Killer Homemade Nachos

On Saturday morning, I woke up with a throbbing headache, totally dehydrated and desperate for coffee. That’s always the sign of a successful Friday night (ours involved seeing “Blue Jasmine” so you know it was wild). A few hours later, feeling better, I was craving some greasy food to accompany my viewing of “It’s Complicated” on Netflix. I remembered that I had corn tortillas in the refrigerator; what if I fried those up and made nachos? I immediately got to work.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how simple it is to fry up your own snack food. Like that time I made Pita Chips and took myself by surprise by how good they were. Here’s how easy it is to make your own tortilla chips. Cut corn tortillas into wedges.

In a large skillet, pour in about 1/2 inch of vegetable or Canola oil (enough to submerge each wedge, but just that…so not a lot of oil). Turn up the heat to high and wait a little bit, like 3 or 4 minutes. Then stick the back of a wooden spoon in the oil: if bubbles immediately form, you’re ready to fry. If not, wait another minute or two.

When it’s time, carefully add the tortilla wedges.

Fry for a minute and then carefully, with a spider tool, flip them over.

Look at that color! You know those are going to be good.

Remove to a paper-towel lined plate and sprinkle, immediately, with lots of salt. If you have more wedges to fry, do those next.

You can stop here and eat these amazing chips with salsa or guacamole and be very happy. I took it one step further by preheating the oven to 350, putting the chips on a foil-lined cookie sheet and grating some sharp Cheddar cheese on top. I didn’t go nuts with the Cheddar, but you can. Into the oven the tray went, and while the cheese was melting I made some quick guacamole.

I didn’t have most of the ingredients I needed, just a ripe avocado. So I mashed that up with some red onion, a dash of olive oil, salt and pepper, and for acid–and this was pretty brilliant, if I do say so myself–the liquid from a jar of pickled jalapeños. Here’s the nachos out of the oven:

I slid them onto a plate and topped with the guacamole and whole rings of pickled jalapeños. Let’s look again just because we can:

People of the world, this was the best snack I have ever made. I would gladly eat this again and again and gain 500 pounds because it’s so good. The ultimate hangover cure. And a good pairing for “It’s Complicated” which features Diane Keaton making really special turkey sandwiches. She can keep her turkey sandwiches, I’m eating nachos.