Dan Whalen

Moules frites are easily one of my favorite things to order at a seafood restaurant. If you eat a dish like this outdoors in the summertime, ideally with your feet in the sand or resting gently on the grass, you will remember it forever. Don’t be afraid to work with mussels—they take a little while to clean, but they cook in minutes and are very inexpensive. 

In hindsight, stuffing a meatball with a tot seems like an obvious idea, but I couldn’t find any evidence of it being done before! After testing the merits of precooking the tots to add an extra dimension of brown flavor and crispness, my tasters unanimously agreed that the uncooked tots worked better. This is because browning the tots essentially seals them inside a crust, keeping them separate from the meat surrounding them. But when you wrap the thawed tots in meat, they really become one with the meatballs and the delicious pork flavor permeates the tots.

Chicken pot pie is one of the most classic comfort foods there is. The thing with pot pie, though, is the crust is complicated and can get soggy easily. This version uses tots as the crust, so it’s easy to make and will be super crispy every time. You can make this in a large baking pan, but I like to use individual baking dishes so my guests can dig into their own little pies.

Why have a burger with some tots on the side when you can just build a burger with tots as the bun! These mini tot sliders are first and foremost insanely cute. Believe it or not, they are actually pretty easy to make, too. But most important—they are extremely delicious. If you serve your friends these sliders when they come over for the big game, they will lose their minds!