Recently, Bertolli gifted me a beautiful, 34 oz. bottle of their extra virgin olive oil and invited me to enter their 150th Anniversary recipe contest. Although I use olive oil in almost everything I cook, this was a real challenge for me. What could I do with olive oil that I’ve never done before? (I even put it in my hair and on my face. Have I mentioned lately that I’m Italian?) Anyway, the first thing that came to mind is the thing that’s almost always on my mind. Nachos.
I love nachos. So much. Here is a picture of me being insanely happy about a plate of nachos:
Everyone who isn’t crazy knows that the best part about nachos is the nacho cheese – you know, the melted orange crayon-looking stuff that gets pumped out of a metal box? Mmm…orange. My go-to vegan nacho cheese recipe is great, but it calls for cashews, which I am almost always out of because I make so much vegan nacho cheese. So today I nacho’d up a “potato cheese” recipe that calls for 1/4 cup of delicious, delicious olive oil.
It turned out so tasty, and it was SO stupid cheap to make! We’re going to have this over jackfruit tacos tonight, but I have a feeling nacho sweet potatoes and nacho, well, nachos are also in the near future.
Oh – and a quick tip for anyone new to chipotle peppers in adobo (affiliate link): These smoky, delicious little peppers are generally sold in a can. I throw the whole can, sauce and all, into the blender and puree it, then I just use about 1 Tbs in this recipe (or one whole pepper) and I freeze the rest. Whenever the nacho mood strikes, the puree is ready to go in my freezer.
Vegan Nacho Cheese on the Cheap
Ingredients
- 2 cups potatoes peeled boiled & mashed
- 3/4 cup carrots peeled boiled
- 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
- 1/3 cup Bertolli Extra Virgin Olive OIl
- 1/3 cup water
- 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
- 1 Tbs fresh lemon juice
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
Instructions
- Peel the carrots and potatoes, cut into 1″ cubes and boil until fork tender – about 15 minutes. (I used about 3 potatoes and two large carrots.)
- Mash, pack and measure the potatoes. Loosely measure the carrots – those don’t have to be exact.
- Place all of the ingredients into a high speed blender and blend until smooth – 30 seconds to a minute should do it.
- Make nachos. Instagram those nachos. Tag me in the picture so I can be weird and “like” your nacho pictures.
Note: This post contains affiliate links which means if you click and make a purchase I will earn a laughably small amount of money which I will spend on Garfield art.
Looks yummers! Can’t wait to try this, and it does seem really easy and cheap to make!!! Also looking forward to joining the recipe contest. Thx for the heads up 😉