Tim Walz’s hot dish recipe is heavy on the tots, light on the pretense

This recipe was a first place champion at the annual Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Off in 2014.

Author of the article:

Washington Post

Tim Carman

Published Sep 02, 2024  •  11 minute read

Tim Walz's Tater Tot Hotdish. Photo by Scott Suchman and Carolyn Robb /The Washington Post

At some point while preparing Tim Walz’s Turkey Trot Tater Tot Hotdish, I was struck by the self-effacing nature of the Minnesota governor’s recipe. The instructions call for you to make a roux, but they don’t call it a roux. They ask you to add milk and half-and-half to the roux to create a béchamel, but they don’t call it a béchamel. They ask you to add cheese to the (admittedly enhanced) béchamel to turn it into a mornay sauce, but they don’t call it mornay sauce.

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Tucked into Walz’s Upper Midwest hot dish, in other words, are techniques that would not be foreign to anyone with a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” I’m loath to make pronouncements about a dish I knew so little about three weeks ago, but based on conversations with food-writing peers and my own spasmodic Googling, I think it’s fair to say that hot dish, at least historically, has leaned more into manufactured foods than into Mmes Child, Bertholle and Beck and their authoritative cookbook.

Walz’s recipe is no ordinary hot dish. It won the 2014 Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Competition, back when Walz was a U.S. congressman representing the state’s first district. The Democrat beat out nine other entries, including a dessert variation from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D), which she dubbed, with a kind of prosaic country-radio whimsy, “It’s So Cold My Hotdish Froze.” In announcing the winner, the Minnesota Star Tribune wrote, “Walz’s recipe requires a do-it-yourself cream of mushroom soup, which probably goes a long way in explaining its appeal.”

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Walz, 60, is now, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, and as such, pundits and reporters have been dissecting every aspect of his life, practically from the moment he was born in West Point, Neb. This relentless newsgathering has included a healthy curiosity about the Walz’s go-to dishes, a reliably blue-collar roster that he promotes as if reading off a list of signature foods from his native state and his adopted one: The governor digs a good Juicy Lucy, runzas, cinnamon rolls dunked in chili, cookie salad and, as noted, hot dish (sometimes condensed into one word, hotdish, as if careful not to violate our personal space).

To date, the reported sample of Walz’s favourite foods is so small – and seemingly so well-curated – that I find it hard separate the truth from the pandering. I don’t believe for a second that the man’s appetite is as colourless as he would lead us to believe in his sit-down with Harris this month. You know the conversation: the one in which Walz said he likes “white guy tacos,” with ground beef, cheese and apparently zero seasonings, Old El Paso or otherwise.

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“They said to be careful and let her know this: That black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota,” Walz told the vice president. To my mind, Walz was just playing the role he was assigned in this campaign-minded exchange: Coach Vanilla against Harris’s Chili Queen.

Yet, for a few days, the interview fueled the MAGA outrage machine, which revved its engines for sensitive White guys unable to differentiate a joke from the truth.

For me, the conversation simply contributed to the general murkiness around Walz’s dietary life. I don’t have a real sense yet what whets the governor’s appetite. Most of the foods he has name-checked are not designed for daily consumption, and I’d venture a guess that Walz can’t secure a runza within 100 miles of the governor’s mansion. Which is probably why he was so happy to wrap his hands around one of these Volga German meat pockets at a recent campaign stop in Omaha. As a fellow Nebraska native, I understand: I know the warm, bone-deep nostalgia of biting into a runza after a long dry spell.

Russian-inspired meat pockets aside, I also believe that Walz stands firmly for Diet Mountain Dew, the much-maligned soda that glows like Ghostbusters slime. The Star Tribune reported that Walz doesn’t drink coffee or alcohol, the latter because of a drunken-driving arrest in 1995. “His beverage of choice is Diet Mountain Dew, lots of it,” the paper noted. The drink unlocks a small insight about Walz: He seems to have a raging sweet tooth, gauging by a soda formulated with aspartame, said to be 200 times sweeter than sugar.

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The governor would seem to come naturally to his embrace of hot dish: His wife, Gwen Walz, is a native of Minnesota, where hot dish has been a way of life for multiple generations (though its popularity is waning among younger Minnesotans, I’m told). His affection for the dish, then, is as much an act of love as it is a political necessity.

