The Reed household lies on a mostly quiet street in a fairly standard suburb in Missouri. A ranch-style home, this is where the Reed family resides, though this should be obvious at this point. Jokes aside, my mother has fixed meals for the lot of us for quite some time, and she isn’t shy to take the recipes of others and add her own quirks and tweaks to make them purely of her own design. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner (though not always in that order), my siblings and I would be hard-pressed to actual find a meal of hers that we actively dislike.
To that end, something that has definitely increased more in recent years is “Taco Tuesday” transpiring in our house on, well, Tuesdays. Though not an original concept in and of itself, we have taken this to heart and started to have different Mexican themed meals on these Tuesdays. Sometimes we get take-out, other times we have make your own taco nights, and so on and so forth. However, my favorite aspect of this is most assuredly the one that involves burger. So, here comes the Nacho Burger to satisfy our cravings for both burger foodstuffs with that Mexican flair. I know we just talked about our venture to the Southwest Diner which involves a similar theme, but not only is this a favorite of my mother’s cooking, but an order to stay at home as much as possible and not stay in incredibly packed circumstances than an eatery like Southwest Diner provides, this is the perfect time to cover the Nacho Burger. It’s the Burger Bounce Quarantine Special!
Now, as said before, the idea can be derived from other similar burgers that exist in multiple places. Chili’s has their own Nacho Burger that shares a lot of commonalities with the one that I ate at the Southwest Diner, and it seems famed Food Network chef and Taco Bell All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game participant Bobby Flay has a Nacho Burger all his own. Granted I haven’t had any of these particular burgers, especially not Bobby’s as I don’t foresee him serving me one anytime soon, I’m sure that my mother’s nacho burgers top both of those. Should be noted that Bobby’s softball season wasn’t even that good, and I much prefer the 2001 season with the likes of Paul Williams and James Van Der Beek. Anywho, what about the food?

Most who know me also know that I have a strong predilection towards cheese, which is without a doubt my favorite aspect of the Nacho Burger. You take a burger patty, of course the standard bun (although this can be toasted for added effect), tortilla chips, jalapeños, and as much queso as you could possibly desire. Of course, this can vary based on taste, but I prefer an immense amount. Drench it, I say! Occasionally when making this dish, my mother will also mix chunks of pepperjack cheese into the ground beef so that the burgers have cheese inside the patties as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t have pepperjack at the time of this meal and didn’t feel going to the grocer so soon after the quarantine announcement was a good idea, so these patties were pepperjack-less. Que serà serà.
The burger was just fine without it, with the queso providing the soft, liquidlike contrast to the crunch of the jalapeños and tortilla chips. As expected, this Mexican flair also provides a level of spice to the dish. Not one that’s excessive, mind you, especially this time around with the lack of pepperjack, and that’s the way I prefer it too. I’ve never been one with a spicy palette. I like it to a degree, but I’m not one to suffer for art, especially one’s culinary in nature. Regardless of the full makeup and what ingredients may or may not be available, this remains one of my favorite dishes to this day, and the fact that as I write this another instance is coming up makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
I love the fact that the kids love a lot of my concoctions. I like to try new things and make changes to recipes. In fact, I’m horrible at actually following a recipe unless I’m baking. Which perhaps is why I don’t enjoy baking as much as I do cooking. When you bake, most times, if you do not follow the recipe, it just doesn’t turn out right.
I honestly don’t remember what started me making Nacho Burgers. There wasn’t a recipe, but maybe an idea sparked from something I saw or something someone said? Hard to tell. But I figured I would try to dress up the burger into one of my favorite types of food, Mexican. Our whole family loves cheese, with the exception of Mallory. She absolutely detests it in any way. However, she does like cheese sauce like queso. Weird, I know. But the fact that I can make a burger without the pepperjack inside for her, but she can still top it with queso for the effect makes me happy. However, she is now allergic to red meat and pork. So I made her a chicken breast instead. It’s all about pivoting these days, right?
Anyway, most of the time I make this burger, I add my homemade taco seasoning to the ground beef along with the pepperjack cheese chunks before forming the patties. Once they are cooked, each person gets to use whatever toppings they like. we have the queso and tortilla chips but we also have lettuce, sour cream, salsa, banana peppers, and jalapeno peppers. For this specific evening we had fried potato slices as our side. It’s pretty easy. Just fix what you and your family like!
Have a lovely day!