revolutionary, but it is a somewhat healthy alternative for those that can’t eat flour or corn tortillas.  They come in different flavors and they are actually quite enjoyable.  On this occasion I picked the Salsa Fresca flavor (Fresh Salsa).  The only problem I can see with these chips is that the bag is only ABOUT half full, and the rest is air.  I had to buy two bags just to make sure I had enough to go around.  I’ll now start with the preparation of the Nachos.

:-P~

Guacamole is one of my favorite things about Nachos, good guacamole that is.  Good guacamole can make inferior Nachos be worthwhile, while mediocre guacamole just rubs me the wrong way, kind of like using sand paper as toilet paper.  The ingredients for this guacamole are: onions, tomatoes, cilantro, green chiles, avocado, limes, salt and Tapatio hot sauce.  It’s hard for me to give an exact estimate for each ingredient as I measure by taste, especially when it comes to the limes and hot sauce.  If I was to go all out I would have used mayonnaise as well, but unfortunately Postal cannot eat mayonnaise.  One of the things I do enjoy about cooking is that you get to eat the food while you make it.  I probably ate about half the guacamole before finishing these Nachos, which was fine as I made more than enough for this situation.  I know I’m biased because I made it, but it came out great.  Below is the final result.

It’s greeeeeeeeeat!!

Next, the beans.  I know this is going to seem lazy, but I really don’t care.  The beans I used for these Nachos are Rosarita’s Spicy Jalapeño canned refried beans.  I have been eating this brand of beans since I was a youngin’ and they have always been some of my favorite beans from a can.  I was about to fry beans, then fry them once more to make refried beans, so this was the best alternative.

Hey chica, come here often?

I had the choice of pretty much any meat I wanted, and I decided to go with chicken, as I love chickens and chickens are awesome, plus, they taste like chicken. The savvy time saver I am, I did not feel like buying a raw piece of chicken and cooking it myself, so I simply bought a package of my favorite chicken strips for my meal.  Really nothing to comment on this, other than they had a special flavoring.

  Mmm…Southwestern seasoned Chicken Breast Strips with RIB MEAT with smoke flavor added.

 In this time of economic crisis I like to find a bargain wherever I can find one.  In this case, I decide to buy the Nice ‘n Easy brand cheese, as opposed to its Velveeta brand counterpart.  Not only do they taste the same, but the Nice ‘n Easy is actually about 1/3 the price of its doppleganger.  Our taste buds could not taste the difference and my wallet was happy.  What else could I ask for?  So to start off I had to CUT THE CHEESE (that was for all the immature readers out there).

 

:-P~~~~

After that I added non fat milk and threw it in the microwave.  Due to a mistake on my calculations I ended up using way too much milk and the cheese was turning out to be too liquidy.  This simply could not do as the consistency of Nacho cheese should be somewhere around slimy.  Not to fear, I quickly fixed this by adding the whole 2lb package of cheese into the mix.  It might have seemed like a waste at the time, but considering how hungry we were getting it was worth it.  I usually recommend indirect heat as the prefered method of melting cheese for Nachos, but in this case it would not really matter as considering how hungry we were the cheese would have no time to get congealed.

 I’m a regular Julia Child

Everything was just about done.  I put the beans and chicken in the microwave while I put together the rest of the ingredients.  Now that my cheese was saved I was able to pour a few layers all over my chips.

 Nice ‘n Cheese ‘n Slimy

Next, the guacamole was placed on one side of the plate, the beans on the other and the chicken down the middle.  Postal and I LOVE LOVE LOVE cheese.  Whether it’s cheddar, jack, provolone or hoop cheese, they are always welcome on our table.  So since simply using generic Nice ‘n Easy would not cut, I proceeded to cover the chips in FOUR different types of cheese.  I’m really not sure what kind of cheese I was adding, but it did not matter, the package said FOUR on it. 

 

 Quadruple your cheese, quadruple your fun

 So there you have it.  The only thing missing was sour cream.  It was party my fault for forgetting to buy it, but it didn’t matter too much as Postal cannot eat that either.

Heaven covered with cheese

So looking back at it, maybe these Nachos were not totally healthy, but I tried.  The milk for the cheese was fat free though, and the chips were brown rice…other than that it was pretty much the same artery clogging mess we all come to love so much.  Postal seemed to enjoy it and has even asked me to make them again, and I plan on doing so.  Oh, and the best part about these Nachos?

They’re Pink Panther approved

- iwst99