Updated on January 4th, 2024
This taco tater tot bake combines tater tots into a Mexican style casserole that makes a delicious meal for any night of the week. During the winter months, casserole dishes are among my favorite things to make for dinner. This specific casserole consists of ingredients such as taco meat, green chilies, corn, black beans, and Mexican cheese. The casserole also gets a lot of its flavor from enchilada sauce. If you would prefer you can add additional toppings to this recipe, some good options might be salsa and sour cream. This taco tater tot bake is extremely easy to prepare if you are short on time. Enjoy. Adapted from Cullys Kitchen.
(Makes 6 Servings)
Taco Tater Tot Bake Recipe
- Total Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
Scale
- 1lb ground beef
- 1 small onion (diced)
- 1 garlic clove (minced)
- 1 small can black olives (sliced)
- 1 (1 ounce) package taco seasoning mix
- 1 (16 ounces) bag frozen corn
- 1 (4 ounces) can green chilies (diced and drained)
- 1 (12 ounces) can black beans (drained and rinsed)
- 1 (16 ounces) bag shredded Mexican cheese blend
- 1 (16 ounces) package frozen tater tots
- 1 (10.5-ounce fluid ounce) can enchilada sauce
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9×13 inch baking dish with cooking spray. Heat a skillet to medium-high heat. Add ground beef, garlic, and onion and cook while breaking the meat apart with a spoon or spatula until the ground beef is completely browned. Drain off any excess fat. Add taco seasoning mix, green chilies, frozen corn, and black beans to the ground beef. Cook until heated through.
- In a large bowl combine the ground beef mixture, ¾ of the Mexican cheese blend, and all of the tater tots. Stir well to combine.
- Pour about 1/3 of the enchilada sauce into the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Add the tater tot mixture to the baking dish and lightly pat the mixture down into a solid, even layer. Pour the remaining enchilada sauce over the tater tots.
- Place into the oven and bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. During the last few minutes of baking, top the casserole with the remaining Mexican cheese blend and the sliced black olives. Return to the oven and bake until the cheese is melted and bubbly.
What can you substitue for the enchilada sauce? We’re not big fans of that. Could you use salsa instead?
Barb – Yes, I think salsa would be a good substitute.
So the tots are still frozen when you assemble it?
Melissa- That is correct. The tater tots are still frozen when you assemble the casserole.
Made this tonight sooooo good. Will definitely be seen in our house again. @barb I made it with enchillada sauce and with the taco seasoning, garlic, and chilies the flavor changes completely. I didn’t add onions because we didn’t have any t I did add some.left over red and yellow bell pepper. Also cooked my tator-tots while I made the meat because I like them extra crispy also cut cooking time in half. Again sooooo good thanks for sharing!
My sister introduced me to this recipe. Her family loved it. I made it tonight and it really is delicious and so easy to prepare. I was worried about the tater tots being too soggy but I made the recipe as directed and it came out great. They aren’t crispy but the taste great. It will def be a repeat recipe since its so easy and cost less than $15 for all the ingredients.
I made a hamburger casserole like this. if you want the tater tots crispy, cook them for a little bit and then cook them with the whole thing. should make them crispy
You should really make this available with Pinterest so I can copy it so I can find it easier. Thanks
This is awesome! I also added red/yellow peppers and also some spanish rice (need it to be as filling as possible… twin 17 year old boys in the house!). Next time I will need to double the recipe. Thanks so much!
This was awesome! I substituted an extra can of black beans instead of the meat to make it vegetarian and it came out great.
Did everything up to step 4 and then i wrapped it and put it in the freezer. got it out mid-week and finished it. Still SUPER tasty!! definitely adding this to my new monthly menu!!
I have never made this but looks great. Just wondering if you could add refried beans to it?
Ashley – I have never tried adding refried beans to this recipe so I am not sure how it would turn out. If you do try it please let everyone know the results. Thanks.
This was delicious, I made it like the recipe called and just added salsa and sour cream at the end. Thank you for sharing!
This is a wonderful recipe! We are gluten free ovo vegetarians, so I used seasoned TVP in place of ground beef and used Daiya non-dairy cheese shreds.
This was delicious . But I had some left over pulled pork that I had smoked and wants to get rid of it so I threw that in instead of the beef , then got some burrito tortillas an wrapped it all up in them ! Very good
I made this tonight for dinner.. it is delicious! The only thing I changed was that I added a can of Rotel instead of chilies. It was really good! We added some Louisiana hot sauce and chicken wing sauce to our individual servings so the kids could still eat it. I think next time I will add jalapenos or something. I like more spicy food. This was good, but not spicy enough for me. 🙂
This recipe looks fantastic. My family is trying to eat more chicken and less beef and pork. Has anyone tried using chicken (probably shredded or diced) in this recipe? I would like your as to whether this would work as well as the beef. I will be trying the recipe, regardless of the answer to my question; we will just substitute it for one of our other “Meat” favorites.
my family loved this! i have a toddler and she wont eat spicy so instead of the chillies i put in a can of petite diced tomatos (drained). ALSO the leftovers are awesome the second time around too! thank you for sharing this!
