Nachos!

I love nachos and for the longest time if you asked me what my favorite food was, I'd say chicken nachos.(A special shout out to Havana's in Norfolk for especially tasty ones!) I'd make them with Perdue short cuts or leftover chicken, sometimes adding onions or jalapeños or green chiles.  In more recent years I have come to appreciate the untraditional nacho. Finn McCool's has BBQ chicken nachos that I really enjoyed. So one night, we had some leftover pulled pork BBQ and we thought, "what about nachos?"

Being a nacho novice, I have always put down some tortilla chips, piled on some meat and piled on the cheese. Flavor was great...on the chips that had meat AND cheese. Then I saw an episode of Good Eats and watched Alton Brown make his nachos and I paid special attention to how he layered the nachos and made sure each chip had toppings. I tried that the next time and although it took a little more work, the effort was worth it. I also noticed that a light layer of shredded cheese, then meat and then more cheese keeps toppings from sliding off.

I continuously experiment with types of chips, cheeses and toppings. For chips, the heartier yellow corn, blue corn and stone ground chips work really well. We have also really enjoyed using the Flax seed tortilla chips from Trader Joe's. We like the pork BBQ with shredded Mexican blend and a little BBQ sauce sprinkled on top. We have recently used my pulled chicken BBQ as a topping, adding lettuce, sour cream and jalapenos right out of the oven. Homemade chili goes great with Pepper Jack or a very sharp cheddar and steak goes well with mozzarella, extra steak seasoning and a little onion. And finally, buffalo chicken with blue cheese and garnished with chopped celery....yummmm. Try some combinations and share what you find!