These chilli beef and cheese nachos are for one serving, the recipe can be scaled up easily enough to serve as many people as you wish!  It uses ingredients that don’t need to be fresh, so easily put together without too many pressures on having to use up fresh ingredients.

It takes just 10 minutes to put together this great Saturday night snack food, a plate full of chilli beef and cheese nachos!

I first had nachos at a restaurant called Sweeney Todd’s at the Millpond, Cambridge, in about 1985, and instantly fell in love with the idea of a huge plate of nachos, hot melted cheese and other toppings!

This recipe using my “food cheats chilli beef” twist of combining frozen beef mince with ketchup and chilli powder, as that’s a simple way to make “just enough for one person”.  I use this recipe mixture to make chilli beef pizza toppings for one person too.

Nachos Ingredients:

• 40 grams frozen beef mince (* see alternatives, below)
• 20 grams tomato ketchup
• ½-1 teaspoon chilli powder (or more if you like it PIPING hot)
• 50 grams nacho chips/tortilla chips (¼ of a supermarket bag)
• 100 grams of cheddar cheese (or whatever you’ve got), grated or sliced

How to Make Nachos:

1. Put the frozen beef mince into a mug – it’s about 3 heaped tablespoons in quantity. Microwave on full power for 30 seconds, then stir and microwave for another 30 seconds.  The beef should look cooked and should be very furiously cooking in its own juices.  Strain off any spare fat (probably about ½ a teaspoon).
2. Add the tomato ketchup (it’s about a heaped tablespoon of ketchup) and the chilli powder.  Stir the mince/ketchup/chilli powder together and set aside.
3. Line a 7-8″ dish with tin foil, I use a sponge tin.  Make a layer of tortilla chips across the base.  Sprinkle the tortilla chips with about a quarter of the cheese.  Make another layer of tortilla chips on top of the cheese. Spoon the chilli beef over the tortilla chips and sprinkle the top with about quarter of the cheese.  The foil makes it easy to remove the nachos and slide them into a bowl or on a plate
   
4. Place under a medium/hot grill so the cheese melts.  After 4-5 minutes, when the cheese has melted and the chilli beef has had time to cook through, add the remaining cheese across the top and put it back under the grill.  I tend to not put too much cheese by the edges as I don’t want it to stick to the foil, so where you place the cheese is your choice!
5. Serve when it looks the colour you like it to be!

Notes:

I only put the chilli beef layer on the top as the top layer, you can make two layers of it if you wish!

If I’ve got a fresh chilli, I’ll grate a fresh chilli across the top when I add the final pile of cheese.

Alternative Thoughts: 

• Beef mince: I often use the Aldi frozen beef mince, which is sold in 454 gram bags, other supermarkets will also sell products like this.  You can use fresh mince, or even shave/chop 1-2 beef meatballs!
• I always have tomato ketchup in the house, so it’s easy for me to use that.  If you’ve got tomato paste you can use that instead, I’d add ¼ teaspoon of sugar just to take the edge off, but that’s optional.
• Cook in the Oven: If you wish, this can be cooked in the oven.  As the heat is less direct than using a toaster, it’ll take a little longer for the cheese to melt and the top brown.

Nachos Menu Cost 80p: 

The cheese is the most expensive part of this, costing about 50p, you can use less cheese.  The beef mince is about 1/10th of the packet, so about 20p.  You should be able to make this for about 80p/serving.