I’ve got a reputation as a good cook, but what that comes down to is that I follow directions well and am weirdly good at picking new recipes. Somehow I can read a recipe and make a pretty good guess how it will taste. Is that normal? Everybody has a hidden talent, I guess. So today I’m cutting through the Pinterest muck and bringing you two carefully curated recipes so you can spend those seven hours binge-reading or watching.
It snowed a month earlier than usual in my town, because 2017. I am not happy about this. Cold is dumb. Chicken Pot Pie would make me feel better the cold, but on a day when I need comfort food I don’t want to mess with crust. Enter Molly Yeh’s easy but glorious Tater Tot Hotdish.
She brilliantly covers a 15 minute pot-pie filling with tater tots instead of asking us to wrangle flour and butter into crust. It’s the perfect dinner to soothe your presidential-tweet-addled nerves on a fall night.
The creamy chicken filling is surprisingly healthy, and even more so if you make it with the nonfat milk that’s in your fridge instead of the whole she calls for (though a dash of cream would improve that variation). I love how adaptable this recipe is— it calls for chicken thighs, carrots and peas, but if what’s in your fridge right now is white meat and broccoli (or Costco frozen veggie mix) they’ll totally work. I sometimes use dried thyme instead of fresh. If you like gross things you might even add mushrooms. In fact, you could probably use chunks of mushroom and squash instead of chicken for a vegetarian version if that’s how you roll. It can easily go gluten free. I make the filling in my Dutch oven so I can just throw the tots on top and toss it in the oven without dirtying an extra dish. This is dinner you can make work tonight, probably without a trip to the store. (Tim Gunn approves.)
If following recipes is daunting, you can watch Yeh make it at Epicurious or the Today Show. And if you love it check out her cookbook, Molly on the Range. It’s a great mix of foods— what else would you expect from a half-Jewish, half-Chinese lady from Chicago who went to Juliard and lives on the North Dakota/ Minnesota line?
Is making sauce more effort than you have in you tonight? Then you need my mom’s tater tot casserole. It’s called Dave’s Good Stuff because… her friend Dave fed it to her on what may or may not have been a date in the ‘70s. I’ve never gotten a straight answer, so I’m guessing it was.
My husband would be horrified if I fed it to company, but he finishes the pan off for breakfast the next morning. It’s mid-century Middle America’s easiest winter dinner and what I make when life gets really hard.
Just layer ground beef, onions and tots and slather on a blend of canned soups before baking. I like to pretend it’s a balanced meal, so I add frozen peas and carrots between the onions and tots. Then I read a book until it comes out of the oven and makes me unreasonably happy.
Is tater tot casserole normal or a delicious abomination? Do you somehow have a superior version I should try? What genius comfort food recipes do you have up your sleeve?
Written by Bea
Bea loves life in the Pacific Northwest, rereading old novels and weird varieties of pickles. She can dive deep on Harry Potter, Twilight, 90’s CCM, celeb fashion or foreign policy. She’s trying to figure out what to do when the little one goes to kindergarten, what to make for dinner and how to be a feminist who can’t pass up a princess book.
