10 Levels of Nachos | With Babish

Nachos. They're not just what you call a group of dudes named Ignacio. They're also one of the most beloved snacks in recorded human history. Invented in 1943 by Ignacio Nacho Anaya in Piedras Negras, Mexico. They've since become an icon of Tex-Mex cuisine. But if you're like me, you've had a great many nachos in your day, and not all of them are very good. Sometimes they take the form of tiny little tortilla chips with a gooey processed cheese sauce. Other times they're underdressed, underseasoned, and underwhelming. And in the very darkest of hours, sometimes they're made with Kraft Singles in a microwave. So I want to explore the entire spectrum of nacho possibility. What are the absolute worst nachos that you could possibly eat? What are the best? What are the easiest? What are the most expensive? And where is the sweet spot for you to make at home? I aim to find out here with Babish, which I know I'm the only one here right now. And so that sounds crazy, but that's the name of the show. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They've supported this channel for over seven years. In fact, they were my first ever sponsor. Squarespace is the perfect platform to create your own site and accomplish your goals online. Whether you're building a digital empire or just want people to give you hilarious episode ideas, Squarespace has you covered. I'm having a lot of fun making food ranking videos, and my favorite part is seeing what you guys suggest. So I built a site where you can submit your episode ideas. Go to RankedWithBabish.com and submit yours. Squarespace's brand new designer templates make it so easy to set up exactly what you need. To create one of your own, head to Squarespace.com for a free trial, and use code BABISH for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Level one, nachos. These plates are so old, there's a non-zero possibility that I've done this on these plates before. The chips, Tostitos. The cheese, Kraft Singles. For the record, folks, I don't recommend using Kraft Singles for literally anything. All right, microwave. Oh, there you have it, folks. Microwave Kraft Single nachos. You can always tell them by their wrinkly appearance and the fact that you made them yourself just now. Are they good? No. Are they bad? Kind of. At the end of the day, there's still melted processed cheese on warm tortilla chips. It's pretty much where you get the ballpark. If you threw some pickled jalapenos on here, you'd still be able to tell the difference. The cheese is really, really gluey. But as far as floors go, this is pretty high. It's just melted cheese on tortilla chips. I would really recommend at least getting pre-shredded cheese, not the Singles, because they are chemically composed of something weird. It's like a non-Newtonian fluid. But at the end of the day, it's melted cheese on chips. What am I, a monster? Level two or possibly level one, I don't know. We're going to find out. Slim Jim nacho flavor. What's in it? Beef, pork, mechanically separated chicken. No cheese products in this. Not even like a cheese powder or like cheese imitation flavored powder or anything. Whoa. It does smell like if you cooked everything in a gas station at once. Like all the burritos and all the Slim Jims and everything, you just threw it into it like an oven and just got it hot. It's like you took a Slim Jim and you put Dorito powder in it. I do feel like I taste cumin and other like taco spice trappings. I will say, if I didn't know that was nacho flavor, I'd probably be like, this Slim Jim's gone bad. But then it lingers and it kind of tastes like a microwave burrito or something. And I guess it is officially level two. I would rather eat this than the microwave Kraft Single nachos. Tastes better and feels better, even though it's still not very good. Man, that smells like the potential energy of diarrhea. It's just like diarrhea in weight. But there it is. Level two nachos in meat stick form. Level three nachos. No nacho conversation is complete without Lunchables nachos. Perhaps one of the least healthy, wholesome meals imaginable for a child. But that's the way kids eat, so who cares? I kind of wish you could treat it like those yogurt cups that you just kind of dump. Okay, so Lunchables nachos come with a little thing of salsa that, if memory serves, tastes exactly like just tomato sauce. And some cheese goo that tastes like straight up Velveeta. Okay, no, that was wrong. I've reviewed these twice over on Beyond Babish. Well, how do I not remember what these taste like? Did they improve it? I mean, I only ranked Lunchables, like, four months ago. They couldn't have possibly improved them in that amount of time. Just because I made a video about it. That cheese sauce tastes almost exactly the same as the one that you get in the movie theaters. Just, like, dispensed from, like, a thing. It's room temperature and you're dipping round chips into it. Maybe not ones this small. This is so annoying to