Nachos For Dinner | Dan Whalen
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Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Dan Whalen: I'm Dan Whalen, cookbook author of Nachos For Dinner and blogger at TheFoodinmyBeard.com.
Suzy Chase: We're only one month into 2022, and I'm already looking to lighten the mood and have some fun. And this is the cookbook if you want to have some fun. I mean, what's more fun than nachos? It's a one pan meal. You can eat them with your hands and no one can resist nachos. What makes nachos for dinner different from nachos as an appetizer or a snack?
Dan Whalen: Well, I tried to balance the nachos. I think balance is the keyword so that you're not kind of having this overindulgent pile of lots of cheese.
Suzy Chase: What's wrong with an overindulgent pile of cheese?
Dan Whalen: Well, that's fantastic as an appetizer, but if you want to eat a full meal of it and still feel like you can do something afterwards. I tried to bring forward more vegetables, more of the proteins and just overall balance the plate of nachos.
Suzy Chase: Nachos are great because they're a blueprint, as you say, and you need a good foundation. What kind of a tray should we be using?
Dan Whalen: So for me, it's always a sheet pan and what's happening there is you have one layer of chips. So you don't end up with that plate of nachos where there's a bunch of what we call naked chips on the bottom of the plate.
Suzy Chase: Okay. So what I think is the most important element of nachos, and I'm sure it's debatable, but I think it's the chip.
Dan Whalen: I'm glad that you're pointing out the importance of the chip, because it really was like a journey for me to try all the chips and focus on what was best. And I think even now when I'm going to the chip aisle, I spent so much time in there looking at all the chips. The whole aisle has been dominated by what they call restaurant style chips, which are like the huge chips. And most of the bag is broken. And what I'm looking for is when I look into the bag of chips to make sure that you see like full size chips. So I'm looking for more triangular and I'm always looking for the sturdiness of the chip. And there's a few brands now that do basically the equivalent of homemade chips. And when you use those, they stay really, really crunchy underneath and they hold a lot of toppings. But if you use some of these more trendy chips that are very thin, you're never going to find the true nacho success.
Suzy Chase: I swear I think the stock people punch the bags of chips when they put them on the shelf.
Dan Whalen: It's true. I mean, I literally saw it this morning. I was swinging to the grocery store to grab a few things for later. And of course I was spending way too much time in the chip aisle. And the guy was standing there, like sort of zhooshing up the bags, like you would a pillow on your couch after you sat down. And I think he was trying to make it seem like there wasn't as many broken chips.
Suzy Chase: So you just said your favorite chip is a triangular chip. So what's wrong with the round one?
Dan Whalen: Nothing's necessarily wrong with the round one. But a lot of times I think they're too small. And especially if you're looking for that perfect thin layer on a sheet pan, it's harder to layer them where there's like a lot of surface area of every chip, if that makes sense.
Suzy Chase: Tell me about your nacho journey.
Dan Whalen: Nachos were the first thing I ever really learned how to make myself. As a kid I would come home from school and put some chips on a regular plate, throw some cheese on there and put them in the microwave. But besides that, I mean, I've been making nachos my whole life. I absolutely have been obsessed. And from going into the basement with my friends when I was in high school, making a big sheet tray of nachos for everyone to just exploring the idea of what truly is nachos on my website. It's just been, like you said, a journey and it's super exciting to finally have this book out to explain how the journey has been so far.
Suzy Chase: So let's go through your five secrets of nacho success. And that's on page two for everyone who has the cookbook. So the first one is take an extra minute to move all the chips around the pan.
Dan Whalen: You just want to make sure that it's like a nice even layer. And I kind of just nudge a few so that every everyone has at least like 50% of the surface area exposed to get all the cheese and the good toppings.
Suzy Chase: Number two, is sprinkle half of the cheese first, then the toppings, then the remaining cheese.
Dan Whalen: Right. So the first part of cheese is actually like a barrier to help the chips stay crispy. If you're stuck like in your store, you only have the more sort of industrial chips. Another step you can do is kind of broil them for a second before you put any toppings on and that'll help them stay crispy. But if you're using a really good quality chip, you can skip that step. And the cheese just helps like any of the juicier toppings not trickle down onto the chips to make them soggy.
Suzy Chase: Now, what do you mean by an industrial chip? Do you mean like Tostitos?
