with this spoon.

- [Claire] Correct.

- There's no, she's not doing this for any particular

reason for the episode,

she's just doing--

- The spoon's gonna be gone now.

- How do I do it?

- I would go this way.

[upbeat music]

- No!

Ah!

Hey everyone, I'm Claire.

We're in the BA Test Kitchen

and today I'm making gourmet

Tater Tots.

This makes it look like I've already made them

and that's mine, and that's the original.

Because they're on identical plates.

- [Producer] That's a wrap.

- [chuckles] Right, I'm done.

I don't know of a single person

who doesn't unequivocally love Tater Tots.

Myself included.

It's a perfect food.

What is more delightful in the world

than a Tater Tot?

Of all the Gourmet Makes in history,

there's no difference in enjoyment

when I'm an adult as when I was a kid.

They're still incredible as ever.

First of all, potato.

One of the greatest foods in the world.

So versatile, so delicious.

So satisfying.

And then a Tater Tot might be

one of the finest expressions of potato.

People say Tater Tots to mean all different brands,

but technically Tater Tot is a trademark

of Ore-Ida Potato Company.

A Tater Tot is shredded potato.

I don't really know.

I don't know how they make them.

But they're somehow bound together and fried

in little tiny nuggets.

They're so good.

I mean, they look the same frozen.

So that kind of makes me feel like

in the Tater Tot factory, they're more par-fried.

But they also at the same time hold together so well.

They're also uniform.

They're just so good.

It's like the perfect amount of crispy outside,

crunchy soft kind of creamy inside.

They're just, I really wanna eat some.

Can I go get some ketchup?

I cannot eat these without Heinz ketchup.

I love ketchup so much.

They're perfect.

They're perfect.

It cannot be improved upon.

We should just, everyone take a plate and go home.

- What are you doing?

- [Claire] Tots.

Tater Tots.

Greatest food ever created.

- Yeah, agree.

- Like I could probably eat in one sitting

maybe like 45 Tater Tots.

They're so good.

- So fascinated.

It's like these weird pebbles

of seemingly like par-steamed potatoes

that then have almost like this slurry around them.

- I know.

Whatever the binding is is incredible.

What's more delightful than a fried potato?

- Nothing. - Nothing.

- You're gonna nail this in two days.

- Ooh, you think so?

- Yeah. - All right.

- Oh, Tater Tot casserole?

- What is the casserole, and then you just put

Tater Tots on top?

- I think it's traditionally beef, frozen mixed vegetables,

and cream of mushroom soup,

but then you top it with Tater Tots.

- Oh really?

- But we could do all scratch.

- If you make the filling.

- [Sohla] Yeah, I can do that.

- Is that a deal?

- Yeah. - Okay.

Ooh, I love this idea.

So you can see that there are distinct shreds of potato,

and a really thin, even, golden crust.

I think barrel is a good word to describe the shape.

They are kind of cylinders, but the cylinders

actually seem to have a little bit of dimension to them,

like there's sort of a flat side.

It's not a totally round cross-section,

if that makes sense.

I'm gonna clear this off because it's too annoying

to reach around these bags to eat them.

- You made these?

- No.

We started like five minutes ago.

- Oh, I don't know. - These are original.

The two plates is throwing every single person off.

- Here's what's so wonderful about Tots.

There's a whole world inside.

There's a lot of textural variants.

- Yes. - On the inside of the Tot.

You know I go look for Tots almost every day.

- Daily. - In the cafeteria.

- Mm-hmm.

Potatoes are fascinating.

- They're so cool.

So weird. - I know.

Tots.

I'm gonna take some measurements.

The length is three centimeters.

The diameter in one direction is 2.1 centimeters.

So we're just gonna call it two centimeters.

Um.

That's it.

That's the only dimensions, right?

I wanna try taking one apart

and separating out some of the pieces

to get an idea of particle size.

There's pieces like this that are a larger piece

and then there's also this size,

which is much, much smaller.

I feel like the pieces are shaggy

so that they're not smooth,

like if you were to look at this up close

it would have a very irregular texture.

You can sort of see that there's a coating.

The coating, it is a very sealed exterior.

Time for my favorite part, reading the ingredients.