me. Like, how are you supposed to use these? You're gonna make a mess. It's not not nachos. Okay, let's try the yogurt cup thing. Now that this is in my head, I can't make it stop. Hey, that kind of works. Let's get some really cheesy chips, hit them in the sauce. After just a few bites, that cheese product really loses anything interesting about it. Wait, is there any cheese in the cheese sauce? So mostly this is thickened milk. Which is honestly better than I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was just, like, straight up water with cheese powder in it that they stabilized with ten different kinds of gums or something. I'm stunned that there are no gums. Oh, sodium alginate. That's a gum. It's been gummed. It's been gummed. But only with one gum. I don't know if sodium alginate's one of the good ones or not, but... Yeah, that's a pretty sorry nacho experience. Would I rather have this or the Slim Jim or the... No, I'd rather have this. I would rather have this. We're at least straying a little closer to God here. But we're still quite far away. Let's go to level four. Level four sees us experimenting with nacho-flavored chips and stuff. Like, I know they're not nachos, but I'd be remiss to not include Doritos in this conversation. Good old-fashioned nacho cheese Dorito. I'm back at my seventh birthday party. We got a bag of these motherfuckers. We got a liter of pop. And we are ready to party. It's, you know, it's a nacho cheese Dorito. What am I going to do? I'm going to say it's bad? Is it a nacho experience? Not really. It's kind of like you took nachos and you ground them up into a powder and you sprayed them on here. Like, kind of. Because you've got... All the trappings are there. Cheese, peppers, tomato. Also, I've been seeing these around in the store as Doritos Simply Nakid. I assume that means naked because they just don't put dyes in it and stuff. Yeah, undoubtedly, probably somewhat better for you, but you're eating Doritos, so... This better taste exactly the same because if it tastes any different, then I'm going to know that poisonous dyes taste good. They look very prolifically dusted. They just don't have the same bright red characteristic to them. They look more like a plain tortilla chip from far away. It might be psychosomatic because they look like they don't have flavor on them, but they do have a more restrained flavor. Let me try one back to back here. Pretty close. I'd say it's the same amount of flavor. This one just has a less intense set of flavor. But I'm not missing them. That's not the end of the world. So this is pretty cool. I'm glad that this is like a growing trend. And, honestly, you can throw both of these away because my favorite is Combo's Nacho Cheese. You've probably seen a Combo in your day. If you've ever been to a gas station in the United States, you've seen these. It's not the same flavor. It's not as tart. It doesn't have that, like, twang to it. So this is like the Doritos NKV, but it's in a pretzel, and there's more of it because you've got the whole line of, like, nacho paste running through the center. All that to be said, is this a nacho? No. It's in a pretzel. It's nacho-flavored, but it's in a pretzel. Then that raises the question, why did I do Slim Jams? Just roll with me, okay? If I had to choose any one of these, I would go this way. This flavor is bigger. You get that texture of the actual cheesy-ish paste in there. And, you know, I just like them better. And, of course, with protein being so hot nowadays, I'd be remiss not to explore Quest Tortilla Style Protein Chips Nacho Cheese. They have a really sandy texture. Literally, once you're done chewing this, it feels like you're chewing on sand. It's not sandy. It's sand. I mean, the flavor's fine. It tastes like normal Flavor Blasted whatever. It tastes like nacho-flavored Doritos. Yeah, this is like a we-have-Doritos-at-home kind of situation. Next up, we're finally introducing some meat and other toppings by Living Moss, if you will. So Taco Bell has a couple nacho options. They have actual nachos, and they have nacho fries. They also have a nacho dip, but my system can only handle so much. This is our first properly loaded nacho entry in the pantheon of nacho levels. Oh, no. Those chips. I think they were made with rancid oil. I might have gotten a bad batch or something. I know they're not frying these up at the Taco Bell. I know they're doing it in some big evil factory. It's a shame, because underneath I can taste it's actually quite a good chip. Like, it's actually a pretty tasty chip. Taco Bell nachos are like you're listening to Chopin, but there's a child with a recorder trying to play along. And it's their first day playing the recorder, and they're not gifted at it. That's a bummer, because otherwise they'd be just fine. It's cheese sauce, it's sour cream. Refried beans are pretty hard to screw up. I feel like I must have gotten a bad batch, because I... You know, I've gotten Taco Bell a bunch, but I've never had their