You gonna eat your tots?

Read Time: 5 minutes

The world never asked for tater tot waffle sandwiches, but I made them anyway. Read along to find out how I incorporated tater tots into my sandwich routine.

First things first, these aren’t actually tot waffle sandwiches because a sandwich is usually named after the stuff in the middle of the sandwich, not the things on the outside. But I think I’m in charge here and clearly no one can stop me, or they would have already, so these are hereby known as: tot waffle sandwiches.

This week I made several tot waffle sandwiches. Read on to see what I did.

The bread

Wait. Whoops, there’s no bread this week. Dang.

The tot waffle.

First, we need some tater tot waffles!

1. Find a waffle maker.
2. Buy some frozen tater tots.
3. Let us get down to business.

Below is my recipe for a tater tot waffle, but it’s so easy you almost don’t need a recipe. You need to thaw your frozen tots and then waffle them.

To find out how many tots I needed to thaw, I opened my turned off waffle maker and placed frozen tots in it until they all fit and then put the rest of the bag back in the freezer. Then I counted them.

The tots I laid out on the waffle maker, I transferred to a plate and let them sit covered in plastic wrap until they were thawed and ready to cook. My waffle maker accepts about 30 tots, but yours might be different.

Thawing 30-ish tater tots can be done in the microwave in 1 or 2 minutes on high. I usually just pull them out an hour or two in advance, but if you’re in a hurry just use the microwave to thaw.

Once your tots are thawed, turn your waffle maker on high and when it’s warmed up, place the tots inside and waffle them. It takes my waffle maker about 8 minutes to get a crispy tot waffle. Your time may vary depending on your waffle maker.

Funnily enough our 15-year-old waffle maker broke during the making of these sandwiches. I dropped it slightly and the knob broke off and you could no longer control the temperature. Since I’m so dedicated to this blog, we quickly bought this fairly cheap waffle maker delivered the next day from amazon and it worked great for tot waffles.

If you don’t have a waffle maker, you’re going to have a hard time making tot waffles, but I’d be really curious to read about your plans and ideas; let me know on twitter.

Waffling history

There was a time in my life where I attempted to waffle a lot of different things. After a search through my instagram, it seems this was around 2014 because below is my first tater tot waffle experience.

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A few weeks ago, when I got the idea to turn tater tots into the “bread” in sandwiches, my mind first went to breakfast because of hash browns so that’s where we’ll start.

The breakfast tot waffle

This is probably the best tot waffle experience, and it likely makes the most sense. You have your bacon; you have your eggs and cheese and then you sandwich it all within a tot waffle.

This particular breakfast tot waffle experience was a folded egg, homemade bacon and good old deli sliced American cheese; the breakfast dream team sandwiched between two tot waffles.

But seriously, the best application for a tot waffle is breakfast. Just start a tot waffle waffling while you’re busy cooking the rest of your breakfast and slice the waffle into quarters. In less than 10 minutes you’ll be ready for a breakfast sandwich or crispy potato hashbrown side dish.

The lunch tot waffle

A good partner to waffles is fried chicken and I guess it won’t even matter that the waffle in question is made from potatoes?

For my lunch waffle I fried up some boneless chicken breast pieces. I typically fry chicken thigh, but we had one extra massive 1.5-pound chicken breast that we didn’t need for another meal and it was either freeze it for later or fry it for sandwiches. And now you know which one I chose to do.

Below is my recipe for frying chicken thighs. I used breast meat in this sandwich, but it’s the same process. If you have an instant thermometer, you should use it if you’re not sure if your chicken is done. The key to this recipe is the spice, but if you don’t like heat, you can leave all of that out if that’s your preference.

With these fried breast pieces, I placed them between two tot waffles and slathered on a little bit of my special sandwich sauce. I didn’t think about it until later, but pickles would have been great here. I also started thinking that slaw would be a good addition, so I whipped some slaw up and that went into my next sandwich.

This was a good sandwich. The crunchy fried chicken and the crunchy potato waffle were good together, but it probably could have used another texture. And like I alluded to earlier, it could have used some pickle acidity to cut the richness.

The dinner tot waffle

For my next tot waffle sandwich, I also fried some pieces of chicken breast meat. I slathered those crispy fried chicken pieces in my old goose sriracha wing sauce and added a basic cabbage slaw sandwiched with tater tot waffles.

The tot waffles in these pictures were redder and darker because I sprinkled Cajun seasoning onto the tater tots instead of just salt and pepper, because why not add more seasoning?

This was a great sandwich and had a lot of flavor from the chicken and crunch from the tot waffle and the slaw kept the spicy heat in check.

The snack tot waffle

For our snack tot waffle, we’re gonna get wild and put the bread in the middle. Ok, maybe it’s bread CHEESE, but it’s still in the middle. Back during my waffling phase I found bread cheese and fell in love. This stuff is great.

Bread cheese isn’t available everywhere, but it seems popular in the Midwest. It was started/invented in Finland apparently and is still very prevalent there. I can find it online, but it’s not cheap unless you’re near where a local cheesemaker is making it.

You can find it online with a search for: “bread cheese” or “juusto.”

I’ve always thought that a cool thing to do at a party would be to have a hot waffle maker in the corner and a few packs of bread cheese. You could put simple instructions by the waffle maker to instruct your party guests on how they can make their own cheese waffle for snacking.

Anyway, enough with me helping to plan your next party, let’s snack.

This is the snack tot waffle. I’m predicting at least one person reading this will try to comment that their nickname in college was “snack tot waffle.”

Make tot waffles

Tot waffle sandwiches might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you should remember tot waffles as a breakfast side dish option. Whenever you might want crispy hash browns, this recipe delivers. You could even dice up some green onions or peppers and sprinkle them among the tater tots before waffling for more flavor.

The simple fact that you can have a crunchy potato side dish cooking with little to no effort while you’re preparing eggs and/or breakfast meat makes tot waffles a winner in my book.

Check back next week when I might be making normal people sandwiches. Or maybe not. No one knows!