Bacon Barbecue Chicken Nachos

I LOVE my new camera.  Love, love, love it.  I am sad that all of the pictures on my blog weren't taken using this camera because everything looks oh so pretty!   I am sort of tempted to update all of the pictures, over time of course.  I can't even say that all the posts moving forward will have awesome pictures, because I still have stuff to download from my iphone!    I find that I am terrified to even have this fancy camera in the kitchen because I don't want it to get dirty!  I'm sure the newness will wear off, but until then I've been bugging Jamie to help me in the kitchen so that the person with the "clean hands" takes the pictures.



I haven't been motivated to be in the kitchen even though December is the best season for baking because both Jamie and I have been sick.  Anything that was going around, I am sure we caught, so this past week was our first week back at work, and I finally felt like myself again.  Thank goodness.  I texted Jamie idea of Barbecue Chicken Nachos and this was the response:

Bacon Barbecue Chicken Nachos:

Ingredients:
Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips
4 chicken breast tenderloins (marinated in bbq sauce and cooked on Foreman grill then diced)
1/2 cup of cooked black beans
1 recipe of Cheese Sauce (see below)
Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce
4 cooked bacon strips crumbled
1/2 cup green onions diced

Cheese Sauce from Serious Eats
1 8 oz block extra sharp cheddar cheese grated
1 tbs. cornstarch
1 12 oz can of evaporated milk
2 tsp. Franks Buffalo Sauce
In a medium bowl toss together the cheddar cheese and corn starch.  Transfer the cheese to a medium sauce pan and add the remaining ingredients.  Turn stove on medium low heat and whisk constantly until the cheese is melted and the sauce starts to resemble cheese sauce. Before it looks like cheese sauce it looks really gross and stringy-- just keep whisking.

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Layer the chips on the bottom of a 9x13 pyrex pan (a cookie sheet probably works just as well).  
• Layer the remaining ingredients over the chips.  I started with a little BBQ sauce, followed by cheese sauce, then black beans, chicken, more cheese, more BBQ sauce, bacon and green onions. 
• Bake for 10 minutes or until everything is piping hot. 

Notes: 

• The cheese sauce didn't look like it was going to turn out at first, but I turned up the heat on my stove to about medium and things started to look better. 
• Next time I will use two different types of cheese because we felt like the sharp cheddar was a little much. 
• DO NOT use pre-shredded cheddar! Reading through the comments on Serious Eats, other people have tried that shortcut, but the problem is that pre-shredded cheese contains a preservative that prevents the cheese from clumping together, which completely ruins the melted gooey goal of nacho cheese sauce. 
• Next time I will definitely use a little less than a tablespoon of corn starch because when the cheese wasn't piping hot the consistency changed and it was a little too thick for me. 
• DO NOT try to reheat the nachos.  I did and it was terrible.  We had leftovers and I didn't want to waste it, so I stuck in the fridge and later reheated it in the oven.  So gross. 

I can't wait to make this again for the Superbowl!  Go Packers! Ravens!