chips. So I don't know. But those chips taste incorrect. But I have a feeling I'm going to like these better. We got some nacho fries, dusted in a pretty pungent nacho cheese powder, and then they come with a little bit of nacho cheese for dipping. The texture of these fries are so bad. I'm getting crispy ones. Like, it's not because they're soggy and they got delivered here. It's the texture of the potato itself. It's not fluffy, it's gummy. And that sucks. The flavor's fine. If anything, I would say it's underwhelming. Like, I want some citric acid to offset all the, like, goo and spice. Did they season the cheese sauce at all? No, it's just straight Velveeta. Not only is it thicker, but it's less flavorful than the Lunchables nacho cheese. And I'm not exaggerating. Whew. Well, a fitting level five, I guess? I thought, you know, ballpark nachos are going to be worse because they're just the cheese sauce with jalapenos, but I would kill for some pickled jalapenos. That vinegary bite? It's going to be a neck and neck. Like, level five and six are going to be neck and neck. There's only one way to find out. Let's make some ballpark nachos. The vessel. Paper. The chips. Round. The cheese. Ultra, super pasteurized, jarred nacho cheese sauce. And the topping, pickled, sliced jalapenos. These are way better than Taco Bell nachos. Just a nice, cheap lager. Oh, man. I am ready to use a public bathroom for a violent episode of bowel contractions. Chips are better. The cheese sauce is better. The pickled jalapenos are bringing the balance. It's bringing the heat, and it's bringing a really nice, sour, tangy, vinegary pickle flavor. Instead of only richness, or only cheesiness, or only imitation dairy just spewed all over the place. Yeah. Definitely level six. Level six nachos. We found it. Level seven nachos. The white people tacos of nachos. The chips. Tostitos hint of lime. The good stuff. The cheese. Pre-shredded Mexican. Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Asadero, and queso quesadilla. Fancy shredded cheeses. A-B-L-W-M-N. Always be layering when making nachos. Very easy to remember. One layer of chips down with cheese on it, and then we're putting down another layer before putting in our toppings. This keeps us from having a whole bunch of chips with nothing on them underneath everything. The protein. Ground beef. Sauteed with what else but taco seasoning. The oven temperature and time. 400 degrees Fahrenheit for until it's melty and done. You know? All right. Chips are browning and cheese is bubbling. Black olives for some reason. I don't know if this is exclusive to white people nachos, or if this is a traditional ingredient, but it confuses me. That's some store-bought pico de gallo. We're just going to kind of plop on there. A hefty squeeze of sour cream. Oh, boy. And some store-bought guacamole placed next to it awkwardly. There you have it. Level 7 nachos. These are probably not going to be half bad. Throw some guac in there. It really, truly does taste like my childhood taco nights, a.k.a. white people tacos. I mean, it's not bad. Maybe thin out your sour cream and drizzle it for the sake of appearance, but, hey, you know what? I think this is more accurate. You got to go to Studio Hinted Limes. You just got to do it. I'm trying to bring some flavor into this house, so sorry for trying something exotic, honey. There's nothing wrong with this. It's not the best nachos you're going to have, not by a long shot, but they are nachos, and they are not bad. You know, they're pretty good. Level 8. Now, this is a level where I want to take pretty much the same amount of labor it took to make the last set of nachos, but make them way, way better, and I think I have a fun idea of how to do that. A fundido idea. It's going to be queso fundido nachos, but I'm going to make them very, very special, and you'll see how. The chips. Chica's Blue Corn. The cheese. Oaxaca. Basically Mexican mozzarella. The protein. Fresh chorizo sausage sautéed together with roasted and peeled poblano peppers and, like, a teaspoon of whole cumin seeds. I'm going to add those for a nice little floral pop. Lay down about half of our sausage pepper mixture. Now, I've got a hot pan here. This pan is still very hot, and that's important. You'll see why. Don't go skimpy on the cheese with this one. This needs to be a cheese-heavy nacho. Top the rest of our chorizo, poblanos. I want these to be spicy, so I'm going to introduce some serrano pepper. Look how pretty that is already. I love the purple chips against the white cheese and the red sausage and the green chili. Come on, now. And this guy's headed into the oven just to melt the cheese. Don't go too crazy. Our cheese is nicely melted. Things are sizzling. Got a couple finishing touches. Some extra Oaxaca. Let's just throw that on there. Make sure all the chips are covered as best as possible. Over on the stovetop, I've had a surprise brewing. Some tequila that I have brought to a bare simmer, and I'm going to very, very carefully