Review: Barker Brewing

July 15, 2016 Derek Sotak

Tortilla chips loaded with a hefty portion of pulled pork served with nacho cheese, jalapenos, salsa & sour cream on the side.

When most people go to Niagara Falls they go to the actual Falls themselves, because they are pretty impressive and all. Some people will go and then enjoy the lovely wine country and wineries in the area. Even others will go to check out the breweries, cideries, and distilleries. And then there are those who go for the nachos, and, if lucky, can also combine that with a trip to some place with tasty BBQ, such as Barker Brewing for example.

HAPPY 4th OF JULY!

July 4, 2016 Nachonomics

Another 4th of July, another chance to trot out the ol' PATRIOTIC NACHOS in case you wanted to make something other than burgers and hot dogs to wow and impress your friends and family. Also don't blow off any bits of your body with fireworks is you are presented with a chance that you might do so.

Review: Doritos Mix Taco Explosion

June 25, 2016 Nachonomics

WOAH WOAH WOAH! WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS? I SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW/RSS "NACHONOMICS", NOT ANY "TACONOMICS" RELATED BULLSHIT! HOW DDDDAAAARRREEEEE YOU TRY AND PAWN OFF SOME LOW GRADE TACO SHENANIGANS AS HIGH QUALITY NACHO MATERIAL? JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE MISTER, HUH? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!?!?!

Worry not friends. As you will see this Taco Explosion is made up of chips flavored (1) Salsa (2) Sour Cream (3) Taco, and (4) Spicy Nacho. Now, if you take taco out of that mix you have nacho chips, salsa, and sour cream, all members of the nacho family! Sure, there isn't any of the other tasty stuff you'd like, but the same general flavor is there, albeit all in chip form. I don't think you can really call these nachos anymore than you could call a scoop of cheese ice cream, a scoop of jalapeno ice cream, and a scoop of chip ice cream nachos, but it's close enough for government work as they say. Really, I've only heard Stephen King say that, but he's pretty folksey when writing so I imagine someone else might say that, at least in Maine.

THE PLAYERS

SALSA

I might agree that this tastes spicyish, like a salsa does, and might pin that down as "salsa", but the fact that this is such a compact nugget of a chip detracts from that a little bit. It's a little like eating a dried up chunk of salsa that may have hardened to the side of the salsa container when you put it back in the fridge rather than regular loose salsa. Ugh, never define any sort of food as "loose".

SOUR CREAM

When I eat this I don't think "Sour Cream", I think more "Cheetos". Perhaps the sour cream flavor is so sleight that it is overpowered by all the chips bits and dust floating around in the bag, but if someone put one in front of you and said "What flavor is that?" I wouldn't pick sour cream. Like the salsa chip you're also trying to compare two different states of matter, solid to pretty much liquid (Thank god it's not a Bose-Einstein Condensate!), which isn't an easy ask either.

SPICY NACHO

These are just Doritos Spicy Nacho flavor of chips, or if not they are so similar to spicy nacho chips that you can't tell the difference from memory. Well, maybe YOU can, but not I. Maybe if you had the two of them right next to each other you could tell them apart, but otherwise I don't think so.

TACO

We're not talking about these here. Go check out Taconomics if you want that.

TOGETHER

Don't know if I would call it "nachoey" so much as just "chipey-with-some-mexicaney-flavors-and-spicesey". Part of the whole deal with nachos is that you are getting a bunch of different flavors AND textures, which is not the case here. Just just having three things with the same texture, even if they are different flavors, doesn't quite cut it.

Are these nachos? No. Are these even close to nachos? No. Could you use them as part of nachos? Sure, but they're pretty much just chips, no matter what the flavors say. I've never tried nachos where there are all different shapes and styles of chips, so maybe you could be the first one that does and let me know! I think really if you want "nacho" chips you have to go to DORITOS DINAMITA NACHO PICOSO, although I'm not exactly what country I'd need to go to to get that...

Review: Idahoan Fully Loaded Nacho Cheese

June 15, 2016 Nachonomics

As part of the life of a nachonomist I spend a lot of time eating chips. Sometimes though, and it may be blasphemous to say it, I don’t want to eat chips. Sometimes I want to eat potatoes, and there’s no better way to have potatoes in my opinion than reconstituted from dust from out of a bag. Fortunately the good people at Idahoan have made a product with me in mind: Fully Loaded Nacho Cheese Mashed Potatoes.

It is truly quite a magic trick to watch a packet full of dust mixed into boiling water supernaturally turn into mashed potatoes. My great grandmother would probably have flashed the sign of the evil eye and spat through it before allowing such devilment to infest her kitchen, but I am accustomed to modern culinary witchcraft and have eaten such a thing before. In this busy work a day world who has the time to slice up potatoes, boil them until soft, and then mash them into mashed potatoes? Not I, that is for sure, hence employing such alchemy. This easy way to make them can result in your potatoes having an interestingly congealed consistency, which these certainly had in spades, in addition to the unnatural color associated with all things containing the “nacho” adjective. These potatoes certainly did not reinvent any wheels in the “nacho” world

At first taste, these are potatoes, and personally with potatoes you want more to them than just the potato itself; butter, sour cream, chives, bacon bits, cheese, etc. These certainly do not have any of that. What they do have, the second flavor that hits you, is good ol’ nacho cheese, in this case the same kind that you can find at a popcorn station of a movie theater to sprinkle over your snack. There are many varieties of fake nacho cheese out there, some more potent than others, some funkier tasting, and some just meh, and whatever they used in here was just plain meh. Yes, it has a spicy cheese flavor kind of, so you have met the bare essentials for calling it “nacho cheese”, but the bare essentials are all you have met. Also, having looked at the expiration date and seen that their best before date was a month before now I wondered if that might be having an effect on them, but I have to assume that that is pretty unlikely.

So you have some so-so potatoes, what are you going to do about that? If you were some kind of gross food waster you could just toss them in the garbage, but don’t be a gross food waster. Maybe if you served them as a side with some other meal as I’m sure they are intended to be eaten that’ll spread out the flavor in the way that just eating them out of a bowl by yourself does not. If you are however going to sit down and consume 4 servings of nacho cheese mashed potatoes resulting in 3,120 mgs of Sodium, maybe you want to really nacho it up some. Treat the potatoes as a really mashed up bunch of chips and cheese, so if you add some lettuce, jalapenos, sour cream and salsa, you’re beginning to really nachoify it. You totally won’t offset the 132% of your daily sodium allowance, but you can pretend the vegetables are helping out some. Sadly, adding some other stuff to help these out is as good you you’re going to get with these.

Last chance for Recipes from the Nachonomicon: A Nacho Cookbook!

June 5, 2016 Nachonomics

Good people, this is it! The last days to get a copy of RECIPES FROM THE NACHONOMICON: A NACHO COOKBOOK are upon us! You haven't backed it yet you say? Well, here's what you're missing out on:

A pocket sized, full color book of nacho recipes from throughout the history and evolution of the food, along with videos of how to make said nachos you can watch along while making them for a true Inceptionesque experience!