My homemade tater tots (AJC Staff)

At least it is according to Twitter and Facebook, which means it must be true. Here’s a story about the natural history of Tater Tots that I wrote two years ago.

The Tater Tot held its debutante ball, fittingly, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. The swooping post-modern structure had itself just debuted in 1954, signaling the country’s interest in new forms, new conveniences, new luxuries — all financed with infusions of postwar cash.

The coming-out event wasn’t actually a dance in honor of a frozen food, but rather a breakfast at the National Potato Convention being held at the hotel. One attendee — F. Nephi “Neef” Grigg of Ore-Ida Foods in Idaho — had smuggled in a satchel of what would be his greatest invention.

As Grigg recalls in his papers, he “bribed … the head cook … and arranged to have the Tater Tots cooked, placed in small saucers and distributed on the breakfast tables for sample treats.”

The response?

“They were gobbled up, ” Grigg wrote, “faster than a dead cat could wag its tail.”

Half a century later, the gobbling of Tater Tots continues unabated — to the tune of more than 3.6 billion annually. Grigg’s solution for using up scrap generated from the processing of frozen french fries has become an iconic American food — snack, side dish, object of adoration. Each successive generation deepens our appreciation.

For baby boomers, the presence of Tater Tots signaled a happy equation in the school cafeteria: Tater Tots + Ketchup = Bliss. For Generation X, they became a ubiquitous comfort food — the stuff of casseroles, fish-stick Fridays and midnight munchies.

Now, a younger generation promotes Tater Tots as hipster bar food. The ultra-chill Clocked in Athens serves its tots as cocktail bites with blue cheese dip. The Vortex in Midtown hosts a monthly “Boozer Doodle and Tater Tot Extravaganza, ” in which would-be artists sketch burlesque dancers, drink to excess and help themselves to the endless single-item buffet. (As often as not, they sketch fetishized images of the tots; some can be viewed here).

This generation also has definitively dropped the “tater.” Following the example set by Napoleon Dynamite, the movies’ patron saint of awkward youth, these fried snacks have become “tots” tout court in common parlance.

Fill it with foie gras

Once a popular food earns its retro cachet these days, the fine dining crowd can’t be far behind. Don’t believe it? Michel Richard — the great chef at Citronelle in Washington — has five little words to shake your soul:

“Tater Tot foie gras ravioli!” the chef exclaims by telephone. “I make the Tater Tot mixture, fill it with foie gras and then saute it until it crisps. They’re wonderful.”

Fancy stuff aside, the French-born chef professes a fondness for the freezer-bag variety of this ultimate American bite in all its plainspoken goodness.

“I love Tater Tots like you get in a burger joint, ” enthuses Richard. “They’re crunchy and crispy on the outside, and creamy and moist inside. Mmmmm.”

So enamored was Richard of the little potato snacks that developing a technique to duplicate (if not improve) them has become a long and evolving professional project. The very first recipe in his James Beard Award-winning cookbook “Happy in the Kitchen” (Artisan, $45) — an homage called Spuddies — binds potato cubes with gelatin, which melts when fried. Creamy and crisp, but not exactly tot for tat.

So Richard abandoned that technique for a better one that, in fact, echoes the industrial process perfected by Grigg a half-century earlier. He barely steams Yellow Finn potato cubes, then packs them into a mold to cool, letting the expressed potato starch do the binding. He cuts the chilled mixture into bites and fries them twice — once at a moderate temperature to cook them through and then again at a high temperature to crisp the outsides. Creamier, crisper.

On menus high and low

Closer to home, some Atlanta chefs also make their own potato bites, though they stop short of dropping in handfuls of black Perigord truffle as Richard is wont to do. Gary Donlick at Pano’s & Paul’s prepares nutmeg-scented potato bites that he serves with wild mushrooms and strip steak. Ron Eyester of Food 101 in Morningside has fashioned crab-filled tots as an appetizer.

Yet the cultish surge in appreciation lies not in the whims of a few creative chefs but in the fact that so many drinking holes and joints have discovered that a hot, salty, greasy basket of tater goodness is the way to diners’ hearts.

“There’s something about that chemical tang of vegetable oil sliding down your throat that’s so addictive, ” says a thoughtful Hillary Brown, the 30-year-old restaurant critic for Athens’ Flagpole newspaper.

The Vortex tries to go the deep-fat fryer one better and serves a messy heap of chili-cheese tots, though this bodacious heap — neither crunchy nor creamy — offers little beyond ballast.

With recipes, texture must be the first consideration. Tater Tots can never be a food of the moment like chili-cheese fries, nachos or still-popping Rice Krispies enjoying their first contact with milk.

No, as millions of Midwesterners can attest, Tater Tots show a gentler side to their personality when smothered and baked. Tater Tot hot dish appeals for its pillowy, potato-y insides as much as its crisp surface.

