Chicken Pot Tater Tot Hotdish, Our Current Favorite Weeknight Dinner
So first of all, it’s imperative we all agree that tater tots are one of the best forms of potato. In my professional opinion, tater tots fall just after poutine and right in front of loaded baked potatoes in Potato Yummyness Ranking—which makes them the perfect way to turn an honestly kinda boring dish (sorry @ chicken pot pie) into something pretty freaking exciting.
We originally got turned onto hotdish—a Midwestern classic, basically a casserole—because of the Iowa caucuses. We’re nerds and thought having hotdish while watching the Iowa caucus drama would be fun. Unlike this year’s caucuses, the hotdish recipe actually worked! Really well! We grabbed it from Molly Yeh’s book, Molly On The Range. She’s basically the queen of hotdish, which we’ve known for years, and now we hate ourselves for not having made one earlier.
It’s admittedly a pretty hard recipe to fuck up, but I was proud of how delicious it came out nonetheless. I really love Molly’s recipe because unlike a lot of hotdish recipes that use condensed soup and canned vegetables, this one does it all from scratch and uses fresh veggies, while still requiring pretty much minimal time and effort. I made a few tiny alterations to the recipe (mostly switching out chicken thigh for chicken breast, slightly bumping up the amount of veggies, and making it into a one pot recipe because I hate dirty dishes) so if you want the original recipe in all it’s glory you can check out her book right here.
I’ve now made it a few times and am absolutely in love. Matt was a little weirded out by just how excited I got over it, because, well, it’s a casserole. But I love tater tots, I love creamy chicken things, and so it really just hit the spot. I highly recommend you try this out for a filling, cheap, and easy weeknight meal.
Okay let’s do it.
Chicken Pot Tot Hotdish from Molly On The Range
takes about 1 hour start to finish / serves 6 - 8
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 - 5 carrots, cut into 1/2” pieces
Kosher salt
6 tablespoons flour
3 cups whole milk
Enough chicken broth base to make 3 cups broth (package will tell you how much this is—ours was 3 teaspoons).
1 cup peas, fresh or frozen
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1/2” pieces
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Black pepper
18 ounces frozen tater tots
Ketchup for serving
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
In a large skillet (I used our 5 1/2 Qt Dutch oven, which I then also served the final dish in), melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion and carrots and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring until soft, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour so that it gets evenly distributed. Add 1 1/2 cups of the milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Repeat with the remaining milk. Stir in the chicken broth base, peas, chicken, thyme, and pepper and simmer, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and no longer pink, about 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired.
If you used a Dutch oven in step 2, simply top snugly with tater tots, and toss in the oven to let bake until the tots are golden brown—start checking for doneness around 30 minutes. If you used a skillet in step 2, transfer the mixture to a 11 x 8-inch casserole dish and then follow instructions above. Let cool slightly, and serve with ketchup, if desired.
Notes
I liked using a Dutch oven for this because it gave a higher filling:tot ratio, but if you want lots of tots with each bite (most people probably do), go ahead and use a casserole dish.
This really is one of those recipes that is basically just a template, so feel free to improvise with seasonings, sauces, etc!
