Ingredients That'll Be Sure To Spice Up Your Nacho Cheese Sauce

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with nacho cheese sauce. All cheese is good cheese, and nachos can be optimized in endless ways. You can bake sheet pan nachos and load them with cheeses and pulled pork, or engineer them to taste just like Taco Bell's triple-layer nachos (with just five ingredients). There are also subtler ways to make a difference with a platter of nachos. We're talking about spice. And we're following the lead of Dan Whalen, a cookbook author and the blogger behind The Food in My Beard, which specializes in "creative comfort food twists and mash-ups."

As Whalen explains to Mashed, it's easy enough to add a bit of heat to nachos, and you can do it in a variety of ways. "A pinch of cayenne will go a long way for heat and won't break the sauce or add texture," Whalen says. Of course, how much you use is up to you, but you'll want to add it gingerly and taste as you go. Remember, cayenne is potent stuff!

But it's also just the beginning: Whalen notes that cayenne "adds heat without doing anything for the flavor." Ingredients like hot sauce and fresh jalapeños do. You've just got to know the best way to add them.

We're assuming that you're starting with a creamy nacho cheese sauce — as opposed to melting shredded cheese over chips. A silky, emulsified sauce will give you that classic nacho experience, but it's also a bit more delicate and prone to breaking (i.e., separating) if not handled properly. warns, "What mainly would cause a cheese dip to break is acidity. This means tomatoes, salsa, or pickled jalapenos." Dan Whalen explains. It's better to top nachos with those ingredients than to incorporate them into the sauce itself.

The same idea applies to hot sauce, which Whalen says he prefers to cayenne for adding spice to his nachos — particularly something like a chipotle-based sauce, with its complex, smoky flavors. Since hot sauces tend to be vinegary or fermented, hold off till the last minute, Whalen says, "I would drizzle some on top just before serving to prevent the acidity in the hot sauce from ruining the dip."

For something more chunky, you can cook fresh jalapeños in a pan on high heat and "mix them into the finished dip," Whalen adds. You could also use jalapeños as a starting point, sautéing them in a pan (perhaps with some beef and onions or any other non-acidic ingredient you want) before adding the rest of the ingredients to build the sauce. Now, you've just got to decide the best tortilla chips to dip into that cheese — and we've ranked 11 popular grocery store brands from worst to best if you need suggestions.