pour over top our queso fondito, making this queso flamado. We're going to let that burn off. It's going to finish melting our cheese. It's going to thoroughly toast some of our chips, and that's fine. I'm just going to cheat a little bit. Back in the oven super quick just to finish her off. Some scallions. And there you have it, queso fondito nachos, or more accurately, queso flamado nachos. So, how'd it work? Look at that cheese stretch. Look at that, dude. Gotta love Oaxaca. Oh, I love Oaxaca. That is fan-freaking-tastic. The beauty of it is that, like, Oaxaca, this will set up in no time. This will turn really tough and rubbery in zero seconds flat, but because we're in the nice, hot cast iron skillet, it's going to stay nice and melty. So every single chip has that queso fondito stretch factor, and the tequila definitely brings some flavor. Not a lot, but tequila's very welcome in this situation. In fact, we could really use some wine. Stretchy every time, baby. Yeah. I didn't even know the lens was wide enough to capture that stretch. A well-deserved level A. It's a little scary to flambe, but you really don't have to do that. You could just not finish it with extra cheese and just finish it in the oven. Get it all melty. If you feel comfortable doing it, it's a fun table-side thing to do for your guests. All right, we're doing it, people. Here's level nine, the most expensive nachos in the world. I don't know why this one's bothering me so much, but it is. The cheese. Some extremely expensive cloth-bound cheddar from Jasper Hill Farm. This clocks in at $34.99 a pound. And then we have some Alta Badia Mia, which is apparently a good Italian melting cheese. This clocks in at $28.99 a pound. Veritable bargain. Before we do anything crazy like make them in a cheese sauce, I'm going to taste them to make sure that they're appropriate. Man, that's really nice. It's like gruyere without the funk and the harshness. And we got the cloth-bound cheddar. It's really tasty. It's just a nice, sharp cheddar. It tastes like dairy, like milk fat, which I know they are, but I do think they're nacho appropriate. We're going to obviously employ some molecular gastronomy and make a cheese sauce. So I'm going to start by grating up these cheeses. That's going to work really nicely with truffle and wagyu. Oops, spoiled the surprise. Is that a surprise, really, if I'm making the most expensive nachos in history? I didn't think so. We are making a sodium citrate sauce, so I do need to employ a bit of precision here. We're going with 69 grams, nice, of the Jasper Hill cheddar. And then we have some Alta Badia Mia. Try to hit 150 grams total, I'd say. Oh, exactly. Oh, 151. Exactly 151. Now, into a small saucepan, I'm going to pour 200 grams of milk. Most recipes call for a ratio of 2 to 3 parts sodium citrate to 99 parts everything else. And I've always found that it gets it too gluey, so I'm going to add, like, 3 grams. Technically, that should be 6 to 8 grams of sodium citrate. Again, I don't trust that, so I'm just going to add a little bit more, like 1 extra gram. And now I'm going to bring this up to a bare, just steaming state. Dissolve the sodium citrate, get it nice and hot. Wait, 200 grams. S***, I messed up the ratio. But we're just going to hope for the best. Now, this is 150 grams of cheese, and I'm going to do a 1 to 1 ratio. That should do it, question mark? I don't know. This is supposed to be precise, and it all just went completely out the window. Get the milk steaming hot, but not scalding or anything. And slowly pour this in. It should both melt the cheese and create a picture-perfect cheese sauce. Okay. Let's see what that looks and tastes like. Man, that's good. That's really tasty. Horrible, thick, just right. The protein, boneless, American Wagyu ribeye. This piece in particular was $124. I want to point out that the most expensive nachos that I've been able to find on the Internet cost $120. Already, this piece of beef alone is going to make them more expensive than that. So I can say with some confidence, without the presence of the Guinness Book people, this is going to be the world's most expensive nachos. So I don't need all this steak for nachos, okay? But I'm going to cut it like this. So that way, I got the piece that I'm going to use for the nachos, and I have a piece for me. Before I cook it, I am just going to hit it with some salt, a quick little dry brine. I mean, it's got to be seasoned, right? We've got to season it. All right, over on the stovetop, I have a significant amount of vegetable oil that I'm bringing up to smoking, because I want to put the crust on this hard and fast. I don't want to cook it. By putting in a lot of fat like this, it's going to cause a lot of sputtering. It's going to be uncomfortable and scary, but it's basically like we're deep frying it. I want a good crust on there, just on the outside. You can see before, after, before, after, before, after. All right, now both to halt the cooking and to make this firm so