Always popular

Consider the “Tomminator” — an amalgam of tots and Brunswick stew sheathed in a thick cloak of melted cheese that has become the signature dish at Fox Bros. BBQ in Inman Park. It is fine when fresh from the kitchen, but distressingly delicious after five minutes when the tots have surrendered all integrity. Sheila Devaney of Chapel Hill, N.C., says the vegetarian Tater Tot casserole she learned to make while living in Georgia “is always the first thing gone when you bring it to a potluck at work. But if there’s any left, it’s even better the next day for breakfast.” Not content with casseroles, a growing subculture of home cooks has begun shredding potatoes and hand-forming their own tots — debating Richard’s recipe along with a number of others floating on cooking Web sites.

Devaney considers such efforts ridiculous, if not anathema to the essential appeal of Tater Tots: their ubiquity. “Why would you ever make your own?” she gasps in disbelief. “Just go to our friends at Ore-Ida. They can hook you up!”

Note: References to Tater Tots and tots are used with permission from the H.J. Heinz Co.

TOTS TRIVIA

• Before F. Nephi Grigg invented the Tater Tot, Ore-Ida used its potato scraps as cattle feed.
• The first test marketing consisted of an Ore-Ida executive traveling the country to hand out samples and play the ukulele while people ate.
• The alliterative name was coined with the help of a thesaurus and, yes, it’s a registered trademark. There are many fried potato snacks but — hail! — only one Tater Tots.
• The Idaho Legislature passed a resolution in 2005 commending the “Napoleon Dynamite” filmmakers that reads, in part: “tater tots (sic) feature prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho’s most famous export.”
• Ore-Ida, a subsidiary of H.J. Heinz, produces several varieties, including onion Tater Tots and mini-Tater Tots.

HOMEMADE TATER TOTS

I know what you’re thinking: “Why would any right-minded person make Tater Tots?”

Soundness of mind has little to do with this particular recipe quest. For many it starts as more of a craft project along the lines of building a gingerbread house or tiling a shower stall.

But you know what? Those homemade tots are not only hilarious but also compulsively delicious, particularly once you get the bright idea to bury a bit of cheese in the center.

So how does one make the transition from tater to tot? It can be a little tricky because cut potatoes weep liquid and starch, particularly once salt enters the equation.

Chef Michel Richard of Citronelle in Washington tried out a number of novel techniques before he hit paydirt. He starts by cutting potatoes into fine dice on a mandoline. He quickly steams these potato pieces until they express their starch and packs them into a mold to chill. He can then portion his tots and double fry them until they’re crisp on the outside and creamy within.

I’ve developed a thoroughly different technique, detailed in the recipe at right, that rids the potato pieces of all their expressed starch and moisture, rendering them easier to hand form into those familiar spool shapes. I may not go tot for tot against Richard, but my method is fairly easy to accomplish in a home kitchen.

Basic Potato Bites

8 servings (6 tots apiece); Hands on: 30 minutes; Total time: 1 hour

If you want to freeze these tots, fry them first until they have taken on some color and plumped. Then you can fry them a second time, frozen, until they fully brown and crisp. If you want a little onion flavor, use dehydrated granules rather than fresh onion.

• 3 to 4 large baking potatoes, peeled
• 1 heaping teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon granulated onion (optional)
• 2 to 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• Vegetable oil, for frying

Shred the potatoes into a large mixing bowl using the shredder attachment on your food processor. You should end up with 4 to 5 cups of potato shreds. Fill the bowl with water and rinse, changing the water 3 or 4 times until it runs clear. Drain the shreds. Fit your food processor with a blade and pulse the shreds, in small batches, to chop them. Place the chopped bits on a sheet pan in a pile and add the salt and optional onion, and work this seasoning in with your fingers. Spread the bits out on the sheet pan and let rest for 5 minutes. Tip out any juices that have collected in the pan. Squeeze the bits, in handfuls, over the sink to rid them of additional moisture. Spread the cornstarch over the potatoes and work it in with your fingers. A handful of the mixture should hold its shape when squeezed in your hand.

Line a sheet pan with wax paper. Form the tots with gentle pressure in your hands (you’ll get the hang of it quickly). Line them on the sheet pan. When finished, place the pan in the freezer and freeze for 30 minutes, just until the surface has hardened.

Fry the tots submerged in oil heated to 375 degrees. If they stick to the bottom at first, let them brown before gently scraping them free with a steel spatula. Remove when golden brown — about 4 minutes.

Variation: Goat tots. These fantastic bites ooze soft, tangy goat cheese. Prepare the cheese by rolling 1/2 teaspoon portions of it into balls between your palms. Form the tots around these balls and proceed as directed above. One 4-ounce log will suffice.

Per serving: 142 calories (percent of calories from fat, 57), 1 gram protein, 14 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram fiber, 9 grams fat (1 gram saturated), no cholesterol, 271 milligrams sodium.