Dan Whalen: So I don't know how deep you want to get into this, but most chips, they start their journey as chips. So like you would take the masa dough, make chips and then directly fry them, but a good chip, a true chip and a homemade chip would be a tortilla first. Right. The first chips that were ever made were just someone deep frying a tortilla that was like on the verge of being stale. So if you make homemade chips, you buy the corn tortillas and you fry them and they're super crispy and they stay very crispy. And there's a few brands that actually make tortillas and then cut them and fry them. And those are the true best chips, but the more common industrial chips like Tostitos and so many other brands, is just the dough that has been turned into a chip first and then fried. They skipped that middle step.
Suzy Chase: So should we be looking at the ingredients on the back of the chip?
Dan Whalen: I think the ingredients is a good way to help, but also just trying the different brands and seeing what's what. And many of these industrial chips that skip that step can still be really crunchy and still be really delicious of course, but it's just, I'm so deep in the chip game that I start to notice, like the nuances of all the different ones. And if you are looking for brands Mi Nina, in my opinion is the best. And I know for a fact that they start with tortillas and then fry them. And now that I'm in the Midwest, I don't find that one that much, that one, I found more often in New England. And the one I can find here sometimes is called Donkey, but it's kind of a rare find and I have to dig deep through the chip aisle to get to it.
Suzy Chase: So the third secret of your Nacho's success is cut everything into small equal size pieces.
Dan Whalen: Yeah. This way you can really get an even spread and get like, say you're making a nacho with three or four toppings. If you cut them too big, you'll only get like one topping on each chip, but this way, if it's nice and small, you get even topping coverage on all the chips.
Suzy Chase: Number four, is spread out the toppings.
Dan Whalen: Right. So obviously like I was saying, you want everything on every chip, but you don't have to be that meticulous. But if you even just take an extra minute or so on this step to really spread them out, and I may this joke a lot, but I'm actually serious when I say it, is I sometimes just like squint my eyes a little bit and you can really see based on the colors of the toppings that the toppings are evenly spread out almost like an abstract painting.
Suzy Chase: Okay. All right. I've never heard anyone say that, but that's a really good tip.
Dan Whalen: I'm glad that I finally got the reaction, because most people just say, okay.
Suzy Chase: Number five, to dip or to top. Now what does that mean?
Dan Whalen: So, when you get a lot of nachos at like say a sports bar, you would get them and like they just throw the salsa and sour cream, like in the top, on the center. Right. And so that's sort of always the question for me. When I'm in my blogging mindset and I'm trying to take nice photos, I'll take all the toppings and spread them out over the chips, like the cold toppings, I'm talking about salsa or pickled vegetables or whatever else. But the problem with that method is that if it sits too long, it may get soggy. But for me it, and also like the blogging mindset, but also just like the cook mindset where I want everyone to have the nachos the way that I want them to experience it. So I'll put the cold toppings on and spread them out all nice and evenly, but it may be better to put all those cold toppings on the side and let people kind of do their own nacho adventure instead of me trying to force them to have the different cold toppings and also to allow the chips to get soggy.
Suzy Chase: So let me also add that since you started your blog, The Food in My Beard in 2008, you've been all about cultural appreciation and not appropriation when it comes to recipes. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dan Whalen: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad that you brought it up because there always will be a question of like who can write certain recipes. Right. And as a white guy who has been cooking for a long time, I love exploring different cultures and regions of recipes, but you have to make sure that you're doing it in a good way. And so many bloggers out there are just looking for SEO and clicks and they post their different recipes and they kinda separate it from like where it's from and what it is.
Dan Whalen: It's very important to me that people can try different recipes and explore different cultures. Right. But if I was writing a nacho book where I was trying to pretend that I had cultural knowledge of like the history of carnitas and that I could do it because my grandmother taught it to me, then that would be not okay. But as someone who's trying to appreciate these different cultures and explore the flavors, it's just important to me to shine a light back on where they came from and make sure that I'm doing it right. Or if I'm doing a twist on it, make sure it's clear that this is a twist and it's like a fun flavor twist. It's absolutely not in any intention to be authentic.
Suzy Chase: So let's start with the classic nacho. What is your version of the classic? I know different people have different versions and I'd love to hear yours.