I can thinly, thinly slice it, I'm going to throw this right in the freezer, probably 45 minutes. I want it to be not frozen, but pretty stiff. Now for the chilies, the most expensive peppers I could find are these Peruvian pearls, which clock in at $17 a pound. They are cute, adorable little chilies. They've been pickled, I think. Really tasty, light, sweet, barely heat, like no heat, pretty much no heat, but a big, fruity, habanero-like flavor. For the chips, I wanted to try these. Masa Traditional Tortilla Chips. If you can't tell by the bag alone, they're the most expensive tortilla chips ever imagined. For reference, a 12-ounce bag of Tostitos costs $5.50, usually. These are 5 ounces and costed $13. Why? Naturally prepared tortillas, the way the Aztecs used to do it. Cooked in grass-fed beef tallow, just like traditional Belgian fries. To put that back-to-back, the word Aztecs and Belgian are almost touching. And then they cook it in grass-fed beef tallow, which admittedly sounds amazing, but then they go and say, just like traditional Belgian fries. They don't smell great. They smell stale. Yeah, I never would have guessed in a billion years that that costs $13. So, obviously, we're using these. I'm just trying to pull out whole chips for optimal presentation. Gotta be whole chips. We're talking about, like, a $200 plate of nachos here. You think I'm gonna have broken chips? I'll lose my Michelin star. I've made the most expensive fill-in-the-blank several times now, and for some reason, they haven't bothered me the same way that these are. Like, I think it's because nachos are supposed to be fun and easy and casual and inexpensive and communal, and when fancy chefs make something like $120 nachos, it's like they're out of ideas. Do something else. Do anything else. I want to be able to broil these and then serve immediately. So, I'm gonna do this little guy. Our steak is thoroughly chilled. It should still be quite raw on the inside. Perfect. That's exactly what I want to see. I'm going to slice it thin enough that a quick stint in the oven is gonna cook it. For tomatoes, I'm going with these heirloom cherry tomatoes. These were $4 a pint, which is a lot less than I thought. Still quite expensive. I think that's it. I think we're ready to go. I'm gonna start by shaving some of this cheese over my bottom layer of nachos. These chips are pretty robust. I don't think they're gonna sog out. So, I will lay down some of my cheese sauce. Everything about this is over the friggin' top. Some more cheese over that. I'm just going to dot the chips with a bunch of these Peruvian pearl peppers. Alright, oven's all hotted up, so these guys are headed in there for an amount of time. I just want to toast the chips and melt the cheese. There they are. Now, using tweezers, of course, let's shingle a whole bunch of Wagyu all over this insane thing. So now, I'm just gonna flash this under the broiler. Super hot, super quick, just to finish cooking the Wagyu through. So, if you look at the pieces, you can see that they're still pink on the underside. That's perfect. Throw some tomatoes on top of the steak pieces. Throw a not insignificant amount of truffle on there. It's a very, very subtle flavor, and it's probably gonna get lost in all this stuff, so. And, of course, we have to serve with one of the most infuriating, quote-unquote, ingredients in the world, some edible gold. Almost didn't get the gold leaf on, and then those oligarchs waiting for dinner would have been furious. We'll calculate how much this thing would cost. Let's see. Well, that was a tremendous waste. Honestly, just eat the beef on its own. The flavor of the cheddar, the flavor of the tomatoes, of the peppers, they drown out the beef and the truffle. They're tasty, don't get me wrong. They're good. Felt bad to make, feels bad to eat. All that to be said, I'm going to eat it now. Because, what am I gonna throw this in the garbage? Am I insane? Well, there you have it. Level 9, the most expensive nachos in the world. Massive diminishing returns. I would rather have a normal plate of nachos than this. All that to be said, I'm going to go eat all of this right now, because I'm not letting this go to waste. Level 10 nachos. What are the best nachos? I don't know if any one person can answer that, because, well, it's a big wide world out there. But I'm gonna try to make my very best plate of nachos. I'm debating with a lot of different approaches. Should I fry my own tortilla chips? Should I make some kind of complicated protein? Should I make a cheese sauce with citric acid, or the old-fashioned way, or an even easier way? Should I make the nachos Texas-style? That is, each individual chip is loaded with all the nacho toppings before being put in the oven. A lot of stuff to consider. I'm gonna start with the protein. And I bought a couple different kinds of proteins, and I'm just gonna riff here. I think I'm gonna use pork. I think I might treat it a little bit like carnitas, a little bit like mojo pork. I'm