Cheesy Tater Tots Recipe

Oh no, I didn’t! LOL, yes I did   Snack time on a Friday night!  In addition to french fries and mozzarella, tater tots are another one of my guilty pleasures. But do you know how hard it is to find a decent plate of tots? Cheesy tater tots are the food single-handedly responsible for the Freshman 15 I put on in college because the dining hall sold them all the time. Now that I know how to make them on my own, I’m in serious trouble.

Ingredients

* 2 medium russet potatoes, peeled , chopped
* 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
* 2 green onions, chopped
* 1 teaspoon seasoning salt
* 1 egg, beaten
* 1/3 cup flour
* oil for frying

Directions

1. Preheat 1 inch of oil in a pot.

2. Place chopped potatoes in a food processor and pulse about 8-10 times or until potatoes are roughly chopped but not mush. Do not over process, you don’t want mashed potatoes.

3. Transfer processed potatoes to a bowl. Add in cheddar cheese, green onions, seasoning salt, egg and flour. The mixture will be thick. Place some of the mixture on a spoon, if you can gently push it off with you finger and it falls in one piece it is ready to go. Add more flour if needed.

4. Once oil reaches 375 degrees. Carefully spoon rounded teaspoonfuls of mixture into oil. Fry until golden brown, about 3 minutes.

5. Sprinkle with more seasoning salt. Serve hot with creamy ranch dip.

Serves 2-4

Notes:

* I had had a couple of disasters making homemade tater tots before. I had originally tried using parboiled potatoes thinking that if I started with raw potatoes I would have raw potatoes inside the tater tot. Well, the result of that first round was a glop of fried potato in the bottom of the frying pan. Not so good. This time around, I decided to start with raw potatoes and it seemed to work perfectly. The potatoes were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

* Another thing I learned while making these is to not make them a head. The first time that I made them, I prepared the mixture about an hour before dinner, put them in the refrigerator and thought nothing of it. When I went to begin frying, the potatoes had released a lot of water and my mixture was total mush. To avoid this prepare the mixture just before you are about to fry them.