A recipe for delicious and unique nachos featuring shrimp seasoned with paprika and spices, honey, lime cumin sour cream and a quick recipe for “trashy guacamole”.
An incredibly quick recipe that takes only 9 ingredients plus spices and only 5-10 minutes of active prep time. With no need for ingredient prep unless you shred your own cheese and buy shelled shrimp, there’s almost no active time needed at all.
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Contents
A New Kind of Nacho Recipe
I never used to think I liked nachos that much. I never disliked them, but they were just always kind of underwhelming and I’d rather get a burrito bowl or a taco if I was out. I think a lot of that is I don’t love Americanized Mexican food that uses ground beef as a protein.
In about probably 2014 I went out to dinner with some friends at a local Canadian style Mexican restaurant called Mexicali Rosas. I was trying to cut back on meat at the time and ended up seeing a Honey Avocado Shrimp Quesadilla and was intrigued.
I’m not kidding when I say I daydreamed about this for weeks after trying it. That quesadilla became my hands down go to every time we went to Mexi’s.
After spending a lot of time drinking there and spending money on Honey Shrimp Quesadillas, I decided I was going to have to make it at home. The homemade quesadilla wasn’t nearly as good and gave up for awhile.
One day I had a lot of tortilla chips that were going to go stale and we’d eaten shrimp the night before. This is how Honey Shrimp Nachos were born.
So What’s on Honey Shrimp Nachos?
The answer to this has changed overtime. My first attempt was shrimp, honey, white onion, corn, tomato and topped with salsa, guacamole and sour cream. The honey is both put on pre and post baking.
I’ve also had this shrimp dish with Costco bruschetta instead of tomatoes, with green onions instead of white and topped with cilantro.
The current (and winning) combination is:
- Tortilla Chips
- Tex Mex Cheese
- Paprika Shrimp
- Corn
- Honey
- Guacamole
- Cumin Lime Sour Cream
- Pickled Jalapeños
- Parsley (totally optional, just looks nice)
How to Serve These Nachos?
You genuinely can serve these however you want. If you want additional customization you can serve with salsa and regular sour cream.
For baking, any oven safe dish will work but I recommend mini Cast Iron Pans. They are by no means necessary but they’re super cute and you can argue as much as you want but pretty food always tastes better.
I’ve talked about them before, but my Lodge 6 1/2 inch cast irons are perfect for these. They can be found here (Canada) (US). They’re not cheap but they’re reasonably priced and I’ve gotten way more use out of them than I initially expected.
Honey Shrimp Nachos
Ingredients
Shrimp
- 1 lb shrimp de-veined and shells removed
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- salt
- pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Cumin Lime Sour Cream
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/2 lime juiced and zested
- salt
Trashy Guacamole
- 1 avocado
- 2 tbsp sour cream
- 2 tbsp salsa
- salt
Assembly
- 4 cups tortilla chips
- 2 cups shredded tex mex cheese
- 3 tbsp honey plus more to serve
- 8 slices pickled jalapenos
- 1 cup corn
- parsley optional
Instructions
Shrimp
- Combine shrimp and seasonings in a bowl, stir until fully coated – set aside.
- Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once oil is heated, add in shrimp and cook about 2 minutes per side. Do not move the shrimp more than you have to. You want them to develop a crust and get slightly browned. Set aside.
Guacamole
- Combine all ingredients for the guacamole and mash until combined. You can obviously elevate this with better ingredients or even a store bought guacamole but this recipe is pretty flavourful anyway, you don't need a super flavour dense guacamole for this. Let the avocado shine.
Cumin Lime Sour Cream
- Combine all ingredients into a bowl and mix well. You want the sour cream to be thin enough that you can squirt it from a bottle on the nachos.
Assembly
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Layer chips, toppings (minus sauces) and then cheese in either small cast iron pans or a baking sheet. The nachos taste best if you layer the nachos 2 times instead of placing all the toppings on top of the chips. Before baking, drizzle honey all over the nachos.
- Bake for 5-8 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly. If the nachos start to brown before the cheese is melted, use the broil feature. You probably will have the nachos be done at about the same time as the cheese.
- While the nachos are still hot, top the nachos with a few squirts of the sour cream and place a dollop of guacamole in the middle. Top with jalapenos and parsley if desired. The parsley can be skipped but it adds some nice color variety. You can also use cilantro but there are already a lot of strong flavours, you don't want to over-do it.
Nutrition
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I love the images & nachos too!
Thank you Lidia! Let me know if you try them ❤️
These look so good! I’ve never tried shrimp nachos but this recipe looks great.
Thanks Rebecca! They’re definitely untraditional but my favourite way to have them. Let me know if you give them a try 🙂
These looks delicious! I don’t eat meat but do make an exception for seafood. I’m always looking for shrimp recipes as it’s something the whole family enjoys. I’ll add this one to my list 🙂
Seafood and shellfish is amazing, especially for quick meals. I hope you live them. Thanks Karen!
We are nacho obsessed in this house (well my son is) and these look like such an amazing alternative. I love shrimp but never get that creative with them so I am 100% trying this. The cumin, lime sour cream sounds amazing – in fact I’m going to make this for all nacho platters in the future. Yum! Can’t wait to try 🙂
I got the cumin lime sour cream recipe from my mom originally! I like to go heavy on the zest. Let me know how you like it, Yolanda! Thanks 🙂
That looks absolutely amazing, and I love those little cast iron pans! I need to get some of those… Ha ha. I’ll look in to making this recipe for my 8 year old… He loves shrimp. Thanks for sharing!
I’m so glad you liked the recipe, Beth! Shrimp is my favourite too. There’s a link to the pans for Amazon CA but imagine you can find them in the US store as well.
Wow this look amazing. I want to try this!
Thank you Andrea! Let me know if you do try it 🙂
Omg! These look amazing! I plan on making these next week for sure! Nachos are my favorite!! Thanks for sharing this recipe!
Thanks Kimberly, you’ll have to let me know how it turns out. They’re my favourite too!
Sounds different but worth a try. I love shrimp and nachos are a family favorite. I am a fan of guacamole.
It definitely is a different recipe but delicious. Based off a quesadilla I had at a local Mexican-American style restaurant. Thanks for the comment, Gina. I’d love to hear how it turns out!
Cumin is my ALL TIME favorite spice to use, but I’ve never thought to spice up sour cream with it! These are going in next weeks meal plan! Thanks for sharing, can’t wait to try them!
I actually can’t take all the credit – my mom served it to the family when we visited for a taco bar a few weeks ago and it was the finishing touch I needed to round out this recipe. Let me know how it goes, Rachel!