not gonna follow any recipe. The recipe will be on the website. But I'm just gonna riff. I'm gonna see what happens. So let's start with our butto pork. I got this little half a boneless pork shoulder. I'm gonna cut this into 2-inch chunks, roughly. And just while I'm getting the other ingredients ready, I'm just gonna hit it with a little bit of kosher salt, just to dry-brine it a little bit, probably about half an hour before it ends up in the stuff, in the suck. All right, now I'm gonna build the braise. I'm thinking onion, obviously. Get those guys in there. A fair amount of garlic. Who might as well do the whole head, am I right, people? Let's do, got a solid teaspoon of cumin seeds. A teaspoon and a half of coriander seeds. Four bay leaves. A nice Mexican cinnamon stick in there. Teaspoon of dried oregano. And, of course, lard. Pound of lard, all day. Let's also get some whole black peppercorns in there. Rounded teaspoons worth. And then I'm just gonna throw this guy on the stovetop because this is enameled cast iron. Should be completely safe to throw on here. And I'm just gonna get that lard heated up while I get my other stuff ready. I'm gonna kill the heat, just so we don't have any huge issues here. Start dropping in our pork. That's gonna cool off the mixture a bit, which I want to make sure it's nice and relatively cool before I add any liquids. Now I'm going to add the juice and the carcass of one large navel orange and the juice and carcass of one lime. And now I'm gonna add just enough beer to just almost cover the pork. And now, as best I can, I'm gonna try to take the pieces that are submerged and prop them up on stuff so that they stick out a little better. Now this guy's headed out onto a preheated 325 degree Fahrenheit smoker. That's why I want one facet of the pork sticking up. It's going to absorb that wonderful smoke. Look at that. Still bubbling from the smoker. Yeah, I'm not sure what to call this because it's not quite carnitas. It's not quite mojo pork. What I did was I smoked it for about three hours. You can see how beautiful and reddish pink they are from all that smoke. I flipped them halfway through to make sure that they were getting even exposure to that smoke. I'm not wasting a single bite of this stuff, nor am I gonna waste this fat. Because, you see, we are going to make our own refried beans. Refried beans are not light on the fat. Keep some of those nice herbs and stuff in there. And look at that. We got spice and citrus-infused pork fat ready to make some refried beans. Some crazy refried beans. Purists will definitely say use dried beans. Soak them overnight, cook them slow and slow, infuse flavors into them. They're gonna be better, and I am sure that's true. But if you make them with canned beans, they're gonna be still worlds better than any canned refried beans that you can buy because you can control the flavors. So I've got about a quarter cup of our infused lard. Let's do like a quarter cup of our chopped white onion. And just a little bit of color. That's perfect. Now I'm gonna add our rinsed and drained beans, which I'm gonna saute together with the onions so the spices can get properly toasted. Here's a hefty pinch of freshly ground cumin. That's gonna smell awesome. Quarter teaspoon of oregano. Never hurt anybody. We're gonna cook that for about five minutes. Now that these guys are getting pretty thoroughly cooked, time to mash. Let's give them a taste with this truckish tea spork I didn't know I had. Goodness, that's good. Salt's in there. It's tasty even without salt. Wow! Oh, wow! That's really good. I'm gonna cover them up. Let them be until we're ready to nacho. Nachos without some kind of pico de gallo just feel incomplete to me. So I got some nice tomatoes on the vine here. Oh, man, I hate dicing tomatoes. This is my least favorite part of making pico de gallo. Finely dicing tomatoes is such a bastard, but I shall endeavor to do it because it is worth making your own pico de gallo for sure. Especially if you don't like cilantro and you want to leave it out. I've also got a white onion here. Ideally, I want to do a finer dice on the onion than I did on the tomato for the pico. Let's get the tomatoes in there. And, you know, maybe about a quarter as much onion as there is tomatoes. And, of course, we need some jalapeno. I'm gonna do a whole jalapeno because I want this to be a good source of heat. There we go. Now here I've got a little bit of cilantro. It's parsley. I really only recommend doing this if you are making a food video and you want it to look correct because it's gonna bring something to the situation but not like cilantro does. And, boom, nobody on the Internet will ever know that it's parsley. Also adding the juice of probably half a lime for this small amount. Now, I know that this is not traditional or even correct at all but I do like to throw a little bit of olive oil in, just like a teaspoon's worth. I just like what it does to tomatoes. It just sort of, you know, softens