Papas Duquesas are a potato-based food item, commonly eaten in Chile. Apparently, the name, and some of the recipe comes from the French "Duchess Potatoes".

The papas duquesas consist of mashed potatoes, rolled into inch-wide balls, with a slightly harder crust. While they can be flavored in various ways, the standard store-bought Papas Duquesas are only lightly flavored. Papas Duquesas, in general, are a variation on common papas fritas (french fries), in terms of size, flavor, and meal role. They are also very close to tater tots, with the difference being that the interior of a papas fritas is made of pureed potatoes, instead of shredded potatoes.

Finally, there is a point to be made, that while sometimes cuisine is treated as a special expression of a particular culture, many cultures around the world have produced roughly the same food items, under different circumstances. Since the modern potato originated in the ChiloƩ archipelago, foods like papas duquesas have probably been eaten in Chile for thousands of years, long before the French invented Duchess Potatoes or Ore-Ida invented Tater Tots.

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