Grilled Nachos

I'm overwhelmingly excited for this weekend! I'm heading up to Toronto for a mini-break with my friend H. We're going to explore the city and then we're going to see Markus Schulz at the Guvernment. It's going to be exciting. So, in the spirit of feeling giddy and celebratory and excited, I'm sharing an extremely fun recipe today.

At our house, the grill gets used for so many recipes: burgers, ribs, quesadillas, peaches, kebabs, just to name a few. Seriously, the grill has contributed to so many delicious dishes. Well, add another recipe to that long list! I'm sharing grilled nachos today. You may be thinking, uhh, seriously? You're still grilling? Labor Day weekend was several weeks ago. You know what? We have until September 22nd to celebrate summer and even after that I'll still be grilling until I can no longer sport flip flops outdoors. No apologies necessary.

Anyway, let's get to the backstory of this yummyness. One lazy Saturday morning, my sister said she felt like eating nachos so after our weekly grocery shopping trip, I grabbed some ground beef, spices, onions, garlic, chipotle peppers, and made an awesome seasoned beef dish to top the nachos. They turned out amazing.

Ingredients:
chipotle nacho beef
½ lb ground beef
½ onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 poblano pepper, diced
2 chipotles in adobo, chopped
¼ cup tomato sauce
1 cup canned black beans (about 1/2 can)
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil

nachos
tortilla chips
chipotle nacho beef
grated cheese
sliced jalapenos
salsa
sour cream
chopped cilantro
chopped scallions

Start by heating a skillet over a medium high flame. Toss in the onions, garlic, and poblano peppers and sweat until softened. Add the ground beef and break it up with a spoon and cook until browned. Sprinkle in the salt, pepper, and chili powder. Stir in the chipotle peppers and tomato sauce.

Rinse a cup of black beans and add them to the pan. Stir them in, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about 10 minutes until everything is warmed through and the sauce is reduced.

Tada! Delicious, spicy, flavorful chipotle beef. This is great on nachos but it would also be delicious in tacos or inside of a burrito too. These could also top some huevos rancheros (eggs with salsa) for an amazingly filling breakfast.

To assemble the nachos, grab a half-sheet pan and line it with parchment paper. I like parchment better than foil (for this particular application) because the melted cheese won't stick to it.

Layer the chips onto the pan and spoon on the beef. Sprinkle on the cheese and the jalapeno peppers. By the way, if you wanted, you could skip the grated cheese and go for queso instead, you know, in queso you were feeling fancy. HA, you like that?

Pop the whole sheet pan onto a super hot grill. Leave the pan there, with the grill lid on, for just a few minutes until the whole pan is warmed through and the cheese melts. The chips should get toasty and delicious.

Bring the sheet pan back inside, using hefty oven mitts, of course. Pick up the parchment with the nachos - the whole thing - and plop it onto a platter. You could leave it in the sheet pan, but I didn't want to risk anyone burning themselves if they touched the pan by accident, you know, in their eagerness to dive into the nachos.

Spoon salsa over the nachos and plop on some dollops of sour cream and then sprinkle the whole thing with a generous amount of chopped cilantro and scallions.

This glorious pile of chips is the perfect snack for vegging out in front of the television. The chips are warmed and have a slightly toasty grilled taste, the cheese is gooey, the cilantro is bright, the sour cream is cooling, the salsa is sweet, the beef is smoky and spicy. It's just an incredible combination of flavors and textures and it's kind of healthy, right? All of the food groups are represented, so there's that.

So this platter of nachos is probably big enough to feed 4 to 6 people but my sister and I shared it between just the two of us. You might be thinking, "Whoa, isn't that a lot of calories? You guys are tubbos!" Well, that's nacho problem, yo. I don't get jalapeno business so don't taco 'bout me like that. Ugh, I'm sorry, I had those puns stuck in my head the entire time I was typing and I just had to incorporate them into this post. I'm sorry!! Forgive me and then go make these nachos. You won't regret it.

Here are the recipe pages: