How A Chef Makes Nachos

I've set myself a challenge to take these chef level Wagyu nachos and make a dish that's just as good with much cheaper ingredients. I'll have to use every trick in the book to get there but I think we might be in with a shot. First up let's see what's possible when money is no object. This is an ancho chili and it's delicious. Smells like raisins, then we got some guajillo and some chipotle. Now the truth is this is one area you don't really want to skimp on. This is the heart and soul of the dish. These have been deseeded we're just going to cut them up and get them toasted in a pan. The reason we're doing that is to open them up. We're going to get the oils going in them. They're going to become lovely and fragrant. In the meantime we've got some water on the side that's come to a boil. Leave that there. Alright these are nice and fragrant now. Filling the room with spice. In they go to the boiling water. We don't need the heat on that we just want to soak these in hot water so there's no heat underneath that. We're going to let those steep for like 20 minutes. So these chilies are going to be the base of the barrier that we're making and it's kind of the foundation. It really is what makes like normal barrier and good barrier the difference is the amount of chilies and the time to toast them and then to kind of soak them really well. While those are soaking we're going to toast our peppercorns and our cumin seeds in a dry pan on a medium heat. Similar to the chilies we're just trying to open them up. Don't burn them we just want them nice and fragrant. Once these are nicely toasted turn the heat off and we can add our Mexican oregano and dried thyme. The two cinnamon sticks and the cloves. To the jug of a blender, one diced white onion, a whole head of peeled garlic cloves, apple cider vinegar, beef stock. We're going to remove our cinnamon sticks and leave those to the side. But we'll add the rest of the spices and all of our soaked chilies. Lid on, blend till smooth. All right set that aside and let's start dealing with this Wagyu. All right so this is a marble score I think it's a eight to nine set of Australian Wagyu short ribs. Let's be honest this is completely unrealistic. You see this on Instagram a bit and it's unnecessary I think as well. But let's do it anyway and see what happens. And also caveat I'm guilty of doing things like this too for clicks so I'm put my hand up just as much as the next guy. The reason why it's unrealistic is because I'm pretty sure as we're going to prove later on in this video you can get just as good a flavor using different products that are a lot lot cheaper. This stuff is delicious don't get me wrong but it will be priced out at around 85 dollars per person which is outrageous and I reckon we can get something that's just as delicious for like seven dollars a person. Let's cut these up and get them cooking. So we're just going to cut our short ribs into three and just look at that marbling. Big Dutch oven, high heat, Wagyu tallow going in. Wagyu Wagyu. You're a Dutch oven. I'm going to season the ribs just with salt and get them into the Dutch oven and get good color on all sides. Once we've got good color on our ribs we're going to pull them out and set them aside. Leave all that fat in there the fat that's rendered as well. Turn the heat down well actually completely off at this point and we're going to really carefully add our sauce from earlier. Wow that smell is incredible. All right we're going to cook this out for about three or four minutes on a medium heat stirring all the time. Just be really careful because it is like lava of stuff. We've got the other onion just in quarters and the cinnamon sticks. Then we add our beef back, put them in, flip them over so they're completely covered in that delicious sauce and we're just going to add about 300 mils of that chili liquor. Just enough to cover the ribs completely. Put it on into the oven. The oven's on 160 degrees. I'm going to start checking them after three hours but it'll probably take more like three and a half four and I almost forgot put a couple of bay leaves in there too. All right so all the other toppings for our nachos and I thought how can we push the boat out on all of this. Pico de gallo one of my favorite sauces of all time. Usually it's made with Roma tomatoes or plum tomatoes. Today we're making it with heirloom tomatoes. Will it make it better? I'm not so sure. So we're going to dice our tomatoes. We're going to dice some white onion, one jalapeno, some coriander, lots of fresh lime juice, a little bit of olive oil and salt. Let's see if it makes a difference. Chipotle crema. Very simple sour cream. I've got some chipotle in adobe sauce. I'm going to finely chop and stir through along with some of the adobo sauce. Job done. I know crema is not just sour cream but real crema requires fermentation and I don't have all day. White queso. Basically a cheese sauce. We are going to use gruyere for this one. Definitely not a Mexican