Hot dish can be tricky to define. The documentary “Minnesota Hotdish: A Love Story” – the most charming film you’ll ever watch about a casserole – quotes a pair of authorities who say that, in most cases, the dish has a protein and a starch, bound together by “some kind of sauce.” It could be a tomato, cream of mushroom or a cheddar cheese sauce – or some combination. “It may have a vegetable,” says Rae Katherine Eighmey, one of the authors of “Potluck Paradise.” The dish also tends to be topped with buttered breadcrumbs or Tater Tots to give the creamy concoction a little crunch.

On the other hand, Lee Svitak Dean, who served as a food writer and editor for the Star Tribune for four decades, says she subscribes to author Beatrice Ojakangas’s formula for hot dish, which boldly embraces vegetables as a primary component. The kind of veg can vary, Dean says. Hot dish can feature onions, celery, green beans, carrots or corn. I should note, however, that it typically does not include peas, as Walz discovered when he tweeted a photo of his Tater Tot hot dish in 2022, complete with the green little buggers. “Might not be able to vote for someone who puts peas and carrots in hot dish,” one commenter scolded.

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Hot dish, as the documentary explains, can trace its roots to World War I, when the federal government asked Americans to cut back on protein so more of the available meat supply could be shipped to soldiers on the front lines. It led to a starch-and-veg heavy dish known as hot pot. The name and preparation evolved into hot dish somewhere between the big wars, and perhaps because it was created in a time of austerity, the dish has made room for American convenience foods: condensed soups, canned vegetables and, when they became widely available in the mid-1950s, Tater Tots, arguably the greatest thing ever made from scraps.

Walz’s award-winning hot dish from 2014 – I should point out that he won the Minnesota Congressional contest three times with different recipes – didn’t take the convenience-foods path toward victory. I mean, other than the cobblestone path of tots atop the casserole. His recipe is contradictory in its complexity: It’s not self-consciously hip, like the deconstructed version that once graced the menu at the now-closed Haute Dish in Minneapolis. It’s also not kitschy-fun, like the hot dish on a stick (with cream of mushroom dipping sauce) at the Minnesota State Fair.

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No, this recipe is sneakier than that. It conceals its sophistication in a hot dish that, on the surface, looks like the kind you’d find at any old church-basement supper. In this sense, Walz’s recipe feels Midwestern to its core. It reminds me of a phrase that was repeated often enough in my youth that it became not a directive, but a way of life: Don’t put on airs. The governor’s hot dish doesn’t put on airs – it doesn’t dare draw attention to the French techniques that give this thing its transcendent creaminess, transforming an austerity meal into something rich and delicious.

Yet seen from a different angle, Walz’s hot dish is something else altogether: It’s cutthroat. It’s a giant slayer. It’s a recipe that, desperately, wants to win. Whoever helped the governor put together this dish – and I’ve been trying to figure out who – knew what they were doing. The recipe is rock solid, down to the last grain of salt. Perhaps this bodes well for Walz’s ability not just to win an election, but to find the right people to help him win.

Given what I had learned, it was interesting to me that in July, as the leading vice-presidential candidates were pressing their cases to join the Harris ticket, Walz did not give his social media followers the recipe to his 2014 hot dish. Instead, he served up an “award-winning recipe” for Tim Walz’s New Ulm Hotdish. Its ingredient list includes brats, garlic powder, two kinds of canned soup and tots. I made this version, too. It’s thin and clunky. It’s not in the same league as the 2014 hot dish.

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This switcheroo would seem to say something about Walz, too: Maybe he wanted to ease newbies into hot dish with a recipe that didn’t require as much time and labor in the kitchen? Was he being considerate, or lacking faith that his followers would embrace a more difficult task? Did he just not have the 2014 recipe available in shareable form?

Yet, I suspect, the likeliest explanation is this: Walz feared the 2014 recipe would come off as too highfalutin for someone who wants to be seen as a man of the people.

