A bag of Doritos is the cheapest flavor bomb in the grocery store, and these Doritos recipes put it to work at dinner instead of leaving it in the pantry. I have so many fond memories of my mom making tacos a few times a month when I was growing up, and the smell of taco seasoning in the air meant I was in for a feast. This whole list smells like that. There are taco salads tossed at the last second so the chips stay loud, casseroles layered like lasagna, chicken baked in a crushed chip crust, mac and cheese with a crunchy lid, and a homemade nacho seasoning for popcorn if you want the flavor without the bag. Most of these easy recipes run about 20 minutes and cost less than takeout, which is the real reason they keep coming back to my table.
1. Loaded Chicken Taco Salad with Creamy Lime-Cilantro Dressing
Most taco salads are sour cream and refried beans wearing a salad costume, which is exactly the complaint that started this one. Averie brings the romaine back and loads it with taco-seasoned chicken breast, tomatoes, corn, black beans, avocado, cheddar and crushed seasoned chips. The dressing whisks together in about 30 seconds from mayo, sour cream, lime juice, fresh cilantro and a pinch of sugar, and any extra works as a veggie dip for the rest of the week. Fifteen minutes, start to plate.
Get the full tutorial at Averie Cooks.
2. Cool Ranch Dorito Cheese Curds
This one is a snack you assemble rather than cook. Fresh plain cheese curds, about half a pound, get tossed with two tablespoons of homemade cool ranch seasoning, a teaspoon of paprika and up to a quarter teaspoon of cayenne, then sit in the fridge for 30 minutes so the spice blooms into the cheese. The seasoning is built from a scratch buttermilk ranch mix with no MSG, and the batch makes far more than you need here. Cheese on cheese, and it keeps beautifully in a lidded jar.
Get the full tutorial at Foodie With Family.
3. Mexican Chef Pasta Salad
Think taco salad with a bag of short pasta folded through it. A fourteen ounce bag of pasta meets a pound and a half of taco-seasoned ground beef, chopped romaine, black beans, halved grape tomatoes, diced sweet onion, two avocados, cheddar and two cups of bite-size nacho cheese chips, all pulled together with half a bottle of Catalina dressing and a shake of hot sauce. It travels well, it feeds a crowd, and the recipe writer insists on serving it at room temperature rather than straight from the fridge.
Get the full tutorial at World of Pastabilities.
4. Nacho Cheese Doritos Casserole
Here is the weeknight version, layered in a dish and baked at 375. A pound and a half of ground beef with three tablespoons of taco seasoning goes in with cream style corn, fire roasted tomatoes and black beans, and a full 15.5 ounce bag of nacho cheese chips does the layering job that noodles do in a lasagna. A cup of shredded cheddar goes over the top. Angela notes you can swap in plain tortilla chips or a different chip flavor, and that black beans are easy to leave out for a picky eater.
Get the full tutorial at Bake It With Love.
5. Jessica's Taco Salad With Creamy Taco Dressing
The trick on this one is how it gets served. Rather than one tossed bowl, every component sits in its own dish on the counter and everybody builds their own: seasoned ground meat, lettuce, green onions, tomatoes, cheese, nacho cheese chips, pickled red onions, guacamole, lime wedges and a creamy taco dressing. Nobody has to pick out the black beans. For a photograph-worthy version the same ingredients get layered into one low, wide pan so the colors show, which is the better move for a sit-down dinner.
Get the full tutorial at A Farmgirl's Dabbles.
6. Southwest Salad With Garlic Lime Dressing And Doritos
Fifteen minutes of prep, five minutes of cooking, twenty minutes total, and it exists for a specific reason: it is how one household gets a five year old to eat a plate of vegetables and lick it clean. A pile of fresh southwest vegetables gets the garlic lime dressing and a scattering of crushed chips on top, so the unhealthy part is a topping rather than the meal. That balance is the honest appeal here, and it works on adults who are bored of salad too.
Get the full tutorial at Lauren's Latest.
7. "Dorito"-Flavored Popcorn
The flavor without the bag. This is a homemade nacho seasoning shaken over popcorn, developed across a lot of test batches by a family who could not have the real thing, and it is dairy free. The point was to skip the monosodium glutamate, the Yellow 5, the Yellow 6, the Red 40 and the disodium inosinate and guanylate that sit on the chips, and still get the flavor people actually want. Make the seasoning once and it lives in a jar for corn chips, crackers and roasted nuts too.
Get the full tutorial at Whole New Mom.
