Tater Tot Casserole with Ground Beef

Our potato tater tot casserole with ground beef and cream of mushroom soup will knock your socks off! Add vegetables for a cheesy meal your kids will ask you to make over and over again. This is what to cook with ground beef that will be a huge hit with everyone.

Easy Tater Tot Casserole

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.

Tater Tot Casserole with Cream of Chicken Soup

I create a lot of different dishes with it throughout the year and share the ones that get thumbs up from everyone.

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.

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.

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, frozen green beans work well too. Here are a few questions you might have:

This is what we used. Of course there are tweaks you can make along the way to add or omit items that you may want to change. Frozen mixed veggies work well, canned can become mushy FYI. Seasonings are up to you for sure. You could use other ground meats that are leaner if you preferred.

Hamburger Tater Tot Casserole Ingredients

• Ground beef and onions – meat should be defrosted
  • this is how to cook air fryer ground beef to speed things up
• Cream of chicken and cream of mushroom condensed soup
• Garlic powder
• Onion powder
• Frozen vegetables like corn and peas
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Cheese is of course optional but my family loves sharp cheddar and is a must
• Tater tots – frozen
• 9×13″ casserole dish

Can you make this with frozen beef?

No, if yours is frozen you can thaw ground beef in microwave 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.

Like I said, you’ll need to precook your hamburger first. This is the only real “prep work” required, it may take you a whopping 10 minutes once your skillet is hot.

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.

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.

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…

A brief step by step is here but there is a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post as well. In a skillet over medium high heat brown the ground beef and onions, garlic and onion powder. Add salt and pepper too if you like. Break apart and cook until no longer pink.

How to Make Tater Tot Casserole with Ground Beef

• Drain any excess grease and allow browned beef to cool. Preheat oven now to 350 degrees F. Add meat mixture, 1/2 tater tots, condensed soups, 1 c. of your cheese and frozen vegetables together in a bow. Fold together.
• Pour soup mixture into a 9×13″ baking dish and top with remaining taters in one layer so they aren’t overlapping. Cover with foil. Bake for 45 minutes.
• Uncover, sprinkle remaining cheese on top. Bake for 15 more minutes until melted and lightly browned on top.
• This last step of adding cheese is of course optional and could be skipped.

Of course timing at the end is subjective. If you want the tots to be browned then remove foil, bake for maybe 10 minutes, then add cheese to melt that. Use cheddar, pepper jack is great or a mixture of two that you love. If you need dairy free you can use a lactose free variety or leave it off entirely.

Variations

If y’all prefer frozen carrots instead of peas, by all means swap those out! What I love about this is that I can find all the ingredients at my local grocery store year round.

Can You Make Tater Tot Casserole with Cream of Mushroom Soup?

You will want to use a can of some sort of condensed soup so it is creamy. It doesn’t matter what flavor you use though; chicken, mushroom or even celery will work depending on your flavor preferences really. These come in low fat too but I prefer “regular” so it’s as creamy as possible.

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. Then, try this asparagus pasta salad with hamburger. There are so many ways to make this type of beef and taters.

How to Save Leftover Tater Tot Casserole

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…