How to Make your own Tater Tots!

When I see Tater tots, the first thing that comes to mind is Gilmore Girls. Lorelei and Rory would have these ridiculous junk food gorge sessions which would always feature Tater Tots and Pop Tarts. Watching these episodes would always give me a craving for super processed frozen food and junk but always with the knowledge in the back of my mind that I would probably take two bites and then realize how bad the stuff tastes. Regardless, ever since I saw this Tater Tot recipe from Pennies on a Platter (via the Kitchn) I've been wanting to try them. And then I had some leftover potato from some potato skins I made for the Oscar party I went to on lst weekend so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try them out!


Now, I saw that the original poster tried a few variations using bread crumbs and corn flake crumbs before finding success with crushed potato chips. BUT I still wanted to try my own topping experiment so I made two different kinds. I made half following the original recipe which is very straightforward so I am not going to re-post the recipe. Also since I was using already mashed potatoes I just kind of eyeballed the measurements to the amount of potatoes I had (guessing it was about half the recipe). The other half I coated with a mixture of the remaining potato chips, panko crumbs, corn flake crumbs and freshly grated parmesan. They did look fancier and quite pretty, but in the end I do have the say the pure potato-coating definitely had more of that potato flavour which made it truly a tater tot. The "fancy" tots were nice and crunchy, but ended up tasting a bit stale (which is, incidentally, exactly what the original poster claimed).

So I can confirm for a fact that the recipe over at Pennies is pretty damn good and probably doesn't need any adjustments. I might try using a baked chip in the future (I used Original Lays) but other than that I see no reason to mess with a good thing. Next up...homemade Pop tarts?