Tater tots, meatball

Mashed potato and cheese, shallow fried.

This is the sort of thing you can whip out on the fly.

Not you, but I can.

In fact, I can even photograph it and still it stays hot and crispy. 

The magic trick to fluffy potatoes is dry potatoes. 

How do you dehydrate potatoes?

Poke a hundred holes in them, deep holes, and microwave until tender. The moisture will escape the holes. The more holes, the more steam escapes.

I figure you're lazy and will only poke twenty holes. 

That's why I exaggerated the hole poking. Just poke a lot of holes.  

The potatoes already contain enough starch-glue to hold them together. They don't need flour and they don't need egg so those glue things are not added. 

Although shredded cheese can benefit from a light dusting of flour to keep the particles separate, very light dusting, so that additional starch doesn't turn gummy. 

For a crust that stays crisp, roll the pressed potato-cheese wads in seasoned flour, a light dusting of flour will form a crispy coat of armor that stays crisp if the potatoes are sufficiently dry.

The meatball is not a classic meatball. It has nothing to recommend it other than speed. And being delicious, that counts too.  It is a one-meat type and for myself it is utterly delicious and I will return to this over a hamburger many more times. It is fast and it is good all by itself but not great and it is better than anything I get outside. 

I hesitate to relate the magic trick to amazingly delicious and fast and satisfying meatballs because I don't care to fight about it.

I'm pretending you're my father and there are some things he's just flat not having like how to improve the texture of meatballs, and meatloaf, or that the texture is in fact improved. 

So you're on your own. Blame him.