Stop Ordering Taco Bell Nachos Without Using This Game-Changing Trick

A big platter of crisp, salty tortilla chips topped with cheese, beans, meat, salsa, and whatever else your heart desires is comfort food at its finest. But Taco Bell's nacho offerings have not historically been all that great. The Nachos BellGrande came in at the bottom of our ranking of chain restaurant nachos, with the chain's Loaded Beef Nachos only scoring one rank higher. To be fair, however, they were the only fast food offerings on the list, and the sampled nachos were taken straight from the drive-thru with no alterations. This may have been the critical error that sealed the fate of these two Taco Bell nacho plates, as to really make these dishes shine, you need to get a little creative with them.

When we talk about creative alterations, we aren't just talking about dousing these nachos with extra packets of Taco Bell's Fire Sauce; we're talking about getting into the online ordering system and really making yourself something unique. Even if you are a fan of the nachos exactly as they appear on the menu, hacking your Taco Bell order can really let you customize it to your tastes, as well as basically invent new menu items to rival the innovative and often downright wild offerings the fast food chain is constantly churning out. You can even save customized orders in the Taco Bell app, making it easy to return to your favorites whenever the craving strikes and earning points when others order the customizations you come up with.

Both of the nacho offerings currently on the chain's ever-changing menu are centered around the signature pale, crisp tortilla chips topped with nacho cheese sauce, sour cream, beans, and ground beef. The Nachos BellGrande go for around $7 and are a larger plate, also topped with diced tomatoes. For about $3, Taco Bell also offers the Loaded Beef Nachos, a smaller serving that doesn't feature the diced tomatoes, but does come with the brand's enchilada-style red sauce as well as a dollop of guacamole.

While it might come with a small up-charge, one simple place to start tinkering is with the protein. Chicken and steak both cost about a dollar to add to your nachos, but are big upgrades from Taco Bell's seasoned beef. For just another $0.30, you can also add black beans. But it is the rest of the toppings where you can really get creative, with offerings available like pickled jalapeños, lettuce, shredded cheese, fried potatoes, pico de gallo, and a wide array of sauces.

Instead of the traditional Loaded Beef Nachos, it doesn't take much to convert them into a plate of spicy chipotle chicken and potato nachos, swapping the ground beef for chicken, adding fried potatoes and jalapeños, and topping it all with a drizzle of creamy chipotle sauce. Or you can turn things a bit healthier and vegetarian, replacing the ground beef with black beans at no additional cost and adding pico de gallo, lettuce, purple cabbage, and maybe some avocado ranch. Those are just a couple of suggestions; we'll leave the creativity to you, but clearly, there is a lot of new ground to cover with these highly customizable menu offerings.