Healthy Frito Pie with 3-Ingredient Chili

It’s been a while since I’ve addressed my title selections. So, let’s take a quick look at why I’ve classified this recipe as a healthy Frito pie.

When you think “healthy” you may think of plate full of colorful fruits, vegetables, and kale—lots and lots of kale. This line of thinking isn’t wrong. Fruits, vegetables, and even kale are packed full of valuable micronutrients that are amazingly healthy. But the same things could be said for the micronutrients in meats, cheese, beans, and even corn tortillas like we’ll be using in the recipe.

My point is this: Micronutrients are in everything we eat, and nutrient deficiencies in America are increasingly rare. I’m not saying nutrient dense foods aren’t important, I’m just saying that paying attention to quantity in addition to quality is the key.

When I call a recipe healthy, it’s because its calorie composition is significantly lower than alternative options. This often means quality gets a bump as well, but the primary goal is to make eating more food for fewer calories possible.

So you may not classify a Frito chili pie as healthy on its own. But when you can eat a huge plate of food that tastes amazing and get 41 grams of protein with only 9 grams of fat, a recipe has earned its healthy stripes in my mind.

Healthy Frito Pie Ingredients

Now that we’ve got the long intro out of the way, let’s get to the ingredient deets.

Low Calorie Corn Chips

The base of your healthy Frito pie won’t actually be Fritos (sorry Frito Lay). We’ll be using thin corn tortillas and cutting them into strips.

The entire rack of corn chips you see in the photo above will only cost ya 360 calories. For comparison, 360 calories equates to only two servings of real Fritos.

These are the same tortillas I use for just about any recipe that calls for chips. Like my best healthy nachos on the internet recipe, for example.

You could also use something like my low carb cauliflower tots as a great base!

3-Ingredient Chili

Okay, we’re technically cheating here. One of the three ingredients for the chili is actually canned chili. Doing this saves a ton of time and seasoning work, but you’re more than welcome to use your grandma’s world famous homemade chili recipe here.

For the canned chili, I used Hormel vegetarian with beans. They also make a turkey chili that’s ridiculously high protein and low fat. Since we’re adding an entire of beef, however, I decided to use a meatless chili.

If you wanted to make your own chili, check out my easy high protein chili or pressure cooker turkey chili recipes. It’s picky eater approved and requires very minimal prep.

Cheese

If we’re being honest, it’s hard to go wrong with cheese. For this recipe, I used a reduced fat Mexican blend of cheese with 80 calories per 1/4 C (28g). If you can’t find the same cheese, do not fret. Any reduced fat or 2% cheddar would work fine, and you could even use sliced cheese instead of shredded.

That’s all I have in terms of ingredient notes. Just know you can always make modifications and make this recipe your own. Enjoy!