John Wayne Casserole with Tater Tots Recipes

Casseroles come in many combinations, but none are more famous than the John Wayne Casserole. This casserole takes frozen tater tots and turns them into a hearty meal. This means there are many John Wayne casserole with tater tots recipes to try.

Make dinner more fun for the whole family with the help of one of the best John Wayne casserole with tater tots recipes. You may come across different names for this casserole when you search for it online.

Some people call it a cowboy casserole, while others call it a simple tater tot casserole. However, the correct name will always be the John Wayne casserole. You may be wondering why a casserole dish is named after famed actor John Wayne.

The answer is easy: John Wayne created this original recipe himself. However, we owe thanks to a woman named Cara Connery. Connery was going through a tough time; a number of her friends and family were dying of cancer.

Connery wanted to help but couldn’t think of a way until it hit her. She put together a collection of celebrity recipes into a single cookbook. The goal was to raise as much money as possible for the American Cancer Society.

John Wayne was among these celebrities, and his recipe would use simple ingredients to make something amazing. In fact, the original John Wayne casserole recipe was a hearty casserole that included eggs and cheese but not much else.

The green chilies were part of the mix, but there were no biscuits, and the ground beef mixture was completely absent. Basically, the recipe John Wayne turned in to Connery was a classic breakfast casserole.

Of course, the book was published in 1979, meaning the recipe has undergone decades of facelifts, just like famous people do to stay looking young. This is how we ended up with a variety of John Wayne casserole with tater tots recipes to try.

John Wayne Casserole with Tater Tots Recipes

What was in the original John Wayne casserole recipe? This recipe had humble beginnings and didn’t feel like a dinner recipe. It had diced green chiles, Monterey jack cheese, cheddar cheese, eggs, flour, salt, pepper, and fresh tomatoes.

The question is, when did it turn into a hamburger casserole? The recipe seems very simple and almost like a breakfast recipe without the ground beef and the biscuit base. In fact, biscuits aren’t always a part of the plan, either.

Some easy casserole recipes use tater tots instead of biscuits. Some recipes utilize a large skillet, while others require a preheated oven. There are even some recipes that use ground turkey, though most will utilize ground beef like in slow cooker John Wayne casserole.

Slow cookers may be the way to go, especially when you know you have a week filled with busy weeknights ahead of you.

Slow Cooker John Wayne Casseroles

The best John Wayne casserole with tater tots recipes may just be the ones you don’t have to monitor. Slow cookers or crockpots do the heavy lifting while we go about our days.

We will need brown ground beef before creating those layers of ground beef and shredded cheese. Still, this is the way to go for busy evenings. We can use an easy crockpot John Wayne casserole recipe to create a meal big enough to share.

The leftover casserole can be used for easily reheated meals. Making this recipe a tater tot instead of a biscuit casserole helps with that as well. We won’t be dealing with soggy bread mixed in, and there will be no soggy biscuit dough.

Instead, we will have potatoes that can be enjoyed crispy or mashed. In fact, a slow cooker John Wayne casserole recipe makes the perfect family dinner. In fact, it will indeed become one of your family favorite casseroles to enjoy.

John Wayne Casserole Oven Recipes

The slow cooker can help us make delicious John Wayne casserole with tater tots recipes. However, the oven can also do the job. In this oven-baked John Wayne casserole recipe, we can make a cheesy casserole filled with cream of mushroom soup’s flavor.

The full instructions are simple: add the ingredients to a prepared baking dish, bake for a bit, and enjoy. The whole thing takes minimal effort, and the results are tasty. We can even combine some variations of this recipe to make it our own.

Add things like black beans or a packet of taco seasoning instead for an utterly different-tasting casserole. There are few things that bacon can’t make better, as proven in this version of an oven-baked cowboy casserole recipe.

The possibilities are truly endless. That’s right, John Wayne, famous for being a cowboy in Western movies, has a casserole named after himself and his career.

Cowboy Casserole Recipes

What is the difference between John Wayne casserole with tater tots recipes and cowboy casserole recipes? The most obvious answer is nothing. In fact, the John Wayne casserole recipe with tater tots that we find most commonly has nothing to do with the original, not on paper.

However, some might say that calling the casserole a cowboy casserole is more fitting. Take this easy ground beef casserole recipe as an example. The recipe doesn’t have a single egg in sight, though the original relied heavily on eggs.

The main dish is very different but still goes by the same name. It is hard to tell when and where the casserole transformed. Now, there are plenty of recipes for the tater tot version, like this tater tot casserole recipe that uses chicken instead of ground beef.

Time is all it takes for a recipe to be completely changed as it is passed down from generation to generation. Maybe John Wayne would appreciate the newer versions of his famous, homemade cowboy casserole by any name. 

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