The first Friday of Cody's senior season, our queso set up like drywall mud by the end of the first quarter. I'd made it at 5:15, poured it into a jar I hadn't warmed, and by 7:20 it had cooled into something you could have patched a wall with. Wyatt ate it anyway, spread on chips like peanut butter. The rest of us waited for halftime and the booster club stand.
Three Fridays later I've got it figured out, and these nachos are now our standing Friday night dinner. Last year we ate sandwiches out of the back of the van in the parking lot. This year we eat nachos in the bleachers, and nobody wants to go back.
Why nachos survive a cooler
The whole trick is that the chips never meet anything wet until the moment you eat them. Everything travels separately and gets built in the stands, one paper boat at a time. The kit:
- Chips: one big bag of thick, restaurant-style tortilla chips. Thin chips snap under queso. The bag rides on top of everything in the stroller basket, never under the cooler, which I learned in week two.
- Plain queso in Wyatt's 16-ounce food jar. He buys pizza at school on Fridays, so his lunch jar has the night off.
- Brisket queso in Matt's old 24-ounce wide-mouth jar: the same queso with chopped Labor Day brisket stirred in.
- The cold bag: pico de gallo in a quart zip bag, sour cream in a squeeze bottle, pickled jalapeños from our backyard plants, a bag of shredded cheddar for Eli and Rosie, and lime wedges.
- Paper nacho boats and a couple of plastic spoons for ladling.
- The frozen water bottles and wet washcloths from last season, which I'll keep packing until Cody graduates.
The queso
Enough for both jars, about five cups:
- 1 pound white American cheese from the deli counter, torn into pieces
- 1 1/4 cups milk
- 1 quart bag of this year's mild roasted Hatch chiles, chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin and a pinch of garlic powder
Melt it all together in a saucepan over low heat, stirring, about 10 minutes. Deli American melts smooth and stays smooth as it cools a little, which is why I use it here instead of cheddar, which goes grainy. For travel it has to be thinner than seems right. Queso thickens as it sits, so when it leaves my stove it should pour like a thick soup. That was my first-week mistake.
The jars get the same treatment as Wyatt's lunches. While the queso melts, they're filled with boiling water and closed for ten minutes. Then the water goes out, the steaming queso goes in right to the top, and the lids go on tight. We eat around 6:30, before kickoff, and it's still hot. By halftime it's warm, and whatever's left after halftime goes in the trash at the stadium, never back into our fridge. I follow the jar's directions and the USDA's guidance on keeping hot food hot, and that's what I'd check before copying me.
Building them in the bleachers
Everyone gets a boat. Chips first, then a ladle of queso, then whatever you want from the cold bag. Wyatt takes brisket queso and everything else. Matt does the same, plus extra jalapeños. I go light on queso and heavy on pico. Eli gets plain chips with a pile of shredded cheese next to them, not on them, and his own small cup of plain queso, which he approaches one chip at a time, slowly, as if it might bite. Rosie, at three, eats chips and cheese and now lasts until halftime, a full quarter longer than last fall.
Kickoff is at 7:00. The bus drops Wyatt off around 4:45, which leaves just enough time to melt the queso, load the van and get to Garland by 6:15 to meet Kristen in our usual section near the 35.
What it costs
- Thick tortilla chips: $2.79
- Deli white American cheese, 1 pound: $5.49
- Milk and spices: $0.40
- Hatch chiles, one bag: $1.16
- Chopped brisket, about 5 ounces from the freezer: $3.40
- Pico de gallo (two tomatoes, half an onion, cilantro and a lime): $2.10
- Sour cream, shredded cheddar and jalapeños: $1.90
- Paper boats, five from a pack of 50: $0.40
Receipt check: $17.64 for five, about $3.53 each. That's more than last year's sandwiches, which ran about $13 for all of us, and I'll own that. But the booster club stand sells nachos for $5 a tray, and theirs don't have brisket. We still buy one thing each at halftime, because that money goes to the boosters, and that's part of the night too.
