People write to this column, and I am grateful for it, truly. But I have noticed the letters fall into two kinds. The first asks for the tater-top hotdish recipe, and those I am glad to answer. The second writes to suggest improvements to the tater-top hotdish, and to those I must say, as gently as the medium allows: please stop. The hotdish is finished. It was finished some time ago. You are not helping.

I have received, this spring alone, proposals involving fresh mushrooms, a panko topping, something called a “roux,” and — I am not inventing this — sun-dried tomatoes. I want to be clear that the people who sent these are good people, and that they are wrong.

Here, then, is the recipe, correct and complete, as my mother made it and her mother before her, neither of whom ever laid eyes on a sun-dried tomato.

You will need one pound of ground beef; one medium yellow onion, diced; one can of condensed cream-of-mushroom soup; one can of cut green beans, drained; one bag of frozen tater tots; and salt and pepper. That is the whole of the list. The list is not a point of departure. The list is the list.

Brown the beef and onion together over medium heat until the beef is cooked through and the onion has gone soft and clear, about eight minutes. Drain the grease, or don’t — my mother didn’t, and she made ninety-one. Stir in the soup, undiluted; this is not the place for milk, and it is most certainly not the place for your ambitions. Add the green beans, and season with salt and pepper.

Spread the mixture in a nine-by-thirteen pan. Now the tots: arrange them across the top in close, even rows, edge to edge, like cordwood. Do not scatter them. Someone will be looking, and that someone is me, in spirit. Bake at 375 until the tots are golden and the edges bubble, about forty minutes. Let it rest five minutes before serving, which no one in the history of the dish has actually done.

The one substitution I will permit — the only one — is cream of celery in place of cream of mushroom, and that solely because Pastor Lindholm cannot abide a mushroom and has to eat somewhere. Beyond that you are on your own, and I would rather not hear about it. Coffee’s on Thursday at the Daybreak if you’d care to discuss it, or anything else.