Tater Tot Casserole with Ground Beef

Love these crunchy little bite size taters? Us too! Throw them in with veggies and meat and you can try this hamburger tater tot casserole with ground beef too. One of many easy ground beef recipes we love to make during the Fall.

If you too love quick and easy casseroles, this will become your new favorite too! With just a few ingredients, layered in a dish and baked in the oven, it is an inexpensive feel good meal you can throw together in no time at all. Even the picky eaters in your house will give it a thumbs up.

We chose to use Idaho ground beef in our dish because well, we live here and always have a ton of it in our fridge and freezer. Of course you can omit the cheddar cheese but that would be a no go for us. 😉 You see, we buy from local farmers at the beginning of each year so we have a bunch in our deep freezer.

I mean if you ever ate at the school cafeteria, you had these for lunch. If you were lucky enough to have a “cool mom” you may have had them with meatloaf for dinnertime too every once and a while. Great as a cheap side dish they also make a casserole over the top as well.

Ingredient Notes

You will want to start out with your Ground beef and onions cooked in a pan to begin with, drained. Alternatively this is how to cook air fryer ground beefto speed things up.

Can you make tater tot casserole with frozen ground beef?

No, if yours is frozen you read how to cook frozen ground beef first and then brown as though it was fresh. Either way you need to precook and brown first before incorporating other ingredients together. You could incorporate a bit of sour cream too if you wanted it creamier. Your can of cream of mushroom soup would accomplish this as well.

What Type of Vegetables to Add

I’ll bet even if you have a non veggie lover in the house they will love the other components enough to ignore that there are peas and corn in this one. You could change that up slightly too, mixed frozen vegetables work well too.

How to Make Tater Tot Casserole Creamy

To make it creamy you will want to add a can of cream of chicken and cream of mushroom condensed soup. Adding shredded Cheese is of course optional but my family loves sharp cheddar and that makes it ooey gooey too.

Can You Make Tater Tot Casserole without Cream of Mushroom Soup?

I do like using a can of some sort of condensed soup so it is creamy. However, I do have a recipe to make homemade cream of mushroom that uses fresh ingredients, isn’t canned and you can make it dairy free if you prefer. Alternatively you could use sour cream but that makes it quite rich.

Tater tots should be left frozen when added and when they bake they will get tender in the center and crispy on the top.

There are TONS of different family recipes for this. If you asked a hundred people how they make TTC as we call it you would get 100 different answers. Large families usually pass it down to their kids and on from there since it’s a frugal meal even the smallest child will eat and love.

Should you thaw tater tots before baking them?

NO! It is always best to add these without defrosting first. Whether you make them my themselves in the oven just to get crispy or you make this casserole with tater tots you don’t want them to break apart and get mushy. To prevent that keep them hard and frozen. They will soften up nicely along with the other ingredients listed.

Tips

I rarely ever have to drain any grease because the meat we have is very very lean. If you do have a decent amount in your pan I would drain in a strainer. As far as your Tater tots go, keep them frozen right out of the freezer. This way they won’t come apart when you mix everything together.

As for the vegetables you could use your favorites but those should be frozen too. I wouldn’t choose soft varieties like broccoli but green beans and/or cauliflower florets would work too.

Now you could use other things on the top, don’t know why you would but definitely an option. Other ideas might be frozen french fries or pirogies that are filled with fluffy taters as well. Timing would vary with those depending on the thickness etc…

How Long to Cook Tater Tot Casserole with Ground Beef

Once everything is prepped in your pan then you will want to bake for 45 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle remaining cheese on top. Bake for 15 more minutes until melted and lightly browned on top. If you want the tots to be browned then remove foil, bake for maybe 10 minutes, then add cheese to melt that. SO you are looking at a bit over an hour start to finish.

Slow cooker directions

We love making this Crockpot tater tot casserole too. The texture is different when you make this one. Since it cooks for much longer and in this device it won’t get crispy. You could of course take the pot out at the end and put into the oven. In a few minutes on broil or 400 F the top would get a bit of a crunch.

You don’t even have to transfer it into a different dish. Just pull the inner pot right out and into the oven it goes. That’s right, the ceramic pot is oven safe and handy to do just that. No need to dirty a second dish y’all. It is an easy dinner recipe everyone in our house loves so I don’t have to hear moans and groans at all. All “Yeahhhhhs” with this easy ground beef casserole.

Looking for other great ideas using the same meat? Try our air fryer stuffed bell peppers some night.

How to Save Leftovers

What if you have leftovers? How do you save them? I have to be honest, this doesn’t save well in the fridge. You can store it in a container for the next day and then transfer into a metal dish. Rewarming in the air fryer works a bit better so you can get the edges crispy again.

I mean you can throw it into the microwave for about a minute and it will be edible but it will be even softer than the first day when it was fresh. I like a bit of texture and not super soft.

Below is the printable recipe card complete with nutritional information like calories and saturated fat content. Of course amounts will vary depending on what type of cheese you use etc…