cheese. Actually a Swedish cheese I'm pretty sure but I love the flavor that you get from gruyere. Really nice nuttiness and I think it works really well with these nachos. Real simple to make. We got some whole milk here. We're going to grate this gruyere cheese. We're going to whisk it through the milk once the milk's hot and I'm also going to add some diced jalapenos. Season it with a little bit of salt and pepper. Job done. Great way to address something's kind of viscosity. A little bit of corn flour dissolved in some water or corn starch dissolved in some water. Stir it in over hot heat. Bingo. This is the texture you're looking for. Smooth, thick, still runny. Next the corn chips and I thought how can I take corn chips from cheap to expensive without ruining them. This stuff right here. Bone marrow. We've got some lovely corn tortillas here. We're going to cut them up. We're going to cook the corn tortillas in the rendered bone marrow fat. A little bit of wagyu tallow as well. Pull them out. Drain them. Season them with some lovely English sea salt. Delicious. I'm honestly celebrating but this is kind of ridiculous at the same time. Our wagyu short ribs have cooked for almost four hours now. Look at that. There's a lovely layer of fat on the top where these bones should just pull right out. All right. It's going to run our tongs through the meat to break it up a little bit. I still do want big pieces of meat. I don't want this to be completely mush. All right. Time to assemble this monstrosity. We've got a layer of the beef marrow corn chips. On top of that goes our wagyu short rib birria. I'll tell you what, this birria is very rich. Next a white queso. Our heirloom pico de gallo. Cut through the richness and finally the chipotle crema. A couple of nice dollops. There you go. That's what an $80 plate of nachos looks like. That's ridiculous. All right. I'm not going to lie. I'm pretty excited to taste this. That is deluxe. It's about as deluxe as this gets. Try and get some of everything on this. It's delicious. I was a little bit worried it was going to be too much, but it actually works. It's rich. It's spicy. It's full of flavor. It's full of texture. Amazing. But there are a few things that we can substitute to make this a lot cheaper. First up, the beef. So what we've got here is some Angus chuck, a fantastic meat for slow cooking that still has a really good amount of intramuscular fat, as you can see here, but is literally like one-tenth the price. So we're going to cut this up into big chunks. We're going to season it really well with salt, and we're going to seal it off in a pot, just like we did before. And then the rest of the meat recipe is exactly the same. So pico de gallo, same as before, but instead of the expensive heirloom tomatoes, we're using the classic Roma tomatoes. Everything in a bowl, season nicely, mix it, set it aside. And this is one where I think, honestly, these are actually probably better. So the next way we're making this cheaper is we're using really standard cheddar cheese. We're just going to grate it, and I'll show you a trick my mum used to do for me a little bit later to make it super deluxe. Chipotle crema. There's not much we can do to make this any more affordable, so it's going to be exactly the same as it was last time. It's also absolutely delicious. Through the magic of YouTube, we have one ready. This took four hours to cook, and it looks insane. So we just need to break this meat up like we did with the, and look at that, just a thing of beauty. Just need to break it up like we did with the short ribs, give it a mix through. You want like nice sized pieces like that. I reckon that's the perfect size piece. Time to assemble. So we just brought corn chips today, reasonable quality, a lot cheaper than harvesting barrow marrow and frying your own. We're going to have a layer of these first. Then this is what my mum used to do. The tasty cheese all over the top, even layer. Now I'm pretty sure Miriam didn't invent this, but I'm a big fan. Sweet paprika, little dusting. Now to the grill. Oven's set to grill, high shelf, under they go. Keep an eye on it. Don't leave it. Don't leave it. Watch it. That's a fart. Let it get all bubbly and golden. That's what we're after. That's what you want. A little bit more. You see the paprika starts to kind of make the cheese go orange. Yum. Now the trick is to have this while this cheese is still melty. So we've got to get a bit of a wriggle on. Next goes our meat. Delicious. Pico, crema. And that's it. I was about to pick that up and then I remembered very quickly that that's just been in the oven and it's going to destroy my fingers. So I'm not going to pick that up, but I am going to taste it. There we are. Pico, bit of crema. Mate, I like it better. And I'm not just saying that. I'll tell you why. I think the melted cheap cheddar cheese is a better moisture level than the queso sauce. I think sometimes you can get a bit wet and the beef is delicious. It's got like a real rich beefy