8. Crunchy Dorito Fried Chicken Tenders
This is our own take on chip-crusted chicken, and the coating is where it earns its place. Chicken gets battered and rolled through finely crushed chips so the crust fries up loud and orange instead of plain golden, and the seasoning is already in the coating, so there is no separate spice mix to measure. Serve with your favorite dipping sauce. It is the easiest way to make chicken tenders taste like something other than chicken tenders, and the recipe is ours on DIY JOY.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
9. Doritos Crusted Cheddar Cheese Sticks
Mozzarella sticks with the breadcrumbs swapped out. One to two cups of chips get pulsed in a food processor until they are the texture of sand, which is the step people rush and regret, then eight cheese sticks cut in half go through flour, whisked egg and the crumb before deep frying. Sixteen pieces from eight sticks. The maker says they stay crisp longer than breadcrumb versions, and that you can freeze them raw in a single layer and keep them in a bag for a month.
Get the full tutorial at I Knead to Eat.
10. Tex Mex Doritos Taco Salad
A twenty minute family recipe, made every summer for years before anybody bothered to write the measurements down. Ground beef taco meat, kidney beans, cheese, green onions, avocado and tomatoes go with nacho cheese chips, and the one rule matters more than the ingredients: do not mix it until the second before it hits the table, or the chips go soft and the lettuce wilts. Keep the components in separate containers in the fridge and it makes fast lunches for the next three days.
Get the full tutorial at House of Nash Eats.
11. Penne And Broccoli In Doritos Cream Sauce
The clever one on the list, and no chips are harmed making it. Richa reverse engineered the nacho flavor into a spice mix and then built a cream sauce around it, so the pasta tastes like the chips without a bag anywhere in the kitchen. Penne, broccoli and a scattering of spiced breadcrumbs on top, vegan, ready in 25 minutes, two servings. The spice blend is the real takeaway here: once it is mixed, it goes on kale chips, popcorn, crackers, nuts and roasted quinoa.
Get the full tutorial at Vegan Richa.
12. Nacho Mac And Cheese
Mac and cheese for people who would rather be eating tacos. Ground beef, onion and jalapeno get browned with taco seasoning and set aside, then a butter and flour roux in the same Dutch oven takes milk and a can of Rotel before the cheese goes in. Meat and macaroni fold back through, then cheese and crushed chips on top and 20 to 25 minutes in the oven. Cook the pasta only to al dente, because it keeps cooking in the dish, and eat it the day you make it since the chip topping softens overnight.
Get the full tutorial at Spicy Southern Kitchen.
13. Pumpkin Cheese Ball
A cheese ball shaped like a pumpkin, and the chips are what make it orange. Sixteen ounces of softened cream cheese beat together with two cups of cheddar, three tablespoons of finely diced onion, half a cup of chunky salsa and a teaspoon of cumin, then chill in plastic wrap for at least two hours before rolling in two cups of crumbled nacho cheese chips. The stem is the top of a green bell pepper. Twenty minutes of work, and it tastes like a taco dip that learned to stand up on its own.
Get the full tutorial at Fake Ginger.
14. Chicken And Doritos Casserole
Seven layers, and the chips are three of them. A sixteen ounce can of refried beans goes down first, then crushed nacho cheese chips, then four cooked and chopped chicken breasts folded through cream of chicken soup, milk, sour cream, a drained can of Rotel and half a packet of taco seasoning, with Mexican shredded cheese between the layers. Thirty to thirty five minutes at 350, uncovered for the last five so the top crisps. It is the chicken counterpart to the ground beef bakes elsewhere on this list, and because the chips go in as layers the flavor runs through the dish rather than sitting on the crust.
Get the full tutorial at Aunt Bee's Recipes.
15. Chicken Tortilla Lettuce Wraps
Ten minutes, and the lettuce does the work of a tortilla. Diced chicken breast cooked with taco seasoning goes into butter lettuce leaves with corn, red bell pepper, tomatoes, shredded cheese, fresh cilantro and crushed seasoned chips for the crunch. Averie recommends butter lettuce specifically, because romaine gives you boats rather than wraps. Set the bowls out and let people build their own, which is why these show up as a party appetizer as often as they show up as dinner.
Get the full tutorial at Averie Cooks.
