Chris Makes Lunch Nachos

[slate thudding]

I feel like I could do like a better manual slap.

There was a little more starch on that, right?

I'm just saying like the machines haven't like,

you know, maybe fully got the edge

on that one, you know, good old fashioned

one of these, like, nobody's mad about that.

[upbeat salsa music]

Okay, so years ago we did this lunch package

called lunch al desko,

like incredible, clever, you know, headline for a story.

But now, you know, we're in this time

you know, where we're all kind of quarantining.

So many of us are working from home.

Lunch is all of a sudden very different.

And not necessarily only in bad ways.

Lunch nachos was one of my approaches to how,

you know, I kind of eat in the middle of the day,

how I feed my kids as well.

They get their lunch break at 11:00 AM.

Who eats lunch at 11?

Nachos are great because they are, they're a blueprint.

But the key is I always try to work in a fresh vegetable.

First things first, when we talk about quick pickles,

sometimes, you know what we're talking about

is bringing a brine of sorts to a boil

and pouring it over something

and then just letting it get a quick soak.

But I want to demo like the quickest of pickles.

They're just given a super quick soak

in a very magical ingredient.

Could you call 'em quickles? Yeah.

You can call them quick goals.

You definitely could.

They're like seriously quickles.

Okay, like when I do a thin slice of an onion

I go like with the grain like that.

It just allows you a, a cleaner slice.

We want to make some really fast pickles here

and we're going to do them, you know, in the time.

Just let them macerate basically in the time

that it takes for us to make these nachos.

Sometimes I will do carrots.

Sometimes I will do chilies.

Sometimes I will do radishes or mixed radishes.

The key is, you know, kind of like any

sort of firm veg will pretty much work.

The trick is this.

This is seasoned rice vinegar.

This has salt and sugar in it

and it's basically ready to go right out of the bottle.

Literally just put it on there.

This is us making pickles together

but me sort of doing it alone.

This has like most of the seasoning you need.

The sweetness in there really tempers the bite of the acid.

There's no need to really thin this out with water,

just an extra pinch of salt,

just give it a little boost,

and then sort of smush them around.

These can just sit and they'll be pretty much ready to go

by the time the nachos are ready.

However, if you store these in the fridge,

they'll be good for a couple weeks.

So the next thing, I'll take out

like a half head of cauliflower or so,

just something that you can kind of chop or thinly slice.

So I'll take the cauliflower and I'll just go right down it.

And I'm going to show you how we're going to cook that

so that it can kind of meld with the nacho

and feel like it really belongs.

I'm just taking a couple of cloves of garlic

and I'm not even going to bother to slice them.

Why am I doing the garlic like this?

Number one, I can fish it out after

so my kids don't have to discover it and have a freak out.

All right.

Number two, garlic gives you so much flavor.

So I'll take, you know, a couple cloves of garlic

while I'm still prepping other stuff,

wandering around, breaking up fights,

you know, cleaning up blood, that sort of thing.

The garlic cloves can just sort of toast,

turn nice and golden,

deep caramelization on the garlic, but it's not burned.

Okay.

Give yourself a little break.

Walk away for a sec.

Just not too far away.

Listen, let's be honest,

some people are never going to be convinced

by a nacho that's got cauliflower in it

and I get you, but like maybe

if you put cauliflower in them, maybe you'd eat more nachos.

So think about that.

This is a way to like, kind of turn it into

like a fast, somewhat healthy meal

with like relatively low effort.

So I've got cumin, I've got coriander, and I've got paprika.

Just regular paprika, not smoked paprika.

I put just a drizzle more oil, like a tablespoon or so.

That's just going to coat those spices.

It's going to allow their flavors to bloom.

Cauliflower is cooked.

It's seasoned.

And yeah, cauliflower is bland as [beep]

but when you cook it and you layer on some flavor,

it becomes like really pleasant.

[Cameraman] Is cauliflower like the actual vegetable tofu?

I, you know, it really, it's very similar.

It can take it, whatever you want to throw at cauliflower,

trust me, it can take it.

I don't know how it happened.

Orange cheddar is the only cheddar

that is accepted by my kids.

Orange cheddar, at least as made by Cabot,

comes in a blue plastic wrapper

and they would always refer to it as blue cheese.

So we'd go to people's houses and they'd be like,

Oh, can I have like, you know,

can I have a blue cheese snack?

And people will be like,

Oh my God, your kids eat blue cheese.

