Thanks, Bertolli!

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.

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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.