Idaho grows more potatoes than any other state, with well over 10 billion pounds of spuds produced in the Gem State every year. But when it comes to the origin of tater tots, Oregon has us beat.
Portland food writer Heather Arndt Anderson set the record straight on a recent episode of City Cast Boise. Turns out tots were created by two brothers in 1952 at the Ore-Ida food processing plant in Ontario, Ore.
“They were specializing in frozen corn, frozen potato products, things like that,” Anderson said. "With the corn waste products, they could just feed that to cattle in the area…But unlike corn husks and stems, potato skins, and potato chunks are still perfectly edible to humans.”
So instead of throwing the leftover potato pieces away, Ore-Ida mashed them up, cut them into cylinders, and then froze them. But before tots became a hit in middle-class households, capitalism had to do its thing.
In Boise, serving tots sans fry sauce is basically a punishable offense. (Thanasis / Getty)
“[Tater tots] were very affordable, and so it just seemed kind of de classé to a lot of people. And so once Ore-Ida jacked the price up a little bit, then people were like, ‘Oh, this is a cool new convenience luxury item for middle-class people.’”
Anderson agrees with Napoleon Dynamite: only the crispiest tots will do. But that doesn’t mean she thinks you can’t experiment. In Portland, “totchos,” or tater tot nachos, are the bar food of choice: tots layered with creamy sauces or meat and cheese. Boise’s generally less creative with our tots, with some notable exceptions.
As for who can claim this potato product today? We would argue that Boise plays a big role in the tater tot story. Firstly: Ontario is technically part of our metro, at least according to the Census Bureau. Secondly: Although Ore-Ida’s tater tot plant was in Oregon, the corporate headquarters for the company was in Boise until the company folded into Heinz — which purchased the company in 1965 — in Pennsylvania in 1999. And finally, Simplot — a true Boise agricultural juggernaut — purchased the Ontario plant a couple of years ago.
Regardless of the claims of origin, Anderson said these delish fried snacks aren't leaving our plates anytime soon.
“Tater tots are inextricable from the American public school cafeteria, and that has gone a long way in cementing the tot as a fixture of the American table.”
