My first (taco tater tot) hotdish

With a certain tweet (yes, it's a tweet) making the rounds last week I decided it was time to earn my Minnesotan cred for real. If you missed it here's what I'm talking about.

I'd never in my life made a hotdish (what we Minnesotans call casserole) and I suddenly felt the need to do so. And one like this lady's sounded really good. So taco tater tot hotdish it would be.

Using the tweet above and a different recipe for inspiration I made it my own a little bit, though taco ground beef, black beans and cheesy tater tots was still the core idea. Instead of jarred garlic I used a fresher bulb. Instead of onion powder I chopped up an onion. Instead of jarred salsa I used a can of enchilada sauce (it's actually cheaper than salsa too). I also used mini tots instead of full sized.

Actual ingredient list:

1+1/3 lb ground beef

1/2 onion, chopped

1 bulb garlic (4 huge cloves), diced/pressed

1/4 cup taco seasoning (~1 packet)

1/2 cup water

1 can (10 oz) enchilada sauce

1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed

2-3 cups shredded Mexican cheese

1 bag (10 oz) frozen corn

1 bag (28 oz) mini tots

Quick version:

1. Preheat oven to 375

2. In large skillet brown beef then add onion and garlic, cook until onion translucent

3. Add taco seasoning and water, stir/let cook a bit longer

4. Add enchilada sauce, black beans, corn and 1 cup of cheese, stir/cook until warm

5. Dump mixture into 9x13 baking dish

6. Arrange tater tots in appealing pattern, one layer as tight as possible over top

7. Bake for ~20 minutes, until tots getting golden brown

8. Pull out and cover with remaining cheese

9. Bake another ~5 minutes until cheese melted

10. Eat

Filling ready

Could've used more cheese on top but it wasn't a problem

A few differences from the video. I did drain my beef after cooking, it wasn't so lean. As stated above I transferred from our larger cast iron to a 9x13 to put it in the oven. I wasn't convinced everything would fit in our larger cast iron but was wrong on this, next time I'll just do everything in there. Because I had more smaller tater tots I couldn't fit them all. If you want to use them all get full sized ones, though I did end up liking the filling to tot ratio of this (more beef, less tots). For exact times (our oven seems to run hot) I did 18 minutes before the cheese on top and 4 minutes after.

This was really good and I'll have to make it again. Unfortunately our picky boys still didn't eat too much but I guess that's to be expected. Either way I'm finally a real Minnesotan.