See the list of all Jason Murphy’s recipes at www.mysaline.com/jason-murphy.
Taking foods I once enjoyed and remaking them into something decidedly more healthy – that’s how I manage to maintain the weight loss that I set out to achieve seven years ago. It’s a sustainable strategy for life, versus losing weight on a strict, plain chicken breast-and-broccoli diet or like-minded plan – which eventually people stop doing out of sheer boredom and cravings. Sometimes it takes effort…more time in the kitchen, more time searching for ingredients, more time for cleaning up.
Every once in a while, it can help to remind yourself why you go through all the trouble. Take, for instance, Sonic tater tots covered with chili and cheese. I used to love getting a cardboard boatload order of those things. I never bothered concerning myself with calories or the macros of what I was eating. Call it willful ignorance. It’s not that bad for me if I don’t understand how bad it is for me.
Well, one large serving is 960 calories, 57 grams of fat – 17 of those being of the saturated variety, 92 carbs of the simple kind, 19 grams of protein, and – hold on to your propeller beanies here, kids – a whopping 2,690 mg of sodium.
I’m not sure a canister of table salt has that much sodium. A cow in a pasture with an entire salt lick in its mouth would be “…dude…that’s crazy,” (if cows could read nutrition labels and cared about such matters). The real kicker here is that’s just the numbers for that one side order. It’s not taking into account at all the cheeseburger or steak sandwich, plus the giant soda. Add another 700 calories and 1400 mg of sodium for the burger, and it’s no wonder that I looked like a water-logged bloated corpse face down in the Hudson River back then.
When I’m in a slight calorie surplus now when trying to add muscle, I’m around 2000 calories a day, and when I’m in a slight deficit to cut body fat, I’m at 1750 calories a day. That one meal alone back then weighs in with more calories than I now eat in a day, and that’s with nutrient dense foods like nuts, avocado, oily fish, and eggs.
However, the sodium is the real mind blower here, and I mean that literally. It’s like begging for a stroke, and if you’ve ever seen the movie Legends of The Fall, you know the only thing worse than dying of a stroke is living through one. There is a reason Sonic is a drive-thru and not a “walk-thru.” It’s because no one can get to their feet and function after eating that gut bomb. It’s a truly irresponsible amount of calories, fat, and sodium for anyone to be consuming. Not knowing those numbers doesn’t change what it’s doing to your heart, liver, pancreas, and those tiny, delicate blood vessels threatening to pop from all the pressure.
When making this one, some of you might be tempted to buy canned chili off the shelf to save time. I beg you not to do so, as once again there is enough sodium in one serving to make any sea a dead one. That’s the trick mega-corporations do with using low quality ingredients, chemical preservatives, and cheap fillers/binders. They overload the sodium so that’s all you can taste. If you could taste the actual ingredients, that would be a very bad thing. Let’s take a look at a major brand that sadly, I ate many, many cans of as a latch-key kid alone at home after school:
Ingredients: Water, Beef and Pork, Textured Soy Flour, Oatmeal, Corn Flour, Chili Powder (Chili Peppers, Flavoring), Contains 2% or less of Sugar, Salt, Modified Cornstarch, Hydrolyzed Soy, Corn, and Wheat Protein, Tomato Paste, Flavoring, Yeast Extract, Spices. Contains: Soy, Wheat.
Oat. Soy. Wheat.
Some major items that jump off the page there are all the fillers and binders. Why are those needed? The clue is the second ingredient, Beef and Pork. No, this isn’t a cute Disney animal buddy movie that ends in tragedy when they both wander into a processing plant at the same time. This means mechanically separated gristle and connective tissue rendered from scraps and bones spun around in a centrifuge type machine like Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase in Spies Like Us.
It’s how they also get the meat in canned wet dog food. That’s what you are feeding yourself, bits and pieces you would not recognize as any part of an animal and definitely not a food source. Those binders are the only way they get the lumps of who-knows-what to stick together into meat nuggets.
With that in mind, if you ever get the craving for that meal, it’s time to break out my version of tater tots and homemade chili dog chili. It’s time consuming, a bit of a bother, and not as addictive as the grease sponge mentioned above, and that is a good thing. The longer you eat clean, the less you will crave “brown” foods that are all fried and devoid of bright vegetables and fruits.
Even this recipe without a boiling vat of overused oil and plenty of cauliflower hiding in plain sight, it still felt like I was back to my old eating habits. I had to remind myself that it wasn’t even in the same universe of nutritional sabotage. It will scratch that itch if you see a commercial while you are hungry, and the tater tots are versatile so it’s a good recipe to add to your arsenal. They go very well with my healthy gravy with some fried eggs for a power breakfast. Roll up your sleeves, get to work, and make this one anytime you feel the call of the drive-thru. You’ll probably burn as many calories making it as you consume eating it, and your blood vessel PSI will thank you.
Cauliflower Tater Tots with Chili Dog Style Chili:
Ingredients:
Tots
- 1 24 oz bag of frozen cauliflower rice
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 cup Mozzarella cheese
- 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp dried chives
- 1/2 tsp onion and garlic powder
- 2 tbsp avocado oil
Chili
- 1 lb ground turkey
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, black pepper, onion and garlic powder
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tbsp chili powder
- 10 oz all natural no sugar added tomato sauce
- 1/2 cup all natural no sugar added ketchup
- 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 cup water
- 4 oz grated pepper jack cheese
- Diced scallions
Instructions:
Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the frozen cauliflower rice until all the moisture is gone and it starts to brown. You want to cook this almost to the point of burning, stir often:
Place the seasonings, cheeses, egg, and hot rice in a large mixing bowl and blend together until well mixed and the cheese is melted through:
Use a disher to scoop out a uniform amount each time onto a baking pan lined with parchment paper. Shape the mix into tot shape, cut in half if they are too large. I find wearing plastic gloves helps with handling the mix:
Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, flip each one, and bake again for 15 more minutes. You can also fry them on a large griddle with avocado oil for a more traditional tot. Two to three minutes tops per side using that method:
To make the chili, brown the turkey with the spices in the same skillet you used for the rice:
Once the meat is cooked through, add the remaining ingredients except the pepper jack cheese and diced scallions and simmer until the sauce thickens:
Load your bowl with some tots, then cover with chili, top with pepper jack, scallions, and sour cream if desired:
See the list of all Jason Murphy’s recipes at www.mysaline.com/jason-murphy.