Okay, let's talk NACHOS!

Remember: no chip left behind...

Well, hello there and happy Friday!

This was a super weird week for us—lots of very fun but out-of-the-norm things on the calendar, including a concert, a fundraiser, a film festival at Henry’s high school, a night of tacos & foot massages for Aaron’s birthday (also bike rides and ice cream, making it 100% the most ‘Aaron’ night ever!). Not to mention a very strange wildfire smoke event…what is happening around here? What day is it? Who are we?

And so last night we were delighted to have a quiet night on the sofa in our pajamas. We watched Air—it’s excellent—and I made nachos.

I’ll be honest: I had an entirely different post planned for you today, but then NACHOS…I posted a photo, and many many of you had questions, and you know I never mind an in-depth chat about snacks, so here we are—let’s talk nachos!

Let’s start with a few of my top nacho priorities: 

Tip #1: start with (a sheet pan) & an even layer of chips. 

El Vez in Tribeca is famous for their nachos, & part of the magic is that they serve them on a pizza pan with one flat layer of chips—their philosophy is “no chip left behind,” & I am 100% on board with that. There’s nothing worse than a nacho mountain with the good stuff only on the top layer of chips.

Tip #2: variety is your friend—I like roasted corn & black beans, a couple different salsas. Nachos are a great way to use up all the odds & ends in your fridge—leftover steak or ground beef or turkey? Yes. Half a tomato, an almost-past-its-prime avocado? Absolutely. Three slices of bacon hanging around since breakfast? Gold mine. Throw it all on there!

Tip #3: (my personal favorite) the cold things you add after they come out of the oven are just as important as the hot ones—I like to add lots of crumbled feta, dollops of sour cream, cilantro, green onions & pickled red onions. It’s those hot/cold gooey/crispy contrasts that make all the difference. 

Tip #4: bake at 400 degrees, instead of broiling. For a while, I was a broiler—it’s quick, you get some good crispy edges, but too often I burn the cheese or the chips get too brown, and at the same time, sometimes the salsa or the tomatoes are still cold under the cheese. Baking at 400 gives a more even heat through, and you’re not in quite as much danger of torching the whole thing if you walk away for a minute.

Okay, let’s talk about the specifics of last night’s nachos (of course I make them different every time, based on what I have in the fridge, but these have some key elements that I do try to include every time):

I started with an even layer of chips on a quarter sheet pan (a little kitchen trivia: most of us home cooks don’t have full sheet pans—they’re used in restaurant ovens and are enormous. Cookie sheets and jelly roll pans are around the size of what restaurant people call half sheet pans, and quarter sheets are half that size—more like 9 x 13) I find that a quarter sheet (9 x13ish) is perfect for nachos for two people, and you know that I’m super into my Great Jones sheet pans—the colors make me so happy.

Back to an even layer of chips. Over that, black beans (I made them from dried beans this week, and here’s how I do it: soak overnight, then simmer till cooked through with oregano and two oranges, quartered. Off heat, while they’re cooling, add red wine vinegar and a little salt.), roasted corn, a few leftover diced chicken thighs, red and green salsa, and a blanket of shredded mozzarella cheese. You could wait and put the salsa on after you cook it, but I like it to get warm along with the beans, corn & chicken.

Slide it into the oven and let it cook for 4 minutes, and then check the cheese meltiness—sometimes it needs a few more minutes. When it’s finished, dollop on sour cream (I’ll be honest, to me this is the most important part), feta, pickled red onions, green onions, and cilantro. Yum!

Pickled red onions are one of those things I try to keep in my fridge all the time, and here’s how I do it: thinly slice a red onion and put it in a jam jar. Fill it halfway with apple cider vinegar and the rest of the way up with water. Add a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt and shake well. They’re ready within a couple hours, but even better the next day. I put them on absolutely everything: nachos, tacos, eggs, black bean soup, chili.

Now let’s talk about how to make the barest bones version of nachos, and then about all the fancy things you *could* add if you wanted to…

Bare bones: chips, canned black or pinto beans, salsa, shredded melting cheese, sour cream—very simple & still absolutely delicious.

And if you want to—as the British say—push the boat out a little bit, you could always add: leftover brisket or shrimp, over easy eggs, halved grape tomatoes, all manner of hot sauces, goat cheese instead of feta, bacon, crema with lime juice instead of sour cream, lime wedges, a sprinkle of tajin, refried beans, diced roasted sweet potatoes.

Of course, you can get wild with the chips, too—you can sub any kind of Doritos for regular tortilla chips (cool ranch for me, please!), and one time at a baseball game, we had “tot-chos,” where there were, as the same suggests, tater tots in the place of chips. RECOMMEND.

One last thing: you may have noticed that more and more of my writing (and photography and social media) is about food these days—restaurants I love, recipes I’m learning, gatherings I host, things I’m dreaming about in terms of hospitality. That’s very much by design. If you’ve been around here for a long time, you know that gathering and feeding people is one of my greatest joys, and it’s definitely where I’m turning my focus in coming projects.

If there are particular things in the food and gathering sphere that you’d like me to write about here, please tell me all about it in a comment on Instagram or Facebook—food you’d like recipes for? Gathering/hosting challenges you’d like me to untangle? Anything!

Just leave it in a comment on social—as I’ve mentioned, I don’t have comments here on Substack because…well, because I need fewer comments in my life in general, but in this instance I’m genuinely asking: how can I help you in your cooking/feeding/gathering/hosting life?

And in the meantime, happy nachos! XO—S