Healthy Raw Vegan Nachos {recipe}

Hi there, my name is Rachel Carr and welcome to my channel. Today we're going to be making a delicious raw vegan nachos with a cashew based cheese sauce, a pecan and pumpkin seed chorizo, and bell peppers for tortilla chips. Let's get started. We're going to start by placing one cup of pecans and one cup of pumpkin seeds in a food processor and you're going to process them for a couple of minutes until they're nice and crumbly. Transfer the pecans and pumpkin seeds to a mixing bowl. Next you're going to add two tablespoons of chili paste, one quarter cup of olive oil, one quarter teaspoon cumin, two teaspoons of oregano, two teaspoons of chili powder, half a teaspoon of sea salt, one quarter teaspoon of cloves, and a half a teaspoon of ground black pepper. Then you're going to mix everything up very well until it's completely combined and set it aside until you're ready to use. Next we're going to make the nacho cheese sauce. Start by adding two cups of bell peppers, two tablespoons of olive oil, three teaspoons of apple cider vinegar, one half a cup of water, one quarter cup of nutritional yeast, one teaspoon of turmeric, one teaspoon of sea salt, and finally of course two cups of soaked cashews. These cashews have been soaked for at least an hour and then drained and rinsed off. Next you're going to blend it for at least five minutes to get a super smooth consistency. Of course soaking the cashews helps it become very smooth but also the length of time that you blend it helps. Next we're going to cut up about three bell peppers to make our raw vegan tortilla chips. Now today's nachos are going to be made half and half with blue corn chips and the bell pepper chips but you can of course do the entire thing raw if you want. I find that it's nice to have half and half with regular tortilla chips so that people can share and they get a chance to try something raw vegan but still you know maybe they want to enjoy regular chips as well. So you want to cut out the seeds and all the the really kind of stringy white parts that's on the inside of the bell pepper. I just like to cut off the top of the bell pepper and just pull the seeds right out and throw away the stem and then you know there's no waste really because I can cut up the top the cap of the bell pepper and just use that as a tortilla chip as well. I like the colors that are produced by using three different colors of bell pepper as well it makes it very very pretty. Next we'll prepare some other garnishes that are going to go on top of our nachos. Even though I'm going to be putting some salsa on top of these nachos I still like to have just for color and for the texture some nice fresh tomatoes as well to go on top. We're also going to be garnishing our nachos today with some fresh chopped avocado. You can choose to do these with guacamole if you prefer that to the chopped avocado some red onion. Love a little finely diced onion on my nachos just adds a nice kick. And the last garnish that we're preparing for today's nachos is fresh jalapeno slices. I'm taking out the seeds and also removing the the white pith from the inside the same way I did with the bell peppers and then I'm just keeping them in nice big round slices which look really pretty on top of the nachos. Now let's build our nachos. So I'm starting by placing bell pepper slices on half of a plate and then on the other half I'm going to be using blue corn tortilla chips. Now you can do this entire thing with the raw vegan bell pepper slices if you'd like. I was just doing this as a sharing plate this day. Then I'm drizzling some of the nacho cheese sauce over it and saving more for later. Then adding a little bit of the chopped red onion, I'm spooning some salsa around. I actually bought this salsa at the store but of course you can make your own fresh at home if you'd like and garnish with a little bit of cilantro. And then finally add a little sprinkle of the raw vegan chorizo on top.