Dan Whalen: Well, the original nacho was actually created by Ignacio Anaya in Piedras Negras, Mexico, which is a border town. And his original version was just the chips with cheese and jalapenos. That's like the true basic of nachos. I think if you take the jalapenos off, you technically still have nachos, but for me it's all about the chips obviously, some sort of cheese like thing, well it doesn't necessarily need to be cheese and then whatever toppings you want to put on.
Suzy Chase: I also love salsa. And you say anything can be sauceified? What does that mean?
Dan Whalen: Well, I worked at a burrito shop actually for a couple years and I was sort of in charge of menus there. And one of my favorite things I did was create a monthly seasonal salsa where I just took whatever fruit or vegetable or whatever else that I was feeling that felt like in season at the time and make a new salsa with it. I have like a chart in here as well as several of those recipes from that burrito shop, where as long as you basically take like a certain percentage of onions, and citrus juice, and garlic, and an herb, you can put sort of like whatever main in that you want in there and turn it into a salsa.
Suzy Chase: There are so many interesting versions of nachos in this book. You have French Onion Nachos, Buffalo Chicken Nachos, Cobb Salad Nachos, Fish Taco Nachos, Banh Mi Nachos. And over the weekend, I made your Caprese Nachos on page 76. Can you describe these?
Dan Whalen: Sure. It's similar to any of like tomato, mozzarella salad, right, but on nachos instead. And I just cut up the tomatoes and spread them out on the chips and based on the process, I broil every nacho in here. So it's a very quick cooking. So I felt like it didn't really cook the tomatoes that much and take away that bright, fresh tomato-y flavor that you love in the caprese salad. Also, topped with basil of course, because that's very important to that salad.
Suzy Chase: I also made the Italian Sub Nachos on page 102. Can you talk a little bit about these. And by the way, I love mortadella.
Dan Whalen: Oh man. I've made a mortadella cheese steak the other day and it was so good. And I just have, whenever I buy it, I buy like way extra so I can just keep continually eating it every time I open the fridge. But yeah, that's also one of my absolute favorites in the book. It's just the chips first and then I use like an Italian cheese blend and put a lot of my favorite meats from a Italian sandwich, like mortadella and salami. A lot of people would say prosciutto, but I think it's too chewy for this particular application. So then you put more cheese on top and broil them and then afterwards, which is also the most important part of an Italian sandwich, is that sort of like lettuce and almost like a fresh salad on top, right, with some balsamic vinegar. So I cover the whole chips with that and some pepperoncini peppers.
Suzy Chase: So what would you say is the craziest recipe in this cookbook?
Dan Whalen: You could say a lot of the things that don't use chips are the craziest, right? So like when you start doing say Chicken and Waffle Nachos and it's like the chicken and the waffles are the chips. Right. You could go in that direction. But I actually think there's a Thai Larb Nacho recipe. Not sure if you're familiar, but it's like the chop chicken and salad that is popular in Thai cooking. And so it's actually like a cold nacho. So I made the Thai chicken salad mixture and spread it over the chips. And then I top it with like a coconut cream basically instead of sour cream. And I was really unsure about it, but it worked so well. And I had it for the first time in the middle of summer on a hot day and it was just like a fantastic plate of nachos. And I think it really, really stretches the definition of what could be nachos in my opinion.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Dream Dinner Party, where I ask you who you most want to invite to your dream dinner party and why, and for this segment, it can only be one person.
Dan Whalen: So I've been thinking about this a lot, because I know you asked this question and it's so funny because for me with a dinner party, it's like, it's really all about the blending of different people. Thinking about one person is really hard, right? I guess I would say Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys who passed away.
Suzy Chase: No one has ever said that.
Dan Whalen: I thought of like, Anthony Bourdain, I also thought of George Lucas or even Han Solo or something. But that's why I decided Adam Yauch.
Suzy Chase: So why Adam and not any of the other Beastie Boys?
Dan Whalen: I read their band biography recently. And I mean, I knew it already, but he like is the Beastie Boys. He kind of was the one who was super creative and really pushing the others to just like be as weird and different as possible at all times.
Suzy Chase: So where can we find you on the web and social media?
Dan Whalen: I am @TFIMB on most social media platforms, which is the initials of the food in my beard. And my website is thefoodinmybeard.com. And I'm pretty active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Suzy Chase: To purchase Nachos For Dinner and support the podcast head on over to CookerybytheBook.com. And thanks Dan for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Dan Whalen: Thank you so much. It's so much fun.
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