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I followed the recipe exactly and it was delicious and flavorful. I found the instructions easy to follow.
This post is sponsored by Lodge Cast Iron
How to love yourself in November: put sautéed garlic, poblanos, mushrooms, peppers, black beans, and corn in a skillet with a cheesy queso-fundido base and top with a layer of sweet potato tater tots. Me, blanket, sweatpants, this skillet.
It’s called a Southwest Sweet Potato Tater Tot Hotdish.
Oh, yes. You heard me correctly.
This is everything we love about Tex-Mex food meeting up with our meatless goals and taking the shape and form of a beloved comfort food of Minnesota winter: the tater tot hotdish. But made new.
How To Make Our Sweet Potato Tater Tot Hotdish:
I grew up eating the occasional non-ironic tater tot hotdish (#proud), so I feel justified to give you the 411 on this staple midwestern casserole: tater tot hotdish usually has a ground beef and veggie mixture, made with some gravy (and by gravy I mean likely a can of condensed soup) and is topped with tater tots and ketchup. I know I know I KNOW, but for surely you need ketchup if you want to eat your tater tot hotdish like a true midwesterner.
Tater tot hotdish is one of those foods that actually so strange and borderline gross that somewhere along the way it becomes, in fact, really really good. I do not know how this works, but I embrace it. I just really love tots, in every form.
Today, though? Tots be getting a modern makeover.
We’re swapping the ground beef for meaty portabella mushrooms, and trading peas and carrots for the spicy crunch of poblanos and bell peppers and corn. The gravy is getting replaced by a pepperjacky-queso-esque situation that is every bit as magical as you might image, and those sweet potato tots? YASSSS. Just the right amount of salty-sweetness to offset the heat.
Important things to consider: Will you swish Tabasco over the top? Sprinkle with more cheese? Decorate with colorful herbs and fresh jalapeños? These things that are up to you, my friend.
One of the keys to this recipe is the cast iron pan, which is why we use (and love) Lodge cast iron for all our heavy-duty, stovetop-to-oven recipes.
Cast Iron Pans FTW!
Buy Now → 
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Buy Now → I’ve had a love affair with the enameled Dutch oven for as long as I can remember (um, how about that one time I wrote a post called 10 EASY RECIPES YOU CAN MAKE IN A DUTCH OVEN). Now might be a good time to mention that these make EXCELLENT Christmas gifts for the foodies in your life. One in every color? I’m not opposed.
It also is worth mentioning that the true cast iron star here is the standard 10.25-inch cast iron skillet – we got this as a wedding gift seven years ago, and while it took me an embarrassingly long time to get over my fears of cast iron usage and maintenance (which were all just completely in my head), now that I’ve found my stride with it, I am totally hooked. For people who are trying to clean-and-green their home life a little bit, this is an amazing natural alternative to nonstick. Plus, like the Dutch oven, it’s versatile enough to go in the oven. Boom! No more worrying about plastic pan handles melting off.
I have two rules for cleaning my beloved cast iron skillet:
- Rinse and dry.
- (If you’re ambitious) Rub with an oil-soaked paper towel.
Here’s the official guide. (My Go-To, Everyday Method)
The end. Nothing fancy. Natural nonstick and affordable high quality cookware is WITHIN REACH for the normals!
And so is a sweet potato tater tot hotdish that will make you win at life. 🏆 I’m so happy for you.
Southwest Sweet Potato Tater Tot Hotdish
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
Description
This sweet potato tater tot hotdish is a spicy twist on the original – loaded with peppers, corn, black beans, homemade queso sauce, and tots! YUM!
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 red/yellow bell peppers, chopped
- 2 poblano peppers, chopped
- 16 ounces fresh mushrooms, stems removed, chopped
- 1 tablespoon cumin
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 1/4 cup flour
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 pound pepperjack cheese, cut into cubes
- 1 14–ounce can black beans
- 1 cup frozen corn
- salt to taste
- 1–2 bags sweet potato tater tots
- red peppers, corn, cilantro, jalapeño for topping (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Heat the butter over medium high heat in a 10.25-inch cast iron skillet. Add the onion, garlic, mushrooms, and peppers; saute until soft. Add the spices and stir to mix.
- Add the flour and stir to coat until everything gets sticky. Add the milk slowly, stirring after each addition, until you get a smooth mixture. Add the cheese cubes and stir until melted.
- Stir in the black beans and corn. Taste and adjust – this is a good time to add your salt!
- Top the whole thing with tater tots (I did mine in a circle formation).
- Bake for 20-30 minutes. BEWARE THE BUBBLING OVER – put a pan underneath to catch any drips. Let stand for a few minutes before serving.
Notes
REALLY good with a hit of Tabasco or something acidic/spicy.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 30 mins
- Category: Dinner
- Cuisine: Mexican-Inspired
Keywords: sweet potato tater tots, tater tots sweet potato, sweet potato tater tot hot dish
Shout out to our fave Lodge Cast Iron for sponsoring this post!
One More Thing!
This recipe is part of our coziest comfort food recipes page. Check it out!
Any idea if this would work as a freezer meal?
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This was disgusting tasted like bland mush. Had to throw out leftovers.
This meal is actually delicious! This appears like the example that I would study and not emerge up until I remained in a food/carb coma. I would want to savor this dish!
Looking for great ideas for dinner
How spicy is this dish? I have a 2 year-old at home and am trying to determine if this would be too spicy as is.
If you wanted to decrease the spice – would you remove the poblanos and just add more bell peppers?
