Name: Tater Tot Casserole Recipe That's Fast
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Ingredients: 2 Cups Kraft Sharp Cheddar Cheese; Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Tater Tots, frozen 1 LB 12 ounces; 1/2 tablespoon butter; 1 pound 90% lean/10% fat ground beef; 10.5 oz can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup; Pepper (to taste); Salt (to taste)

Tater tot casserole is pretty popular in the heartland states, especially Minnesota and Wisconsin. It’s filling and works for feeding a big group of people. I’m keeping things pretty basic with this one, but feel free to throw other ingredients in like chopped onions or rosemary.

The calorie info below is an estimate based on everything that’s in the ingredients. It’s probably not perfect but should be close.

Servings	12
Serving size	140 grams
Calories per serving	258

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What You’ll Need to Make This Tater Tot Casserole

What It Is	Name	Where to Buy
Cookware	Cast iron skillet	Amazon
Cookware	Spatula	Amazon
Cookware	7×11 baking dish	Amazon
Cookware	Measuring cup (1 cup)	Amazon
Cookware	Oven mitt	Amazon
Cookware	Butter knife	Amazon
Cookware	Can opener (maybe)	Amazon
Ingredient	2 Cups Kraft Sharp Cheddar Cheese	Store
Ingredient	Ore-Ida Extra Crispy Tater Tots, frozen 1 LB 12 ounces	Store
Ingredient	1/2 tablespoon butter	Store
Ingredient	1 pound 90% lean/10% fat ground beef	Store
Ingredient	10.5 oz can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup	Store
Ingredient	Pepper (to taste)	Store
Ingredient	Salt (to taste)	Store

Let’s make this tater tot casserole. To start off, grab your skillet.

Put that on medium heat.

Grab the spatula. I really like using a metal one because plastic tends to melt over time.

Grab 1/2 tablespoon of butter for making this part of the tater tot casserole. You might not need it because of the ground beef fat, but I felt like it would add to the flavor.

Following that, throw your butter in the skillet and move it around a little bit.

butter in skillet for tater tot casserole

Then, grab your ground beef. You can get away with using 85 or 80% lean instead, although the fat content in the meal overall will get pretty high if you do.

Throw that into the skillet.

ground beef in skillet for tater tot casserole recipe

Break it up with the spatula. Ideally, the meat will be in pretty small pieces once you’re putting it in the baking dish for the tater tot casserole.

Keep working it around in the pan and continue to do that so it gets evenly browned. You don’t need to cook the meat all the way through, but at least browning it is important. It will have plenty of time to get completely cooked in the oven. Then, grab some pepper.

Add a little bit of pepper to the tater tot casserole meat, just enough to taste.

Stir that around a bit and then grab the salt.

Throw in a pinch of salt and move the meat around some more.

salting meat for tater tot casserole recipe

Move the ground beef around in the skillet. I probably cooked mine another 1-2 minutes after the picture below was taken for the tater tot casserole.

Once the burner for your meat is off, grab some Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup.

You might need a can opener if yours doesn’t have a tab on top, but, mine did so I could just open it by hand. Once it’s open, dump all of that into the ground beef. This is what gives the tater tot casserole its creamy flavor.

I know that not everybody’s a fan of condensed, but I personally like it.

dumping cream of mushroom soup into ground beef

Make sure you get everything out of the can. I used a butter knife to really scrape it out of there.

Take the spatula and make sure to move things around pretty well in there.

stirring cream of mushroom soup and meat

Make sure it really spreads out for this tater tot casserole.

Then, preheat your oven to 400 F

It’ll take about the time to preheat as it will for you to get the tater tot casserole ready to go in the oven.

Grab a glass baking dish so you can pour the skillet mixture into it.

glass baking dish for tater tot casserole recipe

Grab the skillet

dumping meat and soup mixture into glass baking dish for tater tot casserole

Spread that out really well, it’s the base for this tater tot casserole.

I used my spatula to press it down around the dish so it got evenly spread out.

pressing tater tot casserole mixture down

Once that’s taken care of, grab the sharp cheddar.

Get your measuring cup, too.

measuring cheese for tater tot casserole

Measure out two cups of sharp cheddar cheese – here’s number one:

Dump that in for the tater tot casserole. The cheese really helps to hold the tots down.

Get the second one measured out, too.

Dump it in. One interesting thing that I noticed was that my specific bag of cheese was actually 2 cups exactly (weight wise) but both the cups I measured looked pretty full. You may want to consider using a kitchen scale.

Make sure it gets spread around evenly.

dumping cheese into baking dish for tater tot casserole

Now that all your cheese is in, grab the most important thing for making tater tot casserole.

I went with extra crispy and it turned out really good that way.

lining tater tots on glass baking dish for tater tot casserole

You may or may not have enough tots to completely cover the cheese. Sorry about the blurry picture right here, not sure what happened.

Put those in the oven once it’s preheated to 400 F.

Bake the tater tot casserole for 30 minutes at 450 F

Once it’s done, grab an oven mitt.

Carefully take it out of the oven.

tater tot casserole coming out of the oven

There you have it! A finished tater tot casserole. Give it a little while to cool down and definitely don’t reach in and start trying to eat any.

Notecard Version