I love nachos. I do. They need to be crunchy, full of delicious melty cheese, and loaded with toppings. I don’t particularly enjoy spicy food so I usually love it when they’ve got guac, salsa and sour cream. When they’re warm out of the oven, cheesy, salty, zingy. They’re awesome.
Growing up I didn’t really eat avocado – I don’t remember seeing it much around! They’re obviously everywhere now but back in the day I thought of them as these strange “exotic” foods. And I think that nowadays they’re the kind of food that either you hate or you love. I love them. Problem is – like with most foods – that if you don’t season them properly, they doesn’t really taste like much.
Avocados are amazing, they’ve got lots of healthy fats and nutrients and they’re also really filling (as they’re so fatty!) so I really like incorporating them in my diet as much as I can, but let’s face it – if you always prepare foods the same way, they end up getting boring! So I love to find different ways to prepare avocados.
Same goes for tomatoes! I love them on so many things. I’m always looking for new ways to prepare them and have them on the side of lots of meals. They can get boring! And again, if you don’t season tomatoes properly they can be quite bland. I mean if you’re lucky enough to have beautifully ripe, gorgeous tomatoes you may not actually need to do anything to them and you may be able to eat them as if they were apples – lucky you! But living in England I’m unfortunately not that lucky. So they need a bit of dressing up!
Anyways, long rant just to say that I love these dipping sauces. Using them with nachos seems like the obvious way to use them (for a reason) but you can put them on – and as a side of – so many things. So let me show you basic salsa and guacamole 101.
Ingredients for the guac:
- 4 avocados
- 3 spring onions
- A handful of parsley / cilantro
- Juice of 1 -2 limes
- Salt and pepper
How to make guacamole:
- First, wash your spring onions and parsley / cilantro
- Roughly chop up your spring onions and parsley
- Cut up your avocados and scoop them out
- Pop all your ingredients (avocado, spring onions, herbs) in a food processor
- Blitz it all up until it reaches the consistency you like – I like it fairly smooth but if you like it a bit chunkier just pulse it until it’s where you like it.
- Add in your lime, salt and pepper
- For this amount of guac I added the juice of 1 1/2 limes and 1 1/2 tsp salt but start with less, mix and add more until it tastes the way you like it
- Spoon it onto a bowl and if you’re not using it immediately, cover with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge
Ingredients for basic salsa:
- 4 tomatoes
- 3 spring onions
- Handful of parsley / cilantro
- Juice of 1 lime
- Salt and pepper
How to make salsa:
- First, make sure to wash all your ingredients – the tomatoes, spring onions and parsley / cilantro
- Finely chop your spring onions (green and white bits)
- Finely chop your parsley / cilantro and add it to the bowl with your spring onions
- Finely chop your tomatoes
- Note: if you don’t want your salsa to be too watery you should de-seed your tomatoes. This basically means to remove all of their insides and just use the flesh
- Add your tomatoes to the rest of your ingredients
- Mix all your ingredients together and season to taste with lime juice, salt and pepper
- For this amount I used the juice of 1 lime and 1tsp of salt but as before, start with a small amount, mix and taste and add more as needed.
Bonus – Basic nachos!
You’ll need:
- Tortilla chips
- Grated cheese – something like cheddar works best but any blend of cheese that will have flavour and melt well
- Sour cream
- Guac and salsa
- Jalapeños (optional)
To make them:
- In a baking dish (use one that you like so you can bring it straight to the table) arrange your tortilla chips and grated cheese in layers
- Nobody likes it when all the cheese is at the top and there’s nothing at the bottom!! I’d suggest putting a layer of chips with a healthy amount of cheese, then more chips and then even more cheese.
- Pop your nachos in a 180C oven for about 10-15 min, until your cheese has melted and your chips start to look a bit toasty
- Top with whatever you like and eat!
- I’d recommend a mixture of salsa, guac and sour cream.
- I also like to add some fried chopped up chorizo bits if I’ve got some on hand because let’s face it – everything is better with chorizo!
- Make sure to eat them immediately so you’re not left with soggy nachos – nobody wants that!
Top tips:
- Even if you remove the seeds of your tomatoes when making salsa, it’ll probably still release quite a bit of juice so don’t be surprised if you go back to it and suddenly your salsa looks a lot wetter!
- I’ve used parsley on both recipes because I cannot stand cilantro. I’m one of those people to whom it tastes evil so I like to use parsley whenever I can instead. If you like cilantro tough, you should definitely use it here instead.
- If you like your dips to have a bit of a kick I’d suggest using a jalapeño – just treat it like your spring onions. Chop it slightly and add it to your food processor when making guac, and chop it nice and fine when adding it to the salsa.
- If you’ve got the time for it, I’d recommend making either of these recipes ahead of time. Something magical happens when they sit in the fridge for a little while – the flavours just marry each other and develop even more and they become that much more special!
- If you do make the nachos be really generous with the cheese! You’d be surprised with how much that cheese just disappears – you’ll end up wishing you had put more!
- If you’re making the nachos, make sure that when you assemble them your cheese is at room temperature so it melts better.
And that’s it! I hope you enjoy these simple, basic recipes and you get to give them a try next time you think about buying them in the store – they’re so easy to make and honestly so much better than whatever you might buy in a package at the store!
I hope you give these a try and enjoy them and if you do, make sure to share on social media so I can feel proud from a distance!! As always, thanks for reading and see you again soon!
Bake with Andrea 