Can I use frozen hash browns instead of tater tots? If so, would you suggest cutting them up into smaller pieces?
Lyn – I have never used hash browns instead of taters tots so I do not know how it would turn out. If you are talking about the hash brown patties, yes you may want to cut them up into smaller pieces. If you do try it, please let everyone know how it turns out. Thanks.
I have put this together with tator tots on top, put it in the fridge till baking it….about 45 min. baking.
I need to know the Weight Watcher points on this please. Thanks
Any ideas on he calorie content?
Can’t wait to try this. @Diana…I use ground turkey in all my ground beef recipes, have for years and in many of the recipes people cannot tell that it is not ground beef.
I would put the refrained beans on top of the bottom layer that you push down…it would be the easiest place to spread, especially if you warm them in the microwave fo about 20 – 30 seconds (for big can) with a tiny bit of water, stir well prior to applying – to make them more spreadable. Then follow remainder of recipe.
Mmm eating it now. Omitted the chiles. But followed the rest of the recipe. Very good. Everyone loved it. My two 3 year old granddaughters helped. They love to stir. We will be making this again but next time will mix the enchilada sauce into the tots so it is more spread out. Very very good. Would be great for potlucks, ill just double the recipe. Thank you for sharing.
i make this but with mushroom soup and Monterrey jack and mozzarella cheese to top it with
Excellent. My 16 year old granddaughter helped me make it and said it was easy. It was delicious. She took a picture of it to her cooking teacher at school. Even the little ones liked it.
elpato hot tomato sauce is a good substitute for enchalada sauce. It might be kinda hot so you would cut it with the same size water. that is how i make my enchalada sauce and the kids come running.
Red or green enchilada sauce
I was wondering if anyone has thought about this as a crockpot freezer meal?
Do you have the breakdown into carbohydrates(g); proteins (g); and fats(g), please.
Made this for dinner tonight. Fantastic! Followed the recipe except omitted the beans since my hubby doesn’t like beans. We loved it. Definitely a keeper at our house…
I made this with diced chicken tenders instead of the hamburger and used chopped Jalapenos instead of the diced chili’s,it was very good.
I am so excited about cooking this for my family but have 1 quick question. If I wanted to use the garlic that is already minced and comes in the jar that you can purchase in the grocery store instead of buying a garlic and mincing it myself. In measurements how much would I need to use to equal the amount of 1 clove of garlic?
What is the Prep Time and Total Time? Also a calorie count would be helpful.
Tried this tonight, vegetarian style! Used Smart Ground (a soy, meat replacement for ground beef) and omitted the olives. Even my 18 month old couldn’t get enough of this! Shared the recipe with my best friend who is going to make it tomorrow! Thanks for sharing this recipe!
For those who need a nutritional breakdown, it is all canned/processed foods so read the labels and divide by the number of servings YOU get out of it. This is not difficult if it is important to you.
We made this the other night with my fiance. SO GOOD!! SOOOOOOO GOOD! Neither of us are fans of black beans so we substituted a Mexican rice a roni. Turned out great!! Thanks for the recipe we will definitely be making it again soon.
Abbey,
Did you cook up the rice per package directions or put it in raw and let it bake? I would like to try your method of omitting the beans and doing the rice.
Thanks,
Jen
I made this recipe and I used a 32 oz bag of tator tots……mixed it all together before I realized the recipe called for 16 ox…even so, it was awesome. I think if we would have used the 16 oz bag, it would have been too much liquid and not crunchy enough. lengthened the cooking time by 20 minutes for more crunch. Also I used Elk burger and it is a keeper in my recipe book. THE CORN IS THE TRICK!!. The frozen corn is soooo good in this. A dollop of sour cream on the plate and you are set.
I am making this for dinner tommorrow and am using a ground beef substitute(YVES meatless ground) and am going to try the rotell instead of the chilis also. I’ll let you now how it turns out
Fixed for supper, used salsa instead of enchilada sauce
I made this for dinner tonight. It was SO yummy!!! All 4 of our kids LOVED it! 🙂
Love seeing all the different ways this has been fixed. Am going to try this and the comments really helped !!
I made this in two separate casserole dishes, one with meat and one with soyrizo (from Walmart) for our vegetarian daughter. Both were a big hit!
Good recipe. I was skeptical at first, but must admit that it turned out to be quite tasty.
Great recipe! Fixed it tonight.
Arlene,
For the equivalent of minced garlic to substitute for garlic cloves. One teaspoon equals one garlic clove.