Primal Nachos

Primal nachos- I kid you not.

As a new convert to Real Food, I spend a lot of time reading through the #WAPF #RealFood #Primal and #Paleo hashtags on Twitter for more information and new recipes.  A few days ago, RogerDeRok tweeted something about Primal nachos… with bacon instead of chips. Hmmm…

Bacon is made of pure awesome anyway, and what self respecting cook wouldn’t top her home made nachos with bacon? It’s only a step further to make the nachos out of bacon, and it’s low carb, and real food. In fact, if you subscribe to nutrition information that’s found in the Primal, Paleo, Real Food, and Traditional Food movements (as I do), it’s much, much healthier than traditional nachos (depending on the quality of the ingredients). So, why not? (Note to new visitors: I started this site before I started down the real food path and have not had a chance to update old posts- please either ignore old posts or just know that they will be corrected/updated at some point in the future.)

I have not actually read Primal Blueprint, so forgive me if I’ve gotten anything wrong, but I did keep this first batch super simple since you can, of course, doctor up your nachos any way you want.

How to make Primal Nachos:

If you happen to have any left over bacon, simply reheat. If not, cook some fresh bacon until it’s crunchy and firm. You do not want floppy bacon unless you eat your nachos with a fork.

Take your pan, still warm from heating the bacon, and add a splash of milk and a handful of shredded cheese. Stir until all melted and gooey.

Pour the cheese sauce over your bacon.

Top with salsa of your choice (I used home made lacto-fermented salsa).

This is a one pan snack or meal and is really pretty awesome. If I were serving this to guests, I would have used pastured bacon instead of cheaper cured bacon, and I probably would have used Red Leicester cheese for the extra tanginess instead of sharp cheddar. Next time, I will probably add a bit of mustard or a splash of apple cider vinegar for that tang that was missing from the cheese.

Obviously, you can go crazy with this. Sliced black olives, fresh diced tomatoes and onions instead of salsa, and non-Primal types could even crumble up chips as a topping and call them upside down nachos or similar.

One thing to keep in mind when making the cheese sauce is that cheddar isn’t the best melting cheese and will harden or turn mealy if you don’t eat it while it’s still fresh and warm. I’m not sure if there’s a way to fix it without draining the cheese in milk, but you may want to consider blending a cheddar or cheddar-like cheese (like Red Leicester) with a softer cheese, like maybe mozzarella.

That said, it’s about time for me to start working on AndreAnna’s bacon wrapped mini-salmon cakes. Please let me know in the comments if I need to fix anything in this post, or any other ideas that I should try (right now, I’m thinking roasted nori “chips”).