Sometimes, you just want the traditional ingredient

After eating a favorite of my Minnesota childhood, tater tot hotdish, while visiting at the in-laws' recently (my sister-in-law Katie made it), I had a hankering for it again when I got home.
At its most basic, this casserole (casseroles are known as "hotdish" in Minnesota) is ground meat (usually beef) in a dish with some mixed vegetables held together with a sauce of condensed cream of mushroom soup (straight from the can) and topped with frozen tater tots, which brown on top while the casserole mixture underneath is getting up to bubbling heat in the oven.

But hey, I'm in Illinois, where even the mixed vegetables are optional (so I'm told by a co-worker who knows this dish from his rural Illinois childhood), so why not have a different option for the meat? And why does it have to be cream of mushroom soup? Couldn't I make a perfectly good nondairy white sauce to serve the purpose of holding the casserole together?

The answer to "why does it have to be cream of mushroom soup?" is that it's easy. And as for the question about making white sauce myself, well, my sister-in-law did so for hers. And yes, yes I can make a perfectly serviceable white sauce that holds stuff together just fine. I do it all the time at work. Did I do it this time? No. And I won't go blaming the nondairy milk. I'll blame failing to measure out how much milk I was putting in the pan. I had too much liquid for the amount of starch I used, and I ended up with a sauce that was too loose, entirely unlike the consistency of condensed soup. My sauce was like sauce, nothing like the congealed mass that holds its shape while squooging out of the can. I'll also blame not having mushrooms. Didn't have them on the grocery list. I think I'd have liked the hotdish much better with mushrooms instead of the small amount of grated cheddar I desperately added to give the sauce a bit more flavor and body.

Why not have a different option for the meat? Well, no real reason, unless you're very attached to the flavor of browned ground beef. If I had been thinking straight when making the grocery list, I would have used ground turkey, but instead I decided to go out on a limb entirely and borrow a meat substitute option I learned from a vegan enchilada recipe on the New York Times website: crumbled tofu, cooked until it is browned and chewy.

The browned tofu has excellent texture, but I missed part of the lesson of the vegan enchilada recipe: the tofu needs to be heavily seasoned. I went straight from browning tofu to cooking vegetables and white sauce in the same oil. And I wasn't even patient enough to fully brown the tofu this time around. The flavor of my casserole is, as a result, a bit thin, despite my additions of other spices and herbs to the sauce. With every bite of tofu, I was wishing I had used meat.

Fortunately, I was not tempted to also spend the time and effort making my own tater tots, although this guy can tell you how.

I think I can revisit this process sometime after I've finished off the leftovers of the disappointing hotdish and try again to make a low-fat, possibly even still vegetarian version.

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