And you'd be like, yeah, yeah, they do.

They're really adventurous eaters, so yeah.

But God forbid any those people actually had blue cheese

and pulled it out.

My kids would be [beep] scandalized, right?

Another thing that's really key is like,

these are not an ad, okay?

Tostito's Simply Organic yellow corn tortilla chips.

Look at, like, first of all, the size,

how far thin they are.

this is my gold standard for nachos.

So I like making like at least three layers, you know.

Let's do beans next.

And speaking of beans, this is like not an advertisement.

This is just like, Amy's Organics refried beans.

So frigging good, you know?

Just like frigging eat them cold if that's what it takes.

Then I'll do, you know, kind of a third of the cauliflower.

[upbeat jazz music]

This is the ultimate comfort food.

I mean, it just is.

All right, ready to go in the oven

and then we're going to top it, all right.

So nachos are in the oven at 400,

going to go probably about 10 to 12 minutes.

I just want everything to get nice and melty,

get a little color around the edges of the chips

and then we're going to top it.

Not bad.

Who could be mad about that, you know what I mean?

There are just a little bit of color

peaking on some of those, you know,

we're like, we're melted all the way through.

I love these chips because they kind of keep everything,

you know, a little bit more separated.

They've got that wave.

They've got that lightness to them.

Look at how much all this has softened,

you know, in that straight seasoned rice vin.

It's like salty, good little pop of sweetness,

it's bright with the vinegar.

It's so good.

Andy and I were talking the other day about,

you know, a story we want to do for April.

Andy was just like, come April we'll have all have been

in this crazy period of time for like a year.

We all just want to eat things that are delicious

and we don't want to spend a ton of time doing it.

In text, I'm writing for this,

like I'm almost talking about like,

it's not just because I've been watching too much

of The Queen's Gambit, which I have, which is brilliant.

This is like, lunch is like all the nuance of like

the game of chess that is dinner

and feeding other people in this time.

Lunch is like speed chess. [clock ticking]

You are on some serious time pressure.

You know, people's lunch breaks are only so long

and you have to make everything happen

and eat in that window.

So, you know, it's really, really, really important

to kind of keep things easy and delicious as well.

I love yogurt on nachos.

Obviously it doesn't have to be yogurt.

This is Greek yogurt.

Greek controls the moisture.

[Assistant] And we're all curious over here,

how come nachos with no salsa?

[Chris sighing]

Okay, we're opening up a big can of worms here.

The question came in.

What's the deal, nachos with no salsa?

I think...

Here's the thing.

If you have salsa and you want to serve salsa

with your nachos, by all means do it.

I tend not to have a lot of salsa around.

I'm certainly not going to ask anybody to make salsa

but if you have it and you want to serve it with it,

like I love like a little like guajillo based salsa

with some like toasted garlic in it.

I'm just scattering a relatively small amount.

And this is where I love having some pickled chilies.

Like if I had some pickled jalapeno in this mix,

I'd be pretty happy right now

but I've left all heat out just for the sake of the kids.

All right.

That's it, nachos for lunch, you know, live the dream.

Who's not excited to eat that

on a Wednesday in a snow storm, you know?

[upbeat holiday music]

[electronic beep]

The amazing thing is like, when you lean over

and you actually smell this, you get tons

of bright and like vegetal flavors

and I mean that in a good way.

All right.

Ah, the cauliflower,

I think with all those spices with the coriander

and the cumin on there, it really works,

you know, kind of like making it feel like it belongs here.

This is just going to be me eating nachos

for the next like five minutes.

We can sort of switch to ASMR if you want.

And that's it, lunch.

I mean, honestly, who wouldn't be so fired up to eat that?

I mean, granted, one of my kids

would probably pick the cauliflower out.

You lost? We need backup.

[electronic beep]

When the camera, I don't know.

Whatever happened to the camera just a second ago,

I was thinking about how you guys,

like the level of like technical kind of like jargon

that gets thrown around is like a little bit sort of

like a Tom Clancy novel but then just sort of

like the randomness of like, you know,

some of the tech speak in like, you know,

Star Wars or something.

Just like, oh, I used to bullseye whomp rats

in my T16 back home, you know?

Well, let's just switch over to channel two.

[beep] it, I don't know. [crew laughing]

Whatever the [beep] it takes.

I don't care.

I'm just meanwhile sitting here

like I just came to make nachos, so.