Convenience-Store Cuisine Recipe: BBQ Pulled-Pork Nachos!

I’ve been challenged to do a recipe that includes ingredients from a convenience store. Ladies and germs, I present to you a recipe I invented today: BBQ Pulled-Pork Nachos. And they are AWESOME.

Here’s what you’ll need: Cooked pulled pork, Cool Ranch Doritos, Salsa, Sour Cream and Shredded Cheese. Notice there are no measurements; I rarely do that with my own recipes. Everything was eyeballed and the great thing about Nachos is that you can pile it on at your own discretion. You can also eliminate or add ingredients at your leisure.

Do you ever notice that convenience stores rarely just have plain tortilla chips? When I stopped by the gas station I had two choices for corn chips: Nacho Cheese Doritos and Cool Ranch Doritos. I chose the Cool Ranch because, well, everybody knows Ranch and Barbecue go together like peas and carrots.

So you preheat the oven to 350 degrees and you layer your Doritos out evenly. You can put two layers on, but since I’m not making these for a truckload of people, I just used one layer. Then you top it off with your pulled pork.

After that, you add your salsa. Now, I’ll be honest here: If I didn’t already have tons of Salsa in the fridge, I probably would have bought a jar of Jalapenos and just put those on. Salsa tends to make Nachos soggy. So I did my best: I used a fork and just distributed the salsa lightly above the chips, trying to focus on getting those jalapenos on there. That way the chance of sogginess is cut back a little bit, at least.

Next is a step that is crucial to all Nacho-making: pile on the cheese. You want these Nachos to be ooey-gooey when you’re serving them. I used a blend of mexican cheeses, but for extra goo, you might splurge and get the new shredded cheese that has cream cheese mixed into it. I’ve tried it and it does what it says. Or you could skimp and use Velveeta shreds; they have a new Queso Blanco flavor that would be perfect for this.

By the time you’ve done all this, your oven should be preheated. Put those Nachos in there and let them bake for about 10 minutes. No, better make that 8. I put them in for 10 minutes and they came out a bit too crispy on the edges. Although some of you may be into that sort of thing!

Here it is out of the oven. See what I mean? I should have cooked them for 8 minutes to avoid the extra crisping of the cheese and the chips and the what-not. But even out of the oven, these still don’t look complete. Shall I garnish these with a little green onion, maybe some cilantro or other things the restaurants do?

No, I just doppled some sour cream and poured a little barbecue sauce on it. Eat THIS!

Now, I know this isn’t one of those up-close photos of food you like to see on Pinterest, but I’m working on it and hopefully I will be a fabulous food photographer. I was never known for making food “pretty,” but I do like pretty food.

Here’s how they look on my plate. I opted to drizzle some barbecue sauce on it. Not pour, drizzle. And FYI: I got four bottles of barbecue sauce AND five pounds of the pulled pork you see in this post for only $4. Check out the deets here. Combine that with using cheap items from the gas station and stuff I already had in the fridge, this made for a great snack that did not absolutely break my wallet. And they were awesome. I also still have enough Doritos and other ingredients to do it all over again!