High Protein Chicken Tinga Nachos

This post may contain affiliate links. We only promote products we actually use and truly love!

Bold, flavorful chicken tinga nachos come together quickly for an easy meal or game day appetizer in just 15 minutes, thanks to leftover crockpot chicken tinga! Make these next time you’re craving savory, spicy loaded nachos. Oh, and this recipe has 132 grams of protein total (33 grams per serving)!

Whenever we’re running low on groceries and not sure what to make, nachos pop into my head. We always have tortilla chips and cheese, and there’s often a random assortment of toppings and sauces in our fridge thanks to all the recipes we create.

We recently made a batch of our slow cooker chicken tinga and didn’t have quite enough chicken left over to make our chicken tinga tacos again, so what did we do? Turned it into these totally loaded chicken tinga nachos, which ended up being so delicious we had to share the recipe.

Key Ingredients

• Shredded chicken tinga – We use leftovers from our crockpot chicken tinga recipe to make these nachos. It’s the perfect blend of savory and spicy with a tender texture that just falls apart, making it ideal for chicken tinga nachos. Make sure it’s cold when it goes onto the nachos, otherwise you risk the sauce becoming too liquidy and ending up with soggy nachos.
• Queso fresco – Crumbled queso fresco adds a beautiful freshness to these nachos to balance the savory cheese and spicy chicken. We’ve tried a few different brands and Cacique Ranchero queso fresco is by far our favorite for flavor and texture.
• Lime crema – We love making homemade crema with plain Greek yogurt, fresh lime juice, and sea salt. Sometimes we add a few dashes of our favorite hot sauce if we want it to be spicy, which goes really great with chicken tinga!

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

Serving Suggestions

• Game day favorite – Nachos this good make you a winner on game day no matter how your team does. We like to pair these nachos with some Mexican bean dip and southwest egg rolls for a well rounded game day feast. 
• Easy, protein rich dinner – Nachos are a super underrated dinner, especially when paired with a spicy mezcal margarita for a fun Friday night date night at home. 
• Gatherings and cookouts – We love putting together fun spreads of appetizers for family gatherings, especially cookouts during the summer, and these chicken tinga nachos are the perfect addition. Some of our other favorites include baked bruschetta dip and bacon jalapeno popper dip.