(calm music)
Hi, I'm Becky Striepe from Glue & Glitter
and today I'm going to show you
how to make frozen tater tots in your air fryer.
This is a question I get a lot
and I thought why not just throw together
a quick video about it so I can show everyone how to do it.
The first thing to keep in mind
when you're making frozen tater tots in an air fryer
is that there are a couple of simple dos and don'ts.
So let's get into those first.
Really, there's one do and one don't.
Don't overfill your basket.
The way that an air fryer works
is that hot circulating air cooks your food quickly.
If you overfill your basket more than,
I would say more than halfway,
the air is not going to be able to circulate
and your food is not going to cook evenly
and that goes for tater tots
just as it would for anything else.
The important do to keep in mind is do shake.
The more tots you have in your basket,
the more often you should shake.
If you are filling it up halfway, I would stop and shake it
maybe twice during the cooking process,
maybe even three times depending on how busy you are.
The reason that shaking is important
is actually related to the reason
that you don't wanna overfill your basket.
You wanna shake because when you do that,
you're moving the tots from the middle of the air fryer
to the outside and the ones from the outside,
and the ones from the outside are going to move in.
Moving those around a couple of times,
it's just like when you turn something while it's baking,
you're gonna allow things to cook evenly.
If you don't shake enough times,
you'll end up with cold tater tots in the center,
maybe mushy tater tots in the center
and you'll end up with overcooked
or maybe perfectly cooked ones on the outside
but you want all your tater tots to be perfectly cooked.
So don't overfill your basket
and do remember to shake a couple of times at least
during the cooking process
depending on how much you filled your basket.
More food in the basket,
more shaking times is the general rule.
All right, so let's get into making some tater tots, y'all.
These are just some frozen tater tots
straight out of my freezer and I make tater tots so often
that I actually know the cooking time by heart.
If you need a refresher though,
you can always look on the back of the package.
When you're cooking anything frozen
including tater tots in your air fryer,
you wanna cook it at the same temperature
or as close as you can get for half the time.
So these, I think they say 450
but air fryers usually only go up to 400
so you'll cook them at 400
and the cooking time is 18 to 21 minutes.
So I'm gonna go half of the 20 and do 400 for 10 minutes.
For most tater tots,
that cooking time is gonna work perfectly.
You can always start with that.
You'll be shaking anyway so you can check for doneness
in case you need to stop early
although I don't think that you will
but if you're cooking a lot of tater tots,
you may have to add a few minutes of cooking time at the end
if things are looking a little underdone.
You can just kinda test a few tots
and see if you feel some that aren't nice and hot
or aren't feeling nice and crispy on the outside,
just stick it back into your air fryer
at the same temperature, 400,
for maybe one to three more minutes depending
and you should be good to go.
All right, so let's get these tater tots going, y'all.
Just slide the basket right in
and the first thing I'll do is turn it on
then raise the temperature to 400
and then take the time down to 10 minutes and hit Start
and that's really all you need to do.
Just let it cook.
Give it a shake every I'd say three to four minutes
depending on how many tots you put in here.
I just did a couple of servings
so I'll just shake it once or twice and when it is done,
you'll have perfect, crispy, beautiful tater tots.
It's very important that you don't keep your air fryer
right up against the wall.
This is because there's a vent in the back here
and that vent is where the hot air that's circulating
is coming back out of the air fryer
and I have melted an outlet cover
by having that vent too close to the wall outlet.
That doesn't mean that you need to bring this
onto your kitchen table or something.
Just pull it as far out to the edge of the counter
as you feel comfortable with and you'll be fine.
Just a few inches of extra space is all you need
to avoid melting an outlet cover.
If you do melt your outlet cover,
they're pretty cheap to replace
so it's not the end of the world
but it is something I want you to keep in mind
because I'd rather you not have to do that.
The other thing I did wanna mention
about making frozen tots in the air fryer
is that I don't want you to think
that you're not eating fried food when you do this.
Not that the air fryer is actually frying.
It's really like convection baking
but frozen tater tots just like frozen French fries
are deep fried before they are frozen
unless the package specifies otherwise
but if the package doesn't say,
you're buying a deep fried product.
What you aren't doing is deep frying it twice
so it's definitely healthier
than if you were to bust open that package
and deep fry them again
but don't think that you're making baked tater tots
when you do this.
If you want baked tater tots,
generally you have to make them from scratch
or look for a brand that doesn't fry them
but bakes them before they get frozen.
And cooking time is up.
Let's check out these tots, y'all.
Look how beautiful they are.
And that's it.
Perfect tater tots in 10 minutes.
I hope that this video has answered all of your questions
about how to cook frozen tater tots in the air fryer.
If you do have any questions
that I didn't address in this video,
feel free to drop them in the comments.
I'm happy to help. And don't forget to rate and subscribe.
Happy cooking!
(calm music)