Potatoes, vegetable oil blend, soybean and cottonseed,

salt, yellow corn flour, dextrose, sodium acid,

pyrophosphate, parenthesis to retain natural color

closed parenthesis, dehydrated onion,

sodium acid sulfate, natural flavor.

All right, there's a lot of interesting stuff there.

It's fascinating to me that there are things

that I've never heard of

that we haven't yet seen in Gourmet Makes.

We've never had any kind of compound

start with the prefix pyro.

It's to retain the color.

Potatoes, when you grate them,

I think it's an enzyme.

There's an enzyme in them that immediately makes them

start to turn brown, so makes sense that they're

putting something in here to prevent browning.

I would love to find out more about how they're made.

We're gonna go over to the computer

and do a little bit of research.

Go long, Dan.

No, I'm just kidding.

No, no don't.

No don't.

I'm gonna hit the light.

- [Dan] Let's do it.

- [Man] Do it!

- [laughing] That's too close to the computer.

What if I hit the light?

No, don't!

I thought you were throwing it back at me.

What?

- [Man] Nice.

- [Claire] [laughing] Is the internet not working?

Oh.

- [Man] Oh, you need that.

- Wifi.

There we go.

Tater Tots, or just Tots, created in 1953

when Ora-Ida founders were trying to figure out

what to do with leftover slivers of cut up potatoes.

They chopped up the slivers, okay chopped,

added flour and seasoning, then pushed the mash

through holes and sliced off

pieces of the extruded mixture, thus Tots were born.

All right.

I mean, that pretty much tells me how it's made.

- [Announcer] Tater Tots have appeared on the menus

of some of the finest restaurants in the country.

- [Claire] Oh, look at those.

- [Announcer] Like Chef David Kinch's

three Michelin star-rated Manresa

in Los Gatos California. - Manresa.

- I'm making fancy Tater Tots.

Sometimes they're called pommes paillasson.

- Okay, so that's David Kinch, famous chef.

And that is the potato preparation

that I was gonna make.

He said pommes paillasson, I think

and I don't really know how to spell that

so I'll have to do some research.

But this is, this is good stuff right here.

Okay, paillasson that's what he's saying.

David Kinch, pommes paillasson.

So let's see this.

[upbeat music]

Sorry, that's really loud.

- The fancy name is pommes paillasson.

It'll remind you of Tater Tots.

For this I'm just using regular russet potatoes.

- [Dan] This feels like cheating.

- The next thing I'm gonna do

is grate the potatoes. - Oh well.

So he is poaching raw potato in duck fat.

And then the starches are coming out

so that they get that gummy texture.

- Pommes paillasson.

Tater Tots on steroids.

- Some people say that that was cheating,

but I don't think so.

I like the idea of approaching Tater Tots

using sort of a classic method

based on sound potato cookery.

If that works, I think it could be a really neat way

to recreate a classic Ora-Ida Tater Tot.

- [Dan] Are you gonna feel refreshed

when you get back from vacation?

- I'm going on vacation.

I'm hoping to come back not sleep deprived,

having read several books, having not looked at my phone

or computer for a week, and just

completely born again.

[upbeat music]

Vacation's so great.

I hadn't taken a vacation in so long.

You know, you have to really make it a priority,

a vacation, otherwise you'll never do it.

That was my problem.

I feel great.

I wanna go back.

Take me back.

I remember where we left off.

So I can kind of get started right away.

[upbeat music]

I'm gonna go for it, I think.

The whole way through.

David Kinch cooked his potatoes in duck fat.

I'm just gonna use oil.

The potatoes are in water

because that prevents oxidation

so they don't brown.

And Rhoda's helping me put together the shredder

on the food processor.

There we go.

I'm only using oversized kitchen tools today, I've decided.

Does it make me look very small

because it's so big?

So this is, you take the blade out

and it has this little connector piece

that goes down where the blade connects

and this disc spins, and it's a really super fast shredder.

By the way, I feel like I should say something

about potatoes, which are that potatoes are

one of my favorite foods,

and in fact, in my mind, one of the most amazing

ingredients you could possibly work with.

So I think after I shred them, I'm going to pulse them

with the blade in the food processor to break them up

a little bit and leave some larger,

and then get some into smaller, finer bits.

They're amazing.

And they're so delicious.

And they get crispy, and they're creamy,