One Pan Irish Nachos

We love nachos. So much, in fact, that we make them every week (Nacho Sunday!). 

Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I'm 1/4 Irish (and damn proud of it! Although I'm also damn proud to celebrate Cinco de Mayo...). It's also nacho day. I felt we should honor the Irish and the potato famine that caused so many of them to come to America (probably including my ancestors) by making our nachos Irish. 

Oh my goodness this was a good idea. Going to be doing this a lot more often.

This is called "one pan" because other than a butcher block to chop the veggies the whole thing was made in one cast iron skillet, and then we ate directly out of it. It was glorious.

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Soyrizo

Corn

Cheese

Bell pepper

Tomatoes

Cilantro

Avocado

Sour cream

Spices

Heat the cast iron skillet for a couple of minutes, then add a small layer of olive oil. Chop the potatoes into bite sized pieces and put them in the pan. Season generously with salt and pepper and whatever other spices you want. 

If you don't have a cast iron skillet, get one. The twenty bucks you'll spend is way, way worth it. Cast iron skillets keep very even heat on the whole thing so every piece gets cooked the exact same amount, preventing overcooking some pieces while barely cooking others. Plus, you can stick them in the oven. Seriously, they're great.

While those are cooking, chop the veggies and shred the cheese. We used the same veggies we do in regular nachos, but I imagine a wider variety of toppings will be good. Green onions, specifically.

Wow, that's a terrible picture... But you get the idea.

Once the potatoes are a few minutes away from being ready, add the soyrizo to the pan. I scooped half the potatoes on top of each other to make room. Once that was just about done, I added some corn. You could also add beans to make it real nachos, but there's so much going on you don't need to.

And then some cheese.

And then put it in the oven. That's probably one of the greatest things about cast iron - goes right from the stove to the oven. Just remember that the whole skillet is hot, so you absolutely need to use an oven mitt. Cook the skillet at 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes, or until the cheese is as bubbly as you like.

Then put all the vegetables on it! So good. How good? We made this early in the evening after not having lunch, and because we're fat kids we were kind of hungry again at our normal dinner time (8-9pm), so we made a second batch. It really is amazing we don't weigh more.

LOOK AT HOW PRETTY IT IS!

Naturally, it being St. Patrick's Day and all, we paired it with Harp. And it was good.

Total Cost: less than $10, feeds two fat kids 

Total Time: ~25 minutes

Note: In this particular post, most of the photos are courtesy of my phone, which, while awesome and pretty decent at playing camera, is no match for Rich's actual camera. So if the pics look like cell phone pics, it's 'cause they are. Especially the one of the potatoes and soyrizo... it's like I didn't even look at it after. Ugh.

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Nachos!

You won't miss meat with these.

We've been making nachos a lot lately. Like, at least once a week, sometimes more. It started when my roommate and I bought a $5 bag of chips from Costco for our Halloween party (if you've never purchased chips from Costco,  it's two huge bags of tortilla chips in one, for something like 5 pounds of chips). We went through about half of one bag during the party and since they were there we just ate the rest. Actually, I began making nachos when I was home alone and one night made them for both of us. Rich loved them so much he wanted to make them all the time.

And they're so delicious that I never say no.

Ingredients: 

Tortilla chips

Can of beans (black or refried)

Soyrizo (optional... ground turkey or beef can also be used)

Cheese (enough to blanket the chips)

Tomatoes

Onions

Bell peppers (color of your choice)

Avocado

Sour Cream
Cilantro and/or green onions

Line a cookie sheet with tin foil and spread your chips in a single layer. Drain the can of black beans (if you're using refried you might want to heat it separately first to help it spread) and spread it evenly over the chips. 

This is also where you'll want to add some chopped onions.

Optional soyrizo: Cook in a pan on the stove like you would ground turkey or beef (and if you're using ground turkey or beef brown it in a pan on the stove). Cook it thoroughly but don't make it dry cause it's going in the oven in a minute. Spread your cooked soyrizo on the beans and chips evenly so every bite has some. We didn't use soyrizo in these pictures because we ran out.

Cover  the chips and beans with shredded cheese. In the pictures, we're using a mix of pepper jack and cheddar. 

Stick the cookie sheet in the oven at a high temperature, like 400 degrees. Keep an eye on it while it's cooking so you can get the cheese to your perfect level of melted.

This was in the oven about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, chop your tomatoes, bell peppers and avocado (and onions, if you haven't done this already). Once your nachos are nice and gooey stick the fresh ingredients on top with sour cream. Black olives and salsa are also great. 

One cookie sheet of nachos feeds us both, but it has also fed 4 people when we're not being complete fatties.

With this many chopped veggies nachos are healthy, I don't care what you say.

Enjoy!

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