Yes! The poblanos and pepper jack cheese will up the spicy factor of this recipe. You can definitely add more bell peppers and perhaps just use regular Monterrey Jack cheese instead!
Wow!!! I’m excessively eager to attempt this dish. I was brought up in MN and tator child hot dish was a staple, presently I live on the east coast and at whatever point my significant other and I miss the Midwest we prepare a tator toddler hot dish. We will be certainly trying this form soon
Enjoy!
Hi!
Trying to make this cows milk free (due to allergy), thoughts on chicken broth and goat cheese or maybe coconut milk..? I think some combo of that would work alright, but didn’t know if anyone has tried it!
We think those are great substitutes!
I have made this 3 different times for 3 different groups of people (including 3 teenagers). Each time it has been well-received by carnivores and vegetarians alike! I don’t tolerate gluten and it works well to substitute 1/3 cup GF flour blend for the flour. Also, my daughter and I do not tolerate dairy and this is very easy to make vegan or lactose free. You can use any kind of milk (I’ve successfully used both LF dairy and almond) and, for the cheese, either use 8 oz of your favorite vegan shreds or 4-8 oz of Green Valley Lactose Free (but real dairy) cream cheese. Non-dairy cream cheese would work well, too. I have made the recipe as written and other times have modified it based on what I have on hand– it’s very amenable to variation. Most recently, the only fresh veggies I used were 2 small zucchini. For the rest, I substituted 1 lb. of Trader Joes frozen Grilled peppers and onions along with 1 lb Trader Joes “Soy-cutash” with great success. The Soycuttash is a mix of corn, edamame and red bell pepper. I cooked the fresh zucchini right in there after the frozen stuff was thawed in the pan. Then I added the flour, black beans, etc. and continued the recipe from there. You could also add some vegan soy-rizo as a bonus 🙂 At the table, we passed salsa, shredded cheese (both dairy and vegan), Tabasco and Sour cream (Green Valley lactose free and regular). If you’re motivated you could make some quesadillas on the side. Or you could do what we did and just open a bag of tortilla chips and use them as scoops for eating the casserole 🙂 Finally, this makes enough for 2 recipes. So I baked half of it in an 8×8 dish with the tots and it was enough for our family of 4. Then I put the other half of the filling in the freezer for later. I’ll need another bag of tots when it’s time to make the frozen batch. Thanks for this healthy and delicious take on tater tot hotdish that I feel good about serving to my family!
Thanks for sharing, Jenn! 🙂
Delicious! Next time I would add more chili powder and maybe some smoked paprika. It definitely tastes better the next day once the flavours have co-mingled. I used seranos and monterey jack cheese as I couldn’t find poblano peppers or pepperjack cheese.
I followed the recipe exactly and it was delicious and flavorful. I found the instructions easy to follow.
Glad to hear you enjoyed this!
Looks amazing! What quantity of ground beef would you suggest to use as a replacement for the mushrooms? Husband is a meat lover.
Hi, Jo-ell! We’d suggest somewhere between 1-2 pounds.
Hi! If I were to freeze this, any suggestion of how long I would need to bake it?
Thank you- it looks wonderful!
Oh my goodness! I am overly excited to try this dish. We will be definitely trying this version soon. 🙂
Just made this last night for dinner with friends – I thought it would be the perfect thing to keep us warm in the midst of the polar vortex and everyone loved it! Just wanted to note that I made this in a 10.5 inch skillet and I had to cut back on several ingredients because there was WAY too much to fit in the skillet. I ended up using about 2/3 of most of the veggies & 3/4 of the cheese. It still tasted great, but next time I will use my 12 inch skillet or bake it in a 9×13 pan.
This was delicious! With our kiddos we were concerned that it might be too spicy with a full 16 oz of pepper jack cheese so we did 1/2 pepper jack, 1/2 cheddar. We are fans of the ‘original tator tot hotdish’ so this was a yummy twist. Will make again!
Side note- it does make a lot, so we are thinking of either cutting the recipe in half, or making the full recipe and doing 2 9×13 pans- baking one now and freezing the other for later 🙂
Do you peel the poblano peppers for this recipe? — From the video and photos, it looks like they are raw, chopped peppers (with the skin on), but I want to check because I keep hearing you should char and peel the skin off poblanos because they’re bitter and can be hard to digest. But it’s such a pain and never goes easily for me.
We do not peel them and have never had an issue!
Has anyone tried the lactose free versions for cheese? My fiance is lactose intolerant but he’s okay doing a “little” cheese…
From glance of the picture I thought it was a curry dish, lol. Another delicious looking dish, awesome.
Quick question: Tater tots are usually sold frozen… should they be cooked before we put ’em on top and into the oven in the skillet? Or top off the dish with frozen ones?
They should be frozen!
Would it be possible to leave out the milk and cheese to make this dairy free?
This is quite possibly the most amazing thing I’ve ever had!! I’m from Minnesota too. Also a vegetarian. I miss dishes like this and now I don’t have to anymore. Easy to make and perfect comfort food for a cold, rainy night!
Hello—I am in the process of making this for the virst time. I have one concern: the veggies are nearly overflowing in the cast iron skillet and it seems like it will take a very long time to cook down. Did I do something wrong? I am using the proper size skillet.
I’ve looked at Fareway and HyVee for sweet potato tots. I haven’t found them. Where did you find them?
We can usually find them at our Super Target!
Made this last night and it was delicious! Perfect for a cold and rainy Sunday dinner. Couldn’t find sweet potato tots although I’ve seen them around before, regular tots worked just fine but can’t wait to try again with sweet potato.