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I’m a busy working Mum and as such I like to have some very simple recipes in my meal rotation. Recipes that I can prepare in 15 minutes or less. These air fryer chicken nachos take FIVE minutes to cook, and are absolutely delicious!
Saving money on food shopping and cutting food waste are two things that I love to do to help our household budget. Besides mortgage/rent, food shopping is usually the next biggest expense for households and I’m doing what I can to make things a little leaner budget wise at the moment.
Using my air fryer is a great way to have a simple meal, in next to no time, and it is great that this sits on my counter as on my higher pain days I don’t have to worry about lifting heavy things.
Short meal times are definitely the key to success when it comes to busy evenings. Sometimes we go out after the school run, to run errands, and knowing that I’ve got a dinner I can serve in under 10 minutes is perfect for these evenings. My girls get hungry very fast and I like knowing that I have something on hand that they’ll love and that won’t take much effort either.
I love to make a variety of air fryer nacho dishes, including bbq chicken nachos and healthy air fryer nachos where I don’t use cheese and cut back on the heavier sauces. We also sometimes serve this with a large portion of air fryer mac and cheese for a great fun meal. I love to make air fryer chicken recipes as they’re a great way to have fast dinners or even sandwich fillers.

Ingredients for air fryer chicken nachos:
65g tortilla chips
100g chopped cooked chicken (I used air fryer cajun chicken)
20g sour cream
20g guacamole
20g salsa
20g cheese sauce
30g grated cheese
Something to note about air fryer recipes is that all air fryers have different sizes, depths and as such the cooking times can vary. All air fryer recipes on this website are intended as a guide, and not a guarantee that the timings will be perfect. Enjoy!
Method for air fryer chicken nachos:
Layer the air fryer basket with baking paper. You want to skip aluminium foil as this will stick to the nachos and sometimes can be unsuitable for air frying also!
Spread out the tortilla chips.
Share the sour cream, guacamole, salsa, cheese sauce and chopped chicken across the tortilla chips.
Add the grated cheese over the top covering as much of the dish as possible.
Air fryer at 200C (390F) for 5 minutes.
Serve and enjoy!
Delicious serving suggestions:
While the above recipe is delicious there are a number of ways that you can adapt this without changing the cooking time or temperature.
You could use doritos instead of plain tortilla chips. They have a variety of different flavours available and any of them would work great for this nachos recipe.
If you want to have some different chicken then we love to use leftover air fryer peri peri chicken, leftover air fryer chicken fajitas or doritos chicken, which is chicken breast coated in doritos. Yum!
If you’re not a fan of grilled chicken then you could use ground beef instead. Using taco seasoning, or leftover taco meat, is a great way to add some extra flavour. You could use a Vegetarian or Vegan alternative instead, such as Quorn or Beyond Meat mince.
Other ways to liven this up include topping with green onions or adding cooked black beans to the mix before you spread the cheese on the top.
Want to make for easier clean up?
Using baking paper is a great way to make this simple to serve and simple to clean up from.
Usually I won’t use baking paper in the air fryer, as you really need the holes for ventilation, for the best cooking, but these cook great in the air fryer with the baking paper and it is really easy to just lift this out by holding the edges or using a spatula.
Can you re-heat chicken nachos in the air fryer?
If you’re using cooked chicken then you won’t be able to re-heat these again after making them, however, if you’ve made chicken nachos from fresh, and want to re-heat them in the air fryer, then just ensure that it is piping hot before serving.
You can only reheat cooked food one time, for food safety reasons, as you don’t want to run the risk of food poisoning.
While you’re here be sure to check out some of my other air fryer recipes!
- Air fryer parmentier potatoes
- Air fryer frozen roast potatoes
- Air fryer chicken tenders
- Chicken mini fillets in the air fryer
- Air fryer chocolate protein oats
- Air fryer smores
- Air fryer burgers
- Air fryer cheese crumpets
- Air fryer jerk chicken
- Air fryer Nando’s chicken
How to make air fried nacho chips:

Air fryer chicken nachos
Delicious air fryer chicken nachos topped with sour cream, salsa, guacamole, cheese sauce, chicken and grated cheddar.
Ingredients
- 65 g tortilla chips
- 100 g chopped cooked chicken I used air fryer cajun chicken
- 20 g sour cream
- 20 g guacamole
- 20 g salsa
- 20 g cheese sauce
- 30 g grated cheese
Instructions
-
Layer the air fryer basket with baking paper. You want to skip aluminium foil as this will stick to the nachos and sometimes can be unsuitable for air frying also!
-
Spread out the tortilla chips.
-
Share the sour cream, guacamole, salsa, cheese sauce and chopped chicken across the tortilla chips.
-
Add the grated cheese over the top covering as much of the dish as possible.
-
Air fryer at 200C (390F) for 5 minutes.
-
Serve and enjoy!
Note: All calorie information is for demonstration purposes only and is based on the specific uncooked ingredients that I used when creating the recipe.
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