them, gives them a little fat. A little fat to play with. Oh, and, of course, salt. Mix that up and just like that we got ourselves some high-quality homemade, almost traditional pico de gallo. Now we refrigerate this until we're ready to serve. Now on to my source of heat. And I love just slicing up jalapenos, throwing it on the nachos, and calling it a day. But, recently, my partner made some bread and butter red jalapenos. Now these aren't red jalapenos. These are Fresnos. But these are one of my favorite chilis. Great heat content. They're bright and fruity. They're a wonderful chili. So, I'm going to pickle these like I would bread and butter pickles. That is, with a lot of sugar. That way we're going to get sweet and spicy. And pickly. Let's start by thinly slicing. Maybe not too thin. Why don't we make these a little chunky? Let's see if this one's spicy. Oh yeah! I wasn't expecting it to be that spicy. S***. Okay. Good thing I'm bread and buttering them. Oh my god. There's our chilis. Which I'm going to place in a heat-proof bowl. Whew. Now for the pickling liquid, I'm going with equal parts apple cider and white vinegar. About a half cup each. Just need enough to cover the chilis, really. And I want it to stay hot, actually. So, perhaps a bit more. I'm also going to top it with a half cup of water. I don't like too vinegary a brine. Normally you add mustard seeds. Instead, I'm going to use coriander seeds. A tablespoon's worth. Teaspoon and a half of salt. Throw some peppercorns in there as well. Now, normally with bread and butter pickles, you use plain white sugar. But instead, I'm going to go with brown sugar. You want about half as much sugar as you have vinegar. So that means I'm going to add roughly three quarters of a cup of sugar. Alright, now we're going to bring this up to a simmer. Make sure all the sugar's dissolved. Then we're pouring it over the chilis. I'm also going to throw a little bit of onion in there. I think that will only help things. In fact, I know it will. And let's also do some garlic. Two cloves. Alright, our pickling liquid is at a rolling boil. I'm going to pour it over top the chilis. So now we're going to let these sit for 30-45 minutes until it's cooled off and the chilis are quick pickled. For the chips, I'm going to make my own chips. But for only one reason. I want to use flour tortillas. I like flour tortilla chips. I think they're great. This is about as optional a thing as you could possibly imagine. You do not need to do this to make great nachos. Oil's clocking about 350. Let's try these out. So far they're not curling, which cool. Just pushing them down under a little bit. Make sure that they brown evenly. Looks like they're already pretty much done. Keep browning when they come out of the fryer. Okay. Those don't look so great. These got pretty greasy. And they brown too quickly on the edges. If they go any cooler, they will get more oily. But if they go any hotter, they won't brown evenly. It's a real catch-22 here. You really got to wait for them to cool. Otherwise they're kind of soft and weird. It needs to be hotter. 375 is the sweet spot. Probably should have looked it up, you know? This might not be a worthy experiment. You know what, guys? I just don't think this is going to work. I think that flour tortillas are not a thing for a reason. I've made them before and I forgot how they turn out, which is like almost like pastry. They are, after all, just flour and water and some other stuff, so why wouldn't they come out like pastry? Yep. Those are not going to work. So in conclusion, just use store-bought. I like these samosa tortillas. I also like their tortilla chips. They're incredibly rigid. I wouldn't recommend just eating these with salsa or queso. These are a great nacho chip because they are so extremely strong and water-resistant, so we can drench them in cheese and sauce and stuff. The thing I've found when you eat them just straight out of the bag, they need a little toasting. Like they almost have a stale quality to them. So throw them in the oven. Just going to crisp them right up. They'll be perfect. We have our carnitas here. They've cooled off to handleable temperature. Shredding this up to bite-sized pieces that we can sprinkle over the nachos. You do want to do this after it's cooled because if you do this while it's hot, not only will it burn your hands, but also you will experience more moisture loss. You can see that the pork picked up this lovely little smoke ring while it was simmering. It's going to have some of the characteristics of barbecue pulled pork, but with the sensibilities of carnitas. Grab some more of our cooking fat and just drizzle it on. Just going to add a little bit of salt. Got to make sure that every layer is properly seasoned. Holy crap, that's great. Okay, these are nacho ready. Which means all we have left now is the cheese sauce. And I'm going to show you the easiest cheese sauce that exists. I can't imagine an easier one. It only takes two ingredients and