Smoked Turkey Nachos

The original intention for my dinner tonight was to make a variation of BBQ Chicken Pizza.  We have a good amount of smoked turkey leftover from Sunday night's dinner and I thought it could be a fun cheap way to use it.  Plus, Shawn loves BBQ Chicken Pizza, so me attempting it was guaranteed to please him.  I found a recipe on FoodNetwork.com that looked good and featured most of my ingredients so I went with it.  I started by finely dicing up about a cup of smoked turkey and thinly sliced 1/2 cup each of red bell pepper and onion.  I preheated the oven to 475 degrees and placed the baking sheet in to heat up.  This helps give the pizza a nice crisp crust (or is supposed to, anyway).  The method called for me to use parchment paper as the base of the pizza to allow me to easily transfer it to the pan when its ready to go in the oven. 

Here's where it got tricky... I had taken a ball of dough out of the freezer last night to thaw and let it sit out at room temperature for about an hour before dinner.  I don't know if it was the humidity, the quality of dough, or plain old user error, but I could NOT get this dough to work with me.  I got hole after hole in my mishapen dough then rolled it up to try again, which of course made it even tougher.  Finally, in a moment of weakness that was fully witnessed by my husband, I tossed the dough ball into the trash.  Shawn always knows the right thing to say in moments like this: "Sometimes you have to know when to call an audible".   

After looking through the ingredients that were left on my countertop, I pulled out some tortilla chips, and decided on nachos.  Starting with a thin layer of chips on the baking sheet, I topped them with a light layer of mozzarella cheese, then drizzled Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce lightly over the pile.  I sprinkled it with the turkey, onion, and peppers, another drizzle of BBQ sauce, and topped the whole thing with sharp cheddar cheese.  After turning the oven down to 450, I cooked the nachos for about 8 minutes and they were perfect. 

We served them on paper plates with sour cream; just as all nachos should be served.  Sweet Baby Rays is our favorite store bought sauce and it was perfect in this dish.  Sweet and tangy- yum!  The cheese was cooked just right and the toppings were cut small enough to stay on their respective chips.  It was a tasty, unhealthy, meal. 

I'm so glad that I opted to change up my plans.  I was so frustrated with the dough and can't imagine that I would have enjoyed the meal as much after all that annoyance.  It's like Shawn said... sometimes in cooking, just as in sports and in life, you just need to call an audible.