A meal to make your heart explode

Tater tots are everywhere. They can be served as a side, appetizer, meal or snack. They really can be just about anything. This delicious form of potatoes is even better when there is more to it than just your average tater tot taste.

It can get expensive trying to fill your Midwestern taste buds by constantly going out to eat or trying to cook things from scratch. Instead, allow yourself to combine a less stressful version of cooking by adding in frozen food that only needs to be heated up while you prepare everything else.

Instead of following the strict recipes where if you add too much of something it can ruin everything, follow this recipe where if you add too much of something it makes it even better. This is an easy and cheap loaded tater tot recipe that will have your heart wanting to explode from not only a heart attack, but of happiness.

Ingredients

Frozen tater tots

Ground beef

Shredded cheese (of your choice)

Shredded lettuce

Diced white onions

Sour cream

Directions

1. Follow the directions for cooking the tater tots. Fill an entire cooking pan (usually around 2.5 pounds).
2. While the tater tots are cooking in the oven, mix in ingredients for the ground beef. The ground beef should be around the same weight of the tater tots. (In this case, it was 2.28 pounds.)
3. Put the ground beef in a large bowl in small amounts and layer the ground beef with garlic salt, pepper and parsley. Once the final layer has been added, mix together with your hands so the layers are meshed equally.
4. Once the meat has been mixed, put olive oil in a sauce pan. On medium heat, add the ground beef and cover the pan. Leave it for 15-20 minutes, or until thoroughly cooked, while mixing every 5 minutes. Make sure to continuously break up the meat with a utensil so it does not clump while cooking. Clumping will make it less of a mixture when adding it to the tater tots.
5. Once the meat and tater tots are finished cooking, drain the meat.
6. Add the ground beef to the tater tot pan as evenly as possible.
7. Layer on two 8-ounce bags of the shredded cheese of your choice. Then put the pan in the oven for about 3 minutes or until the cheese is melted.
8. Once the cheese and meat has been mixed with the tater tots, add on any toppings of your choice. Make sure the layers are thick because once everything is mixed, there will not be as much as you thought. In this case, I used four handfuls of shredded lettuce, three handfuls of diced white onions and a couple tablespoons of sour cream.
9. Once everything has all been mixed together, serve for a nice heart attack on a plate.
10. There will most likely be leftovers. After refrigerating, more cheese and toppings may need to be added according to the portion you serve next.