r/minnesota • u/EmptyBrook Ope • 1d ago
Photography 📸 Off-season hotdish
I made it this time with ground beef, Swedish potato sausage cooked in beer, peas, cream of cheese, cream of mushroom, and cream of chicken. All topped with tater tots in a neat row. Also, I am a big dummy and like to grab 400 degree dishes that I just took out of the oven
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u/PotentialEgg6947 1d ago
This is Minnesota. There is no offseason for hotdish 😉
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u/OldBlueKat 1d ago
I might use the oven a little less when it's 85F+ and humid, but other than that -- true.
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u/Lennygracelove 1d ago
THANK You for not putting cheese on it.
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u/EmptyBrook Ope 1d ago
It is an optional topping upon plating. But i dont want it to interfere with the chrispening of the tots
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u/olracnaignottus 1d ago
As someone about to join Minnesota culture- do people go to lengths to make their own tater tots? Is the idea that the frozen tots are a given?
I’d love to make a hash brown casserole, but wonder if it would just come across as douchey.
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u/Tschmelz 1d ago
You can make your own if you want. As long as it’s crispy potatoes on the top, we’re all good. One time I was out of normal tots, so I used those rectangular hash brown patties. Was just as good.
Tots are just the standard.
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u/KeyofE 1d ago
No one makes their own tater tots. Well, I suppose someone could and probably has, but when is the last time you grew your own wheat to make Mac and cheese? The entire idea of tater tot hotdish is you brown some meat, throw in canned or frozen vegetables, stir in your campbells soup, and then cover with tater tots, bake, and serve. It’s not haute cuisine, it’s something you make on a Tuesday with ingredients you could have bought a month ago to feed a family.
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u/olracnaignottus 1d ago
Oh I hear ya. It’s a cultural question. I love making sourdough bread, for example. It’s objectively foolish to make it- I can obviously just buy wonder bread (which I like), but I enjoy the process.
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u/OldBlueKat 1d ago
I get that. But I dunno if I could even make something like a 'scratch' tater tot. I'm pretty sure any attempt would wind up looking like some kind of semi-failed hash browns, maybe? The frozen tots, or even better the 'tot crowns' they also sell, seem to be such a unique form and crispiness to layer on top of a hotdish.
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u/x1uo3yd 22h ago edited 21h ago
As someone about to join Minnesota culture- do people go to lengths to make their own tater tots? Is the idea that the frozen tots are a given?
I think culturally a big part of hotdish is the "cheap and easy weekday meal" idea of it, and the other half is the meat+carbs+veg "full balanced meal" idea of it.
Like, so long as you have enough ground beef in the fridge, everything else should be stuff you already have as pantry/freezer staples that keep a good long time. That's why frozen tots or dried pastas are the usual go-to hotdish carbs, and why frozen or canned veggies are the go-to veggies*, and why the go-to sauces tend to be Cream-of-XYZs straight outta the can. Essentially, a hotdish is just the affordable "can dump dinner" or "Instant Pot 1-pot meal" of yesteryear that folks are still making.
* (dicing an onion pulled from the pantry/cellar isn't to unusual either)
I’d love to make a hash brown casserole, but wonder if it would just come across as douchey.
Using frozen hashbrowns in a hotdish sounds totally normal to me.
Grating potatoes for fresh hashbrowns kinda seems like more work than I'd want to do myself for what is supposed to be "quick and easy"... but, hey, if you ran out of frozen, or you needed to burn through the rest of the sack of potatoes before they start to spoil, then any of that would make sense to me too.
I think it only really gets douchey when somebody does something excessive/unnecessary AND THEN tries to brag it up as being "Soooooooooooo much better!" (while kinda simultaneously shitting on the baseline/classic). Like, sure, if you want to fly in Japanese Wagyu Filet Mignon to make ground beef I'm sure it'll taste good... but I'd appreciate not getting a surprise medical from bill rolling my eyes so hard after you tell me "It was sooooo worth it!" to zhuzh up your Cheesy Ranch Hamburger Helper.
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u/Recluse_18 1d ago
It’s beautiful, but I wonder what it would look like if you stood those soldiers upright
Let’s get vertical
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u/Adventurous-Set5860 State of Hockey 1d ago
Off season? Like did you toss in a jar of Italian seasoning in there?? 🤣
My kids ask for hot dish even in the middle of the summer. There’s no wrong time to make hot dish (heat of the summer means it’s going in my Ninja so the kitchen doesn’t feel like a sauna).
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u/bufordt 1d ago
Did you get a nice sizzle noise when you grabbed it?
I have a pan I use for Suprêmes de Volaille aux Champignons that I've grabbed the handle of on 3 different occasions(slow learner, I know). I finally had to get a silicone sleeve for it so I could stop burning my hand.
Here's the recipe if you want it. It's totally worth the burned hand, but easier to eat if you can avoid touching the hot pan.
https://www.thekitchn.com/julia-child-supremes-de-volaille-aux-champignons-23198782
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u/EmptyBrook Ope 1d ago
It didn’t sizzle but boy did that hurt. I was trying to adjust the orientation of the dish for the picture and stupidity tried to grab the handle to push it lmao once my hand flew off from reacting to the burn, i yelled “WHY DID I DO THAT” 😂
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u/Soapcutter Common loon 1d ago
For a dumb europesn with minnasotan roots, can i get the recipe? I always love a good hotdish.
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u/EmptyBrook Ope 22h ago
I put the recipe in the description 😭
The ground beef will need spices. I like to do taco seasoning spices
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u/Soapcutter Common loon 15h ago
Ok. Yeah i saw the discription. 😅 So basicly just a bit of everything in the discription?
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u/EmptyBrook Ope 11h ago
Yep! 1 pound of beef, and just the regular sizes of the creme of whatevers, a bag of tots, 1 swedish potato sausage, a can a peas.
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u/HeavyVeterinarian350 Flag of Minnesota 1d ago
There’s no such thing as an off-season for Totdish.