flavor and unsurprisingly it's not quite as fatty, but it's still just as moist and delicious. Look, food's expensive. We all know that food costs have gone through the roof and this is still like around 20 bucks a person. It's not a cheap plate of food to make, but it is delicious and it's a perfect sometimes meal. However, I'm pretty sure I can make a plate of food that's just as delicious for less than half that amount. Let's see if I can do it. For the most cost effective version of this dish, we need to rely on technique and the first technique we're going to tackle is making our own cheese. Now you may be thinking, Andrew, you're off your head. I'm not making cheese. Honestly, this is like a farmhouse style cheese. There's versions of this all over the world and it's not that hard. So I'm going to add two liters of milk to a pot because two liters of milk is a lot cheaper than even cheap cheese. Bring that to a simmer. We don't want this to boil. We just want to see steam coming off it. So our milk's come up to the temperature. It's not boiling, but you can start to see there is some steam coming off it. We do not want this to boil. Okay. To that, we're going to add the white vinegar. Stir carefully. Not carefully, but stir. Look at that. Starts going already. And we're going to add the juice of one lemon. So just a reminder, there's no heat on at this point. Stir that through. Now we're just going to leave it. Just going to let it sit until all the curds and the whey has split apart. So I've got a bowl here with a sieve and a piece. Well, this is actually like a bag, but any piece of like cheesecloth will work fine. Um, worse comes to worse. Use an old t-shirt. No, don't do that. Oh, don't do that. I've got like a fine sieve shimwa or spider here. We're going to lift these curds out and let as much way come out of that as possible. And then into your cheesecloth. Good stuff. Put this in the fridge, two hours at a minimum, but overnight is actually better. This dish, we're going to make a salsa roja, like a roast tomato salsa. And the reason being is that we want to introduce some moisture to the plate. Uh, and I don't think you're going to get enough from a pico de gallo. Nothing wrong with it. I just think this is going to work better for this dish. So I've got half a white onion. I've got a stainless steel pan over a high heat with no oil in it. In the onion goes. I've got four cloves of garlic that still have the skin on. In they go. Then I've got four Roma tomatoes in half. In they go. We really want to build some flavor here, some char. And I've got one ancho chili. Now I want a bit of heat in the salsa. If you don't want it super spicy, then leave the seeds out. I'm going to leave it whole with all the seeds in there. And we're just going to kind of toast it and waken it up just like that. We don't want this blackened at all or anything like that. We just want it softened. Pull that out. Leave that to a side. And we want to get these tomatoes, onions, and garlic really nicely charred. We've got a small food processor here. You can absolutely do this by hand if you don't have one of these. We're just going to help this chili by just running our knife through it a couple of times. Like I said before, leave those seeds in there. Give it a little mix. Next goes in our charred tomatoes, our onion, and our garlic, which we can now peel. If you want, you can let the garlic cool before you peel it. Oh, big pinch of salt, juice of a lime, and blend. Give it a taste. All right, we're going to put that aside. Next up, let's make some refried beans. The reason we're going to add some beans is because we're trying to bulk out the beef. We want to add some more protein to the dish. Beef's expensive. Beans are cheap. They're also delicious, and they add a great kind of viscosity thickness to the whole thing as well. Real simple. We're going to use butter in a cold pan. Then turn it on. One white onion, finely diced. Three cloves of garlic, also finely chopped. Then what I have here is a can. Ben, get in there. There's a can of black beans that I've just drained and rinsed. Once our butter's melted, we're going to saute our onions and garlic with some pepper and salt. Once our onions and garlic are nice and fragrant, we're going to add our beans and about half a cup of water. If you had some chicken stock around, you could absolutely use that instead. Just going to let those cook for like 10 minutes, completely soften, and then we'll mash them down and turn them into a lovely refried bean. For our beef, we've just got standard economy minced beef. It's nothing crazy, but you can make this stuff taste real good. It just requires a bit of patience and technique. I've got a really large fry pan here over a hot heat, and I'm going to add about two tablespoons of a neutral flavored oil. Fat is your friend here. Not necessarily from like a flavor perspective. We're not using anything fancy like beef tallow or bone marrow. This is just peanut oil, but it's your friend because