Jill Can Cook: Bacon Wrapped Tater Tots

My family has been having tons of parties and hang out sessions this past year. I absolutely love any excuse to get together with family. And being able to cook something for the occasion is a nice bonus, too!

I've added Bacon Wrapped Weenies to the rotation of delicious appetizers I bring along with me. They are always a hit and every time my niece hears of a party coming up, she makes sure to beg me to make them. I love her, but I don't always want to bring the same thing. So, I made a compromise the last time around. Instead of weenies, I'd use tater tots! Let's see how these came out...

Bacon Wrapped Tater Tots

Adapted from: Damn Delicious

Ingredients:

Market Basket brand represent!

• tater tots, room temperature
• bacon, uncooked, quartered
• brown sugar
• cheese, cut into squares

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. 
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat; set aside.
3. Working one at a time, wrap each tater tot and cheese square in a piece of bacon. Repeat with remaining tater tots, cheese squares and bacon pieces. 
4. Place tater tots seam side down onto the prepared baking sheet. 
5. Sprinkle with desired amount of brown sugar.
6. Place into oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, using metal tongs to turn at halftime.

I was making this appetizer for a large group of people, so I just kept making them until my pan couldn't fit any more or until I ran out of something. But if you go to the original blog page, you have the capability of following more specific directions.

Joe's grandmother got me this pan. I love it for parties since it has a sturdy cover!

As it is with bacon wrapped appetizers, they're petty easy to put together. This probably took me about 20 minutes to get together, including finding all the ingredients.

With the brown sugar on top, along with a last minute sprinkle of chili powder!

That's it for prepping pictures. 

I put this together the morning of our get together and placed it back in the fridge. About a half an hour before we left for the party, I popped the pan in the preheated oven and kept it there for about 5 minutes less cooking time than it needed. I pulled it out, brought it to the party, and popped it back into the oven for 5ish minutes, mostly just to heat it up since it was pretty well cooked.

You know I had to eat one before I took a picture. Hahaha

These were good and just as easy as the bacon wrapped weenies, but they were a lot harder to eat. The weenies could be easily eaten with toothpicks whereas these needed a fork. I think that maybe if you precooked the tater tots for 15 minutes ahead of time, then cooked them with the bacon, they might not have been so mushy. Oh well,I'll know better for next time and you'll know better for when you make them.

Also, since I've made these, I've seen them made by putting the cheese on top of them during the last 2-3 minutes of baking, making them more like loaded bacon taters. That might not be great for a party, but might work if you made these like a side dish. 

A+ for taste, B for overall grade considering they weren't too party friendly.