Costco’s New Cauliflower Tots Are a Win for Your Freezer

Remember earlier this year when we told you that cauliflower had colonized your freezer? The frilly white florets still reign supreme! Costco has the latest product when it comes to cool ways to keep your cauliflower fun and interesting: they’re now selling big bags of Maas River Farms’ organic Cauli-Tots.

For the last few years, we’ve been watching the grand rise of cauliflower, as the cruciferous vegetable has served in place of a wheat pizza crust, substituted for rice in grain bowls, and taken over for the starchier potato in mashed, latke, or gnocchi form. It even stands in for meat in vegetarian wings — sesame or Buffalo options. And now, in tot form in the Costco freezer, it seems that cauliflower’s continued rise shows no sign of stopping.

Billed as a “great alternative to potatoes and fries,” and “loaded with cauliflower,” the tots cost $10 for a three-pound bag — which supposedly holds 16 servings of 140 calories each. That’s making them a big hit with health nuts and Costco product-stalkers alike. They’re pretty easy to make straight from the freezer — just 14 minutes in the oven (or you can deep fry, but who has time for that?).

And the best part of the new product? People really like them: Instagrammer costcohiddengems reported that their kids gobbled them up. “The texture inside is like soft cauliflower mash… while the outside is still toasty.” Meanwhile, up in Minnesota, they’re doing as they do up there: using them in place of tater tots in hotdish.

Casseroles, where the slight differences in texture are hard to perceive, seem like a good place to begin experimenting with the new product, but before long there’s a world of tot-options — starting with the greatest use of tater tots, of course: cauli-totchos.