An Alternative to Sonic Chili Cheese Tots

One of my favorite 'junk food' things to eat is Extreme Tots from Sonic.  If you aren't familiar with that, it is tater tots in a foot long hot dog container that are topped with chili, cheese, onions, and jalapenos.  Oh my goodness, just thinking about it makes me smile.

It's not very good for you, though.  In fact, my wife would tell you that it is more toxic than week old chicken salad in an unplugged refrigerator.  So we're going to make our own, from mostly homegrown and homemade stuff. 

First, we start out with some freshly dug new potatoes.  We store these in the 'mud room,' a room that we kick our shoes off in when we come in the house.  Potatoes are supposed to be stored in a cool, dark place.  This little room has it's own air conditioning vent and we keep the door closed, so it fits the bill nicely.


Potato Storage Room

We pull out a handful or two of nice potatoes and wash them up.  You aren't supposed to wash them prior to storage as you want them dry in order to avoid rotting, so you wash them when you're ready to cook them.  Once they are washed, cut them into manageable pieces.  Chop, chop, chop...

Red and white potatoes

In one of the few things advertised on TV that I've ever seen Tricia buy, this is it.  A vegetable mandolin that chops, dices, slices, and cubes anything you put in it, including your fingers if you aren't careful.  Tricia pulled it out and put the cut up potatoes on the rack, pressed down the handle and it chopped the potatoes into little blocks - tater tot sized, you might say.  The mandolin is a pretty nifty little kitchen gadget.  I'm still more partial to the mandolin musical instrument though.  Bruce Hornsby might tell you to listen to the mandolin rain.


The mandolin

Here are the cut up potatoes right out of the mandolin.


Tater tot sized

We toss them in some olive oil and arrange on some stoneware baking pans and put them into the oven to roast.  You could add any number of herbs at this point.  We generally add a bunch of rosemary along with the olive oil to roast.  The flavor is great, but for our meal tonight, we'll just go with some olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper.

One thing about kitchen gadgets is the clean up.  You know what I'm talking about.  So while we have it out, we'll use it for something else.  We have a lot of tomatoes and jalapenos coming out of the garden right now, so we'll use it to dice up a bunch of tomatoes, jalapenos, and onions to make some Pico de Gallo to put on top of our tots.

Chop, chop, chop

Add some lemon juice and salt and pepper to the container.  During the winter and early spring, we have a lot of cilantro that we harvest and freeze in ice cube trays.  Add a cube or two of cilantro to the tomatoes, onions, peppers, lemon juice, and salt and pepper.


Adding cilantro

And here we have it, folks, some homemade Pico de Gallo.  I could eat this whole bowl.  The name means beak of the rooster in Spanish.  Who knows why it is called that?  I read somewhere that people used to eat it by pinching it between their thumb and index finger, like the beak of a rooster.  Odd, I know.  We eat ours on chips or with a fork.

Pico de Gallo

Ahh!  The potatoes are done.  We'll go ahead and pull them out of the oven and we have chili all made.  So we can say grace to ask the Good Lord to bless this good food and we can start serving...


Hot Potatoes right outta the oven!

It may not look like it, but this is a monstrous pile of food on my plate.  Tricia looked at it as we sat down and remarked, "Going on a trip?"  It has many layers of good items layered in there: roasted potatoes, chili, fresh pico de gallo, and some grated homemade cheese from Rosie's milk on top. 


Extreme Tots - Our Maker's Acres Edition

We enjoyed our meal.  It was delicious.  Sorry Sonic, we made our own Extreme Tots tonight!