Bacon Wrapped Tater Tots Fat Pants Party
A few years ago, some coworkers and I started a semi-regular weekend gathering that we referred to as "Fat Pants Party", which grew out of "That's What Fat People Do". The main idea is that everybody wears their fat pants, we drink a lot, and we eat massive amounts of food so that we can take advantage of the elastic waists on our fat pants. For the most part, we come up with a menu and everybody takes responsibility for part of it. In the past we've had Beef Wellington, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, macaroni and cheese with potato chip topping, and donut ice cream. We put heavy emphasis on being unhealthy. Naturally, when I came across Recipe Girl's Bacon and Cheese Wrapped Tater Tot recipe, it had Fat Pants Party written all over it. The main problem was at the time I bookmarked it, there wasn't another Fat Pants Party on the calendar.
Lucky for me, one of the other participants coincidentally took the initiative to arrange another Fat Pants Party. The only hurdle for this party was that we were a man down. One of the key people responsible for the menu has abandoned us and moved to New York. Even without her, I think we did well with the menu: Build your own burger bar with 3 types of cheese, sauteed mushrooms, bacon, & avocado, grilled pineapple, regular tater tots, bacon and cheese wrapped tater tots, some unhealthy "salad" from the supermarket, New York Times Chocolate Chip cookies, cookies and cream ice cream, and homemade magic shell. It was the perfect night to be wearing fat pants.
Recipe Girl takes way better pictures than I do and also has some recommendations on variations of this recipe, so you should check out her version. Some slight differences: I did not use center cut bacon, but I am going to next time I make them. Even though this is pretty trashy food, I think using a higher quality bacon will have a pretty big impact, since a lot of the flavor comes from the bacon. I also made some modifications to her process: Cutting the slit into the tater tot seemed an extra unnecessary step, so I skipped that part. Additionally, I don't think it's important to use a toothpick to secure the bacon. The beautiful thing about bacon fat is that is does a pretty good job of acting as its own binding agent.
- 1 pack of bacon
- 1 block of cheddar cheese
- 1 bag of frozen tater tots
Cut the block of cheddar cheese into small rectangles, about the length of one tater tot. Place one cheddar rectangle on a tater tot and wrap a piece of bacon around it. When the bacon has been wrapped around one time with just a little bit of overlap, use a kitchen scissors to cut it. Make sure that the two ends stick together and place on a baking tray. I found that 1 slice of bacon would wrap around about 3 tater tots + cheese. Bake on 400 for 20-25 minutes.
It's pretty easy to lose track of how many of these things you eat. I found myself popping one after another in my mouth. They were best right out of the even, but even after they had cooled down some, they were still pretty damn delicious. Also, we had only bought 1 pack of bacon so we cooked the remaining tater tots on the same oven tray. Those turned out great because they ended up being cooked in the bacon fat. Just something to consider if you end up with some extra tater tots.
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