I understand the basic concept of poutine–squeaky fresh white cheddar cheese curds, fries, and gravy. Yum. I can get some good cheese curds at the local farmer’s market, but what of the fries and gravy? Are the fries more shoestring fries, crinkly, steak fries, or something in between? And the gravy–I searched Google long and hard for a good recipe but found mostly people saying that you couldn’t get this kind of gravy outside of Canada. The closest approximation someone came up with was beef gravy mixed with a bit of BBQ sauce, which is what I ended up trying. What came out was very good, but I have no idea how it compares to real poutine, having never eaten it before.
What are the essential elements of a real Canadian poutine?
The three essential elements of traditional poutine are the ones you mention. As for fries, it depends on tastes. In most restaurants, you’ll find poutine made with real fried fries, but I can make a perfectly good one at home with oven-baked frozen fries. As for gravy, you can even buy some online…
The fries range from rough cut potato chunks to "mac: fries… the gravey ranges from the exotic (moose nose drippings fried in onions, thickened with browned flour to bovril.
Basically its hot fries, with cheese curds, and HOt gravy poured on top…
almost anyway you do it counts as Poutine… somewhere
Almost, in every diner in NJ they’re “Disco Fries”.
Yeah, OK, it’s not real cheese curds, if isn’t even necessarily real cheese or it could be (for some, the gods forbid) Cheez Whiz, and brown gravy not BBQ chicken gravy. Which does raises the question if it’s really Poutine at all I guess?
I’ve had poutine in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, and really all that’s common to all of them is some sort of fries, some sort of gravy and real cheese curds. I seem to recall the Quebec ski lodge poutine as having a kind of sweeter and spicier gravy, but I prefer it with plain ol’ beef gravy. Use what tastes good to you, you really can’t go wrong.
Unless you use shredded cheese. That is very wrong.
Poutine mixes (or canned gravy) are usually the poor man’s version of what you’ll find in restaurants — which varies greatly and depends on a person’s personal taste. But the one I would say is the most popular around Quebec is St. Hubert (which also happens to be the main roasted-chicken restaurant chain in the province). Personally, I think they’re all fairly equal.
And, of course there are now international flavours of poutine available, e.g:
Mexican poutine - throw some sliced, pickled jalapeños on top.
Italian poutine - substitute gravy for spaghetti meat sauce.
etc.
I LOVE the Mexican one…
By the way, for those interested, the first ever Festival de la Poutine (sorry, site in French only, but you’ll get the picture) will be held in Drummondville, about 65 mi/105 km east of Montreal. Dunno what it’ll look like, but certainly a good artery-clogging time to have.
Yeah, see my post [post=9967437]here[/post] on this exact subject. (Actually, it would be sort of similar to having an invitation to a 4[sup]th[/sup] of July party featuring Pilgrims biting into Big Macs, which if not offensive, would at the very least be extremely odd.)