16. Taco Pizza With Homemade Pizza Dough
Pizza night and taco night, settled. A sixteen ounce dough ball gets refried beans, taco sauce and pizza sauce as the base, then mozzarella and colby jack, seasoned beef, and shredded lettuce and crushed taco-flavored chips added after it comes out of the oven so nothing wilts. An hour start to finish with homemade dough, much less with store bought. The couple behind it grew up on Iowa taco pizza and have been making their own version for ten years, which shows in how the toppings are ordered.
Get the full tutorial at Show Me The Yummy.
17. Aunt Sue's Taco Salad
A family cookout recipe that has never once come home with leftovers. Torn iceberg, or iceberg mixed with romaine, goes in with lean ground beef browned with diced onion, diced tomatoes, dark red kidney beans and cheddar you grate yourself, then crushed nacho cheese chips and bottled Italian dressing go in right before serving. Twenty minutes. If leftovers are likely, keep the chips out of the bowl entirely, because they turn to paste in the fridge and the rest of the salad keeps fine.
Get the full tutorial at An Affair From The Heart.
18. Doritos Taco Corn Salsa Salad
A church potluck dish, served cold, and it works as a dip as easily as a side. Two cans of drained sweet corn go with two cups of grated cheddar, half a cup each of mayonnaise and ranch dressing, a diced red bell pepper and half a diced red onion. A ten and a half ounce bag of taco flavored chips gets divided: three quarters crushed and mixed in, the rest left whole as a garnish around the edge with minced chives. Assemble it ahead, chill it, add the chips last.
Get the full tutorial at eRecipeCards.
19. Taco Salad Pizza With Doritos
The second pizza on this list, and it goes the other direction: a hot crust under a cold salad. A pound of pizza dough takes southwest salsa, mozzarella, black beans, half a pound of turkey taco meat and cheddar, bakes at 475, then comes out and gets shredded iceberg, diced roma tomatoes, cilantro, a cup of crushed chips and a cilantro avocado dressing. Twenty minutes. The contrast between the piping hot base and the cold toppings is the entire point of eating it.
Get the full tutorial at Lauren's Latest.
20. Mexican Salad With Catalina Dressing
A grandmother’s recipe that first landed on the family table in the early 1970s, and it has the ingredient list to prove it: iceberg lettuce, purple onion, tomatoes, Ranch Style Beans, cheddar, corn chips and a bottle of Classic Catalina dressing, with no taco meat because her mother never added any. The useful tip here is about temperature. Chill the salad and the bottle of dressing together, then add the cheese, chips and dressing right before it goes to the table.
Get the full tutorial at Cooking With K.
21. Three Doritos Chili Bacon Nachos
Three chip flavors in one pan, which sounds like a gimmick and turns out to be the point. Nacho cheese, cool ranch and spicy sweet chili get layered with a can of warmed chili, half a pound of cooked and roughly chopped bacon and two to three cups of shredded cheese, built in two layers so the middle is not bare, then baked at 350 for about ten minutes until the cheese goes melty. Sour cream, peppers, onion and cilantro go on after. Nothing subtle happening here.
Get the full tutorial at Bacon Today.
22. Dorito Haystack Bar
A serve-yourself bar rather than a dish, and a childhood favorite for the woman who posted it. Guests stack in order: crumbled saltines, cooked rice, a pound of browned ground beef, a jar of cheese sauce, shredded lettuce, diced tomato, nacho cheese chips and shredded cheddar. Crock pots hold the rice, beef and cheese sauce warm so the line keeps moving. Her warning is worth repeating: start with a small plate, because the pile grows faster than anybody expects. Serves four to six and doubles easily.
Get the full tutorial at Recipes That Crock.
23. Mexican Dorito Casserole
The pantry version, and the one to make with a rotisserie chicken. Two cups of cooked chicken mix with a cup of cheddar, a can of cream of chicken soup, half a cup each of milk and sour cream, a drained can of Rotel and half a packet of taco seasoning, then layer with an eleven ounce bag of nacho cheese chips in an eight inch square pan and bake at 350. Forty minutes total, six servings. If soft chips bother you, hold them back and add them at the end instead.
Get the full tutorial at Jam Hands.
24. 3-Ingredient Chicken Dorito Bake
Three ingredients, and two of them are already in the house. Cubed boneless skinless chicken breast gets tossed in mayonnaise, which is only there to make the crumbs stick, then dredged in pulverized chips and baked at 375 for about fifteen minutes. No deep fryer. Two substitutions worth knowing: sour cream works in place of the mayonnaise, and yogurt does not, because it turns the coating soggy. Cut the chicken larger and the same method gives you tenders instead of bites.
Get the full tutorial at TipBuzz.
