Julie Clark
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Cheeseburger Tater Tot Casserole
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Enjoy a juicy cheeseburger…casserole-style! Your favorite cheeseburger toppings get baked into and sprinkled on top of this Cheeseburger Tater Tot Casserole. A family favorite recipe your kids will love.
I love a good cheeseburger. It’s classic comfort food. When the days are cooler, I crave that grilled burger flavor. This Cheeseburger Tater Tot Casserole with ground beef, cheese and potatoes cures my cravings…and makes my kids smile every time.
If you’re from the midwest, you might have also heard this called a tater tot hotdish. Easy dinners like this are what I grew up on. Let it be a new favorite for you, too!
About this Cheeseburger Tater Tot Casserole Recipe:
- Flavor: This tastes like a cheeseburger and french fries. You won’t be disappointed!
- Texture: The tater tots get crispy on top, which pairs well with the saucy ground beef and melted cheese. Toppings add the crunch!
- Method: This recipe bakes in a 9×13″ baking pan.
Ingredients
- For best results, use a lean ground beef. You can even add in sausage if you’d like a different flavor.
- Choose your favorite bbq sauce. I like Sweet Baby Ray’s.
- For the best cheese texture, buy a block of cheddar cheese and shred it on a box grater. It will be extra creamy.
How to Make Tater Tot Casserole
This recipe takes about 20 minutes to prep and about an hour to bake.
- Choose your favorite ground beef. I like to purchase at least 85% lean beef to cut down on fat content. You can even use ground turkey or ground chicken if you’d like. Brown the ground beef and drain off any fat.
- Add favorite hamburger sauces to the browned beef…ketchup, two kinds of mustard and barbecue sauce. Mixing the other flavors in with the ketchup tones down the ketchup flavor and makes this casserole recipe savory and mouthwatering.
- Spread the meat in a 9×13 casserole dish, then top with red onion and cheese. The onion is optional, and you can use a different type of cheese if you’d like. This recipe is highly versatile so get creative with those layers!
- Top with tater tots (they can still be frozen) and pop it into an oven that you’ve heated to 350 degrees. One hour later and you’ll be diving into this tasty casserole!
Make it in the Crockpot
If you’d like to make this cheeseburger casserole in the slow cooker, you can!
Simply prep the meat as described, then place it in a slow cooker. Top with the onion, cheese and tater tots, then cover and slow cook on low for 6 hours or until heated through. The tater tots won’t be as crispy this way, but it is a way to make easy tater tot casserole.
Top the Casserole
Just as you would add fresh vegetables and toppings to a burger, I like to add the same to the casserole after it has baked:
- Tomatoes
- more onion
- a little lettuce
- dill pickles are a must
- sweet pickle relish
- chopped bacon to make bacon cheeseburger tater tot casserole!
We’ve added avocado, pepper, bacon bits, and even sour cream. Add any veggies you’d like.
Make it a Freezer Meal
You can freeze the leftovers of this casserole, but you can also freeze the entire casserole for a quick weeknight meal.
To freeze the casserole to bake later:
- Make the casserole, but don’t bake it. Use an aluminum pan rather than a baking dish so it is easy to wrap.
- Wrap the casserole in plastic wrap, then again in foil.
- Freeze for up to 3 months.
- When you are ready to serve it, pull it out of the freezer the night before and let it thaw in the fridge overnight.
- Then bake as the recipe below states.
Cheeseburger Tater Tot Casserole
Enjoy a juicy cheeseburger…casserole-style! Your favorite cheeseburger toppings get baked into and sprinkled on top of this Cheeseburger Tater Tot Casserole. A family-friendly recipe your kids will love!
Servings 10
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 2/3 cup ketchup
- 2 teaspoons yellow mustard
- 2 tablespoons dijon mustard
- 4 tablespoons barbecue sauce
- 1/2 cup chopped red onion
- 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 32 ounces frozen tater tots
For topping:
- shredded lettuce
- diced tomatoes
- diced dill pickles
- bacon bits
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a 9×13" baking dish with cooking spray.
- In a large skillet over medium heat, cook beef until it is browned. Drain off any fat & remove from the heat.
- Add the ketchup, mustards, and barbecue sauce to the beef. Stir to mix well.
- Spread the beef mixture in the bottom of the prepared pan.
- Sprinkle the chopped red onion over the meat.
- Sprinkle the cheddar cheese over the meat and onion.
- Line the top with tater tots.
- Bake, uncovered for 1 hour or until heated through.
- Top with your favorite burger toppings such as lettuce, tomato, pickle and bacon.
- Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Video
Notes
The calories shown are based on the recipe being divided 10 ways, with 1 serving being 1/10 of the recipe. Since different brands of ingredients have different nutritional information, the calories shown are just an estimate.
Nutrition
Calories: 514kcal | Carbohydrates: 30g | Protein: 23g | Fat: 33g | Saturated Fat: 13g | Cholesterol: 88mg | Sodium: 851mg | Potassium: 578mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 6g | Vitamin A: 325IU | Vitamin C: 7.4mg | Calcium: 198mg | Iron: 2.6mg
Tools to Make This Recipe
- Cheese Grater: I 100% recommend grating fresh cheddar cheese for this recipe. This cheese grater makes it easier than ever!
- Ground Beef Meat Chopper: I recently got one of these and don’t know how I lived without it!
- 9”x13” Baking Pan: One of my most used kitchen pans.
Other Casserole Recipes
I make something I call a “Whopper Salad” its almost the exact ingredients but more lettuce and the other stuff are the toppings. I use thousand Island as the sauce because no one likes mayo as a salad dressing.
I was looking to make a different tator tot casserole and come across this recipe. I wasn’t sure about the ingredients as I did not have any BBQ or Dijon mustard on hand…so I made a few substitutes…..I used honey mustad (same amount the recipe called for dijon) for the bbq part, I added to the mix what I thought was 4TBSP worth of BBQ ingredients. I baked for an hour on 375 uncovered, and it was AMAZING!!! We will be having this again, it was like a sloppy joe type tasting and very easy to make.
Sooo soo good. Thank you!
We made fresh tater tots, skipped the salad 🙈 and cooked slighlty less, only 35minutes, so the onions and tomatoes still had a bit of crunch. We LOVED it. Can’t thank you enough for this recipe💗
So glad I came across this recipe while searching for quick dinner ideas. My family is vegetarian so I tweaked it a little using Boca crumble as a meat substitute, and I added the red onions and tomatoes to my mixture. I also added a little seasoning salt, garlic power and onion powder, I left out the bbq sauce and used Sargento shredded cheese (mozzarella, mild cheddar and mexican style). I added lettuce,more tomatoes, and pickles on top. Yummy, Yummy, Yummy! Thanks bunches 😋
This was awesome. I made it the weekend before during my meal prep and then froze it. We put shredded lettuce on the bottom, then the casserole, then pickles, red onion, ketchup and tomatoes. Total keeper!!
My boyfriend absolutely loves recipes like this. He’s supposed to start making dinners from time to time, so I’ll have to share this with him because it sounds amazing!
Easy to make. Taste has yet to be determined. Looks and smells wonderful. Did not change the recipe at all.