{Healthier} Restaurant Style Nachos Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Are restaurant nachos healthy? ›

A: Traditional nachos are not always healthy because they're typically made with refined flour tortilla chips, loads of cheese, and fatty meats. Plus, they're often served with sour cream and other high-calorie toppings. When making nachos at home, be sure to use healthier ingredients to make them a healthier option.

Can Nachos be healthy? Absolutely! By eliminating or reducing unhealthy ingredients and increasing or adding things like more veggies (such as fresh corn and peppers), you can transform fat-laden nachos into a delicious, healthy version.

A: While you can technically use any type of cheese for nachos, some cheeses work better than others. The best options include Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Pepper Jack, and Queso Blanco.

Mix and match healthy options like grilled meat (chicken, fish, shrimp), ceviche (raw seafood marinated in lemon or lime juice and other seasonings), black beans, brown rice, avocado salad, sautéed veggies, or tortilla soup.

Best: Siete Tortilla Chips

"Made with quality ingredients like avocado oil, cassava, and chia seeds, these chips are an awesome choice." These chips are also paleo and vegan-friendly, and you can enjoy flavors like Lime, Churro, Nacho, or Jalapeño Lime.

Low Sodium Tortilla Chips

Tortilla chips can easily contain 65mg-140mg of sodium (about 3-6% your daily allowance), and that's assuming you stick to the usually surprisingly-small serving size! Luckily some brands now offer no salt added/low sodium tortilla chips, such as Garden of Eatin', Chi-Chi's, and Donkey Chips.

For a low-calorie alternative to tortillas, try lettuce wraps. Comprised of 95% water, lettuce contains minimal carbs, with half of its carb content derived from dietary fibers.

Potato chips get a bad start with 15 more calories per serving than tortilla chips. Both chips have little to offer when it comes to protein and fiber—so that's a draw. But fats make things interesting: While tortilla chips have less saturated fat than potato chips, they also have almost 10 times the trans fat.

WebMD calls nachos one of the "worst Mexican dishes for your health," as the gut-busting combo of fried chips, heaps of cheese, beef, beans, sour cream, and guac can lead even diners who share an order to take in more than a cheeseburger's worth of calories and fat.

Why are nachos so high calorie? ›

Unfortunately, the primary ingredient of this dish is extremely high carb, high-calorie corn tortilla chips. So here's a nacho-like small plate alternative that delivers a spicy bean and fresh peppers mixture on a zucchini round, smothered in melted cheese.

They're not the healthiest choice when you're dining out. Those globs of glorious melted cheese are full fat and the fillings may be glistening from the oil they're sautéed in. But if you make your own quesadillas, you can keep the delicious taste while you jettison most of the fat calories.

The cooking method

Drummond "nukes" the nachos in a microwave and the NYT grills them, but the best results, I find, come from baking, which heats the dish all the way through without making the base layer soft and chewy.

Asadero Cheese

It elicits a subtle tanginess that offers a little more dimension than Oaxaca cheese. Because of its spectacular melting properties, it's an ideal base for queso on nachos, burritos, tacos, enchiladas or any Mexican dish.

Sharp cheddar gets my vote for nacho cheese. It melts smoothly without being stringy, while having a nice flavorful punch. You can use mild or medium cheddar if you prefer, but the flavor will be a bit blander. Monterey jack and pepper jack also melt really well into sauces and make a great white nacho cheese sauce.

Nachos are a notorious calorie bomb

WebMD calls nachos one of the "worst Mexican dishes for your health," as the gut-busting combo of fried chips, heaps of cheese, beef, beans, sour cream, and guac can lead even diners who share an order to take in more than a cheeseburger's worth of calories and fat.

Taco Bell's Nachos BellGrande, on the other hand, comes in at 740 calories, 38 g total fat (58% DV), 7 g saturated fat, 82 g carbohydrate (27% DV), 16 g of protein, and 1,050 mg sodium (44% DV).