a pan. So you might have heard of making cheese sauces with evaporated milk. One of the easiest ways to do it. You shred your cheese of choice, toss it with a little bit of corn starch, and then add it to some nice warm evaporated milk on the stovetop. Let it melt. Bing bang boom. You got yourself a cheese sauce. But I can do you one easier. You know what's already got starch on it? Pre-shredded cheese. That's right. I am normally extremely anti-pre-shredded cheese because of the anti-caking agents. The tapioca starch, the potato starch, the corn starch that they dust it with. But in this case, it works to our advantage. So, let's make some of the easiest cheese sauce that has ever even thought about existing. As far as I can tell, nobody else has tried this. I haven't found recipes online for this. Every recipe involving evaporated milk has you dusting your cheese of choice with corn starch. And this is already done. Into a saucepan goes one 12-ounce can of evaporated milk. And that's it. We're gonna heat it up and it's gonna make a cheese sauce. That's it. For a wee bit of color and heat, I'm going to grab chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Basically, if you've ever used dried chilies, particularly chipotle chilies, they have a very distinct flavor. And this is like that flavor distilled into a, you know, semi-fresh, sauce-based kind of thing. You can already smell it. And that is gonna bring some great color, flavor, and heat. At least, that's what I'm theorizing. Whoops. Brought the evaporated milk to the boil. I don't know if that's bad or not. Kill the heat. Let the boil come down. Get the cheese in there and commence to folding. If you over-agitate cheese when making a cheese sauce, sometimes it can split or become grainy or both. It's looking pretty good. So, now I'm gonna add in my chipotle chili that's gonna add some awesome color to it as well as some intense flavor. Wow! Look at that! It's perfect! And if you don't add the chipotle, what you've basically got is the world's easiest two-ingredient cheese sauce. It is like a miracle. It's stable. It's smooth. Oh, that's weird. It looks split. Why is that splitting? Oh, it's really split now. I've made this a handful of times. That's never split like that. Maybe the chili did it. Luckily, I know the fix. Let's see if I blend it. Will it come back together? Because, yeah, that is split. Yep. Smooth as a daisy now. Okay. Even smoother than it was before somehow. Okay. It's finally time to assemble our nachos. Let's space them out. Overlapping chips are a missed opportunity. For the cheese, we are, of course, using our cheese sauce, but I also want shredded cheese on there. I do think that is the ideal to have both. What I wanted was longhorn cheddar, and this is extra sharp cheddar, which is not gonna melt as well. I don't have my ideal cheddar, but we do have cheddar. Just for a little extra flair. Just to show that we give a sh**. Normally, I would only put cheese on the bottom layer. Just cheese, but I know these chips can handle it. Drizzle some of our cheese sauce over top. I don't have as many pickled chilies as I'd like, so I'm gonna be sparing on this bottom layer. Same for the top. Got our refried beans here, which have completely cooled and, in doing so, have almost become crumbly, which is actually ideal. Our first layer. Let's lay down another one. I'm gonna do it kind of piece by piece here, because I want even and prolific coverage. Let's get this going, and I'll finish it with the chilies and the pico. In the meantime, let's share some stories about life, love, and all of the above. Or at least that's what I do on my podcast in the Booth of the Babish. Available now on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. You hear that? I said do you hear that? Let's top it up with some of the pickled chili peppers. I'm also just gonna grab some pico and just wantonly sprinkle about. There it is, folks. My level 10 nachos. Took some time to prepare, but will it be worth it? Let's find out. That's an okay one. Oh, man. So much going on. The porkiness is profound. So sick of nachos. I don't know if I can eat this whole thing, but I'm gonna try. Level 10 nachos. I'm gonna take these upstairs to my nephew and other who won't mind that something fell out of my mouth when I was making them. Just like pure fat like that. What the f*** just fell out of my mouth? And we're gonna polish this off. Well, we're gonna try. Thank you guys so much for watching. Please leave a comment below. What do you want to see me explore 10 levels of next? What is your level 10 nacho made out of? What did I miss? What should I try next time? And what does a proctor do? I know the word, but I don't know what it is. Proctor? It sounds municipal. Or medical. Maybe it's because it rhymes with doctor. Anyway, I'm gonna go eat these. Thank you. Love you. Bye. Thanks again to my long-term partner Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. 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