These taco sheet pan nachos are the perfect meal for when you want to nibble on food while out on the deck sipping some summer cocktails in the hot weather. All you have to do is prepare the taco meat, dice up all of your ingredients and then broil them in the oven to melt the cheese.

If you are looking for more appetizer recipes that double as a meal in hot weather (or any time) try my shrimp dip, my campfire/BBQ chili cheese fries or make some crostini and load then up with cheese and meat.

Taco Sheet Pan Nachos on a turquoise cookie sheet

Quick and Easy Sheet Pan Nachos

These sheet pan nachos are fabulous when served with a side of my fantastic homemade guacamole, some salsa and a bowl of sour cream.These are not only a snack, these are the perfect dinner. You have your protein, vegetables and of course cheese which is its own food group in our house. Not only that, it’s a pretty healthy dinner as well even though you’re eating chips!

How to Make Sheet Pan Nachos

These are seriously the easiest snack-dinner you are ever going to make!

First prepare your taco meat. You can prepare ahead of time and then simply heat it up and put it all over the tacos. You don’t want to have to heat the meat in the oven or the chips are going to burn.
Then you are going to prepare all of your vegetables. Drain the pickled jalapenos, drain your black olives, slice and drain your fresh tomatoes and slice your green onions. We did leave lettuce off of these nachos because I didn’t really feel like eating hot lettuce. IF this is something you like (for example if you’re the kind of person who loves taco pizzas that have shredded lettuce on them) then feel free to add shredded lettuce as well! I would simply add it at the end though so it’s not wilted.
Place the nacho chips on a large baking sheet in a single layer, however the chips should overlap each other a little bit to create a uniform layer of chips. Then you are going to sprinkle on your meat and then the cheese. I like to hide the meat under the cheese so that the cheese melts over it and helps it stick to the nachos.
I like my tomatoes warmed up and cooked so I put on my tomatoes and then I broil the nachos in the oven. Whatever ingredients that you want heated up you are now going to put on top of the nachos. I prefer leaving everything off until the end except for tomatoes which I love heated up.
Turn on the broil in your oven and place the cookie sheet on the middle rack. Broil them, watching carefully, until the cheese has melted all over the nachos nicely.
Remove from the oven and top with the remaining ingredients. Let the pan cool safely somewhere until no longer hot enough to burn yourself and then eat the nachos straight from the pan!

close up of Taco Sheet Pan Nachos on a turquoise cookie sheet

Topping Suggestions

You can really go in any direction with these sheet pan nachos, however I decided that since I was serving the kids as well they were going to have normal tacos and Mike and I were going to enjoy a pan of nachos while sitting out on the deck. I definitely wasn’t going to make two kinds of meat so these taco sheet pan nachos were born. I also was craving the pickled jalapenos that come in the jar so that meant I had to serve these with a vat of sour cream on the side, as I can’t handle the heat but loooove the flavor.

Some topping suggestions for these are:

Taco meat. You can use ground beef, ground turkey or even ground chicken and season it with a pack of taco meat or use my homemade taco seasoning mix.
Tomatoes. Make sure to dice them up and drain them well in a colander in the sink.
Green onions. Green onions are actually the only onion I could get my hands on since all onions are recalled in the stores right now!
Black olives or green olives. We prefer black olives but green olives that are pitted and sliced would be amazing on this as well.
Avocados. Yes, I make my nachos with avocados AND I serve guacamole on the side, I basically made these so that I could eat avocados on chips.
Pickled jalapenos that come in the jar. These are much milder and easier to deal with than using fresh jalapenos, which you could use if you wanted, but this was all about the quick easy meal for sitting on the deck and enjoying one of the only hot days we’ve had the summer. Pickled jalapenos are also less spicy and I love their flavor.
Red and green peppers – dice them small and sprinkle them on top (Mr Magpie isn’t the biggest pepper fan so we left them off)

picking a piece of Nachos from the turquoise cookie sheet

Cocktail Suggestions

Nothing matches sheet pan nachos better than a good cocktail to go with them! This made me realize that Mr. Magpie needs to do a classic margarita recipe! He actually makes them all the time and we did have margaritas with these nachos but we haven’t photographed them yet, on my to do list! Meanwhile here’s a list of hot summary whether cocktails that you could sit on your deck while eating these:

And there you have it! Hope you give these a whirl!

Happy cooking,

Love,

Karlynn