Adding tots to Tim Walz’s Tater Tot Hotdish. Photo by Scott Suchman and Carolyn Robb /The Washington Post

Tim Walz’s Tater Tot Hotdish

8 to 10 servings (makes about 12 cups)

Active time: 50 mins; Total time: 1 hour 35 mins

Tater Tot Hotdish is a beloved upper Midwest staple, and this version comes from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick. The recipe was a first place champion at the annual Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Off in 2014. We kept the original recipe mostly intact, but replaced blanched green beans with frozen ones and used just one skillet to cook the components, reducing the number of dirty dishes. To save time, you can prep some of the ingredients, including chopping the mushrooms, while other components, such as the turkey and bacon, cook.

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Make ahead: The assembled hot dish, minus the Tater Tots and final sprinkle of cheese, can be covered and refrigerated for up to 1 day in advance.

Storage: Refrigerate for up to 4 days; reheat in a 350-degree oven until warmed through.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground turkey, preferably 85 to 93 percent lean

1 large egg

1 garlic clove, minced or finely grated

1/2 cup chopped scallions (4 to 6 scallions)

1 teaspoon fine salt, divided

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed

1/2 teaspoon dried ground sage

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 (1-pound) package frozen cut green beans (no need to defrost; see Variations)

4 slices bacon (4 ounces)

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

1 1/2 cups (3 1/2 ounces) chopped cremini mushroom caps

1/3 cup all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

2 1/2 cups whole or reduced-fat milk

1/2 cup half-and-half

1/4 cup chopped yellow or white onion

12 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded, divided (about 3 cups; see Notes)

1 (32-ounce) package Tater Tots (no need to defrost)

STEPS

In a medium bowl, mix together the turkey, egg, garlic, scallions, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, the pepper and sage. In a large (12-inch) skillet over medium heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the turkey mixture and cook, stirring occasionally and breaking the meat up with a wooden spoon, until browned and no pink remains, 6 to 8 minutes. (While the turkey mixture is cooking, wash and dry the bowl you just used.) Transfer the turkey mixture to the now-clean bowl and add the green beans.

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Wipe out the skillet and return it to medium heat. Line a large plate with towels and set it near your work space. Add the bacon to the skillet and cook, turning over as needed, until crisp, 8 to 10 minutes. Adjust the heat as needed to prevent the bacon from burning. Transfer the bacon to the prepared plate, let cool completely, then coarsely chop. Using a slotted spoon, add the bacon to the bowl with the turkey and green beans, leaving the bacon grease in the skillet, and gently mix to combine. Transfer the mixture to a 9-by-13-by-2-inch baking dish and spread in an even layer.

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees.

While the bacon is cooling, return the skillet with the bacon grease to medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter and once it’s melted and the foam begins to subside, add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until they release their liquid and it evaporates and the mushrooms brown, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer the mushrooms to a small bowl.

Return the skillet to medium heat. Add the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter and let it melt. Evenly sprinkle the flour into the butter and whisk to incorporate. Cook, stirring constantly, until the flour is cooked out and the roux is light brown, about 2 minutes. Slowly whisk in the milk and half-and-half, and cook, whisking constantly, until steam starts to rise off the surface of the mixture and it thickens to the consistency of heavy cream, 2 to 4 minutes. Add the cooked mushrooms, onion and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and season to taste with pepper. Cook, stirring, until well combined, about 1 minute. Add about 2 1/2 cups (10 ounces) of the cheese and cook, stirring constantly, until melted and the mixture is thick and uniform, about 1 minute, then remove from the heat.

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Pour the cheese mixture evenly over the turkey mixture in the baking dish. Arrange the Tater Tots over the top, then sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup (2 ounces) of cheese. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbling around the edges. Remove from the oven and let sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

Variations: If you prefer to blanch your own green beans instead of using frozen, bring a large pot of water to a boil, add the green beans and cook until crisp-tender and bright green, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain well, and transfer to a large bowl of ice water. Once cool, thoroughly drain and add to the turkey mix mixture.

Notes: Do not use pre-shredded cheese, as the cheese has anti-clumping additives that can yield a grainy result.

Nutrition per serving (scant 1 1/4 cups, using reduced-fat milk), based on 10: 541 calories, 27g carbohydrates, 112mg cholesterol, 36g fat, 3g fiber, 26g protein, 16g saturated fat, 1166mg sodium, 6g sugar

This analysis is an estimate based on available ingredients and this preparation. It should not substitute for a dietitian’s or nutritionist’s advice.

Adapted from Tim Walz’s recipe in the Star Tribune.

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