If you’re like the rest of us, you may have seen a few Minnesota hotdish posts in your feed lately. Why the sudden interest in a baked entree in the peak heat of summer? A resurfaced recipe from Minnesota governor and newly tapped vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has brought the regional dish into the national limelight.
Walz, it turns out, won the Minnesota congressional delegation’s hotdish competition for two years in a row when he was in the House of Representatives, first with his recipe for the bratwurst and cheddar-based New Ulm Hotdish in 2013, and then with his Turkey Trot Tater-Tot Hotdish in 2014. He then achieved a hotdish trifecta by winning again in 2016 with a Turkey Taco Tot Hotdish.
If you didn’t grow up eating them, you might be wondering why there’s such a hubbub. There are thousands of recipes online, TV recipe showdowns, art exhibits, and Minneapolis’ American Swedish Institute sells hotdish playing cards. You can even study their regional distribution on this unusually informative tea towel. So, who better to define them for us than TikTok’s finest Minnesota stan account, That Midwestern Mom, Amber Estenson?
In Midwestern parlance, says Estenson when she spoke to TODAY.com, “a casserole is the dish the food is baked in.”
“Casseroles can be hotdishes but a hotdish does not have to be in a casserole to be a hotdish,” she says, explaining that a Minnesota hotdish could be cooked on the stovetop, like her mom’s noodles with beef and tomato.
It’s common for bloggers to claim that there must be something crunchy on top of an authentic hotdish, but Estenson says that’s not always true.
“The biggest difference (between a casserole and a hotdish) is that it has to be a complete meal. It has a vegetable, and meat, and a starch and some kind of creamy substance to pull it all together, like cream of something soup.” Although a few recipes use processed cheese or a tomato base instead, the sauce is a critical component. “If you call something a dry hotdish, it’s an insult!” she laughs.
“Casseroles are usually hotdishes — a Tater Tot casserole and a Tater Tot hotdish are basically the same thing — but we’re never going to call green bean casserole a hotdish, because it’s a side. If you think of Hamburger Helper, that’s a one pot meal, so it’s a hotdish. Well, there’s not always a vegetable in Hamburger Helper, but you can count the onions!”
We asked Estenson about one of the most important aspects for outsiders to learn: grammar and usage. She says she has seen both “hot dish” and “hotdish,” but feels the one-word version better reflects its status as an archetype. It’s even a collective, irregular plural, like sheep.
“If you’re physically in a space with a lot of different dishes on a table, you can say ‘hotdishes,’” says Estenson, but “if you’re talking about it as a category, it’s ‘hotdish.’”
Why is hotdish a Minnesota thing?
Estenson says while the hotdish is also common in the Dakotas and parts of Wisconsin, it’s ubiquitous in her neck of the woods. Noting the prominence of components like fish and potatoes, she wonders if there are roots in the Scandinavian heritage of many Minnesotan settlers, but it has spread out into the culinary vernacular of the entire state, so common that its presence is taken for granted.
“When you come to a potluck, you’re going to bring a hotdish, or a salad,” she says. “Everybody’s got a hot dish recipe, everybody’s grandma makes it, so it’s something that you don’t think about until someone asks about it. It’s unique to this little pocket of the Midwest.”
Greta Hardin, author and host of the podcast “The History of American Food,” may have some answers about its origins. Hardin tells TODAY.com that the first hotdish-type meals were probably a chowder, but in the old sense of the word, a layered dish of fish, salt pork and crackers dating back to the 1700s. Over time, the range of ingredients used changed as the first viral recipes spread through radio, magazines and newspapers.
“World War I and rationing meant meat had to be stretched,” she says, “so noodles, rice, breadcrumbs, oatmeal, vegetables were added to stretch meat.” And then, says Hardin, “The rise of canned, boxed, frozen convenience food meant they could also be assembled into a fresh-seeming meal from shelf stable products. so they were a quick-assembly dinner for women who had to take on more responsibilities during the war and post!”
But perhaps the most unexpected of the factors responsible for their cultural importance, according to Hardin? Cars.
“If you had a barn dance or apple peeling bee or any other large community gathering, people came all day, and the host largely provided all the food. If people brought contributions, it was beverages or ingredients — part of an animal, barrels of something — and it was usually cooked on-site,” she says, “With cars instead of wagons, people could come for just the event and bring prepared food.”
With home kitchens having moved from open hearth fires or wood stoves to electric ovens around the same time, baking things all together in one easy-to-carry dish, instead of serving individual components on the plate, just made sense.
The last major historical phase in the hotdish, Hardin says, is the late 20th century inclusion of ingredients from other regional cuisines, largely driven by media trends.
“A recipe for a ‘Mexican’ or ‘Chinese’ or ‘Hawaiian’ dish was published locally,” she says, “or an ingredient was advertised — soy sauce, taco sauce, chili powder, ginger, pineapple, corn chips.” Home cooks looking to showcase their modernity and sophistication, or just to try something new, added these novel flavors to their traditional dishes, and that interweaving continues to this day.
Feeling ready to try your hand at this Minnesota delicacy? Molly Yeh, blogger, cookbook author and host of Food Network’s “Girl Meets Farm,” has a canned soup-free Tater Tot Chicken Potpie, or her more classic beef Tater Tot Hotdish, but if you really want the full cream-of-something-soup experience, TODAY.com also has a Pulled Pork Hotdish and a Tex-Mex Hotdish. And as for the acceptability of these modern fusion riffs on the hotdish, like this Mozzarella Stick Hotdish, or Walz’s taco take?
“Oh, sure,” Estenson says, “Here, anything can be a hotdish and anything can be a salad if you try hard enough.”