it's going to help us build maillard. The maillard in the beef is what makes beef taste delicious. It's really important that we take the time to build that now. One of the ways we're going to achieve that is by using a good amount of oil. Get that oil into that pan and it'll rip and hot, rip and hot. Once our oil is nice and hot, we can start adding the beef in little pieces. We don't want to put it all in the pan at once or the temperature of the pan is going to completely fall away and we're just going to end up boiling our meat. We're also not going to move it for a while. We just want to let it in there, let it get some good maillard, let it build some flavor. I'm going to hit it with a bit of salt and then we're not going to add any more seasoning until we've got really good color on all that beef. It's going to take about 10 to 15 minutes and it's worth just taking the time to get really good color on there. In the meantime, we're just Okay, we can see the pan starting to change here. The sounds are starting to change and that's what we're looking for. Now we can start breaking up the beef and that is what we're after. All this lovely golden color. Scrape the bottom. It looks like there's a lot of fat in there right now but don't worry. We're going to break it up as much as we can with a wooden spoon. It's not quite there but we're pretty close. But now is the time that we're going to add our garlic and onions. I'm So I've turned the heat down from like high to kind of medium, medium high now. The last thing we want to do is burn these onions and garlic. We want to saute them nicely. A little bit of color is great but we do not want to burn them. So refried beans, the liquid's pretty much evaporated. Now there's two ways you can do this. You can just use a masher and do it by hand but I already had this out and I'm lazy so I'm going to do it in the food processor. If you've got the equipment, why not use it? Ain't that right? We don't want puree. We want a little bit of texture here. So our beef, onions and garlic's looking lovely, golden. Smells delicious but it's only seasoning in here is salt. It seems a bit counterproductive but now we're going to start adding seasoning. We've got Mexican oregano, smoked paprika, ground coriander, ground cumin, some white pepper and a secret ingredient. It's not that secret, let's be real. About half a teaspoon of MSG. Stir that through. We just need to toast those spices and bloom them up. It's let's assemble. So we've got the cheapest chips that we could find, cheap chips, cheapest chips that we could find at the supermarket onto the tray. Now we're going to put our queso fresco on next and we're going to put it under the grill but it's not going to do like what the mozzarella does because it's not that type of cheese. So the reason we're putting it under the grill is just because I kind of want it to go like a little bit soft and also kind of like heat it through a little bit so that when you put other stuff on there it doesn't kind of lose all that heat. Cool. So you can see here it's like it's soft, it's hot but it's not going to, excuse you, but it's not going to like melt like a mozzarella or tasty cheese would. That's okay. So refried beans next. I'm just going to dot some off. That's a weird way to say it. I'm just going to pop off. Now our delicious beef on that goes. A roast tomato salsa. Only really moist ingredient here so you can get a fair amount on this and finish with some coriander and I'll tell you what for five bucks a portion that's pretty good. Oh seven dollars sorry. I reckon you can get it for five but Caleb will yell at me if I say that. So there you go. Nachos that cost literally less than a tenth of the first ones but will they taste just as good or better? There's only one way to find out. You know the technique for pulling this off on a budget is making sure that you're layering flavor and making sure that you're thinking about texture. We're never going to get that like luscious stewed meat like we got with the last two. So by adding the refried beans to kind of give that mouthfeel is super important. If we didn't have the tomato salsa we're lacking liquid, we're lacking moisture so we definitely need that and the queso frisco it's not tasty cheese, it's not mozzarella but it is just as delicious, just as rich and really brings the whole thing together. So what one is my favorite? Look this is delicious don't get me wrong and if someone served this to me I would not be upset about it but honestly hand on heart my favorite out of all three is number two. I think the chuck just works better. I'm also a really big fan of grilling that cheese on the nachos as well. Legends thank you so much for watching. Like this video if you've taken anything from it, subscribe if you're not and we'll see you next week for another recipe and if you don't know we do actually have a second channel it's called Backup House it's linked below and it's very recipe focused so go check that page out too. See you next week.