Bienvenue au Mediocre Chef. Aujourd’hui nous cuisinerons de la poutine!

Translation: Welcome to Mediocre Chef. Today we are making poutine! (At least, we hope that’s what it says above. The French curriculum in Alberta isn’t great.)

We (obviously) aren’t from Quebec. We were both born and raised in Alberta, but we still appreciate the pièce de résistance that is poutine.

We’ve covered other Canadian dishes before (check out our posts on Green Onion Cakes, Ginger Beef, and Donairs), and now it’s finally time to tackle the big one: poutine.

Poutine is a simple dish and because it’s so simple, it’s also the easiest to get wrong.

What Is & Isn’t Poutine?

Before we go any further, we’d like to lay some ground rules for what qualifies as a poutine, because there are a ton of variations. A poutine needs to have:

French Fries — we’d also probably accept tater tots as a replacement, because tater tots are delicious.
Cheese Curds — has to be cheese curds, none of that shredded cheese bullshit.
Gravy — not another sauce as a replacement. It must be gravy. Other sauces in addition to gravy are also acceptable.

If it doesn’t have those three core ingredients, it is not a poutine. Would you call chili cheese fries a poutine? No. Then butter chicken poutine isn’t poutine either, it’s butter chicken fries.

Some poutine purists would say that poutine only has those three ingredients, but we say that it’s a poutine as long as it has at least those three. We will say though — adding too many ingredients on top of the trifecta (french fries + cheese curds + gravy) isn’t always a good thing as the flavours can become muddied. We recommend adding a maximum of 2 or 3 additional ingredients: a protein, a vegetable, and possibly an additional sauce or garnish.

Can you pass the test?

Question 1:

Is this a poutine? Fries, cheese curds, gravy, popcorn chicken, honey dill & green onion.

Question 2:

Is this a poutine? Buttermilk fried chicken, cheese curds, ranch and buffalo sauce on house-cut fries.

Answers:

If you answered yes to 1 and no to 2, you passed! 🎉

How Do You Pronounce Poutine?

There are two ways: the Western Canadian way, and the Quebec way.

Poo-teen (how us cowboys say it)
Put-sin (how the Quebecois say it — listen to Ryan Gosling pronounce it)

Making Poutine at Home

A good, simple poutine has only three ingredients. This means there isn’t much room to mess up on any of them — they each have to be just right.

Cheese Curds

Cheese curds are expensive (inflation hurts), but they are well worth the splurge. We got ours from Costco — you can get a 1kg bag for $15.99 CAD. Meanwhile, you can get a small bag (240g) from Superstore for $6.99 CAD. Yikes.

If you’re feeling bougie or you got a bonus and want to spend it all on cheese you might be able to find cheese curds at your local farmers market!

French Fries

There are a few ways you can go about making french fries. You can air fry, deep fry, or bake your fries.

If you went to Costco for cheese curds, you could also pick up some Cavendish FlavourCrisp fries. They are delicious. 10/10 would recommend.

Of course the other option is to make homemade french fries. This just requires some russet potatoes (long bois) and basic knife skills to cut your potato into fries. Alternatively, you could use a mandoline to quickly create fries, but typically the attachments will produce thin, stringy fries which we don’t recommend. You want thicker french fries that will hold up to the gravy. (If you have a french fry cutter, we’re jealous.)

For the purpose of our poutine experiments, we made homemade deep fried and homemade air fried french fries.

The trick to getting crispy, cooked through french fries is to soak your fries in cold water to remove the starch, dry them with some paper towel, and then deep fry them in a neutral oil at two different temperatures. You’ll first want to fry at 300°F for 5-8 minutes, and then fry them at 400°F until they are the perfect golden colour.

🥔 Mediocre Tip: We’re not deep frying experts (we’re mediocre), but you can let the oil get a bit higher than your desired frying temperature. When you add your fries, the oil will come down in temp. You don’t have to aim for a perfect 300°F or 400°F! Also, fry your fries in batches. If you dump all of your fries into a pot full of oil, you’re probably going to have a bad time.

Gravy

This, in our humble opinion, is the real star of a poutine — a bad gravy will ruin a poutine quickly. We know because we compared five different gravies on the night we made poutine and only one made the cut.

Gravy Ingredients:

3 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp flour
300ml beef broth
150ml chicken broth
Salt and pepper to taste*

*When we made our gravy we used salted butter and seasoned with salt, and felt that it was still a little bland. Don’t be afraid to lean into the salt, but don’t go overboard.

Melt the butter in a pot on medium high. When it is melted and sizzling, put the flour in. Stir and whisk to avoid burning the flour. You should have a roux. Cook the roux until it’s golden brown and smells nutty. Stir often to avoid burning the roux. When you’ve reached the proper color, slowly add the broth by first adding ¼ - ⅓ of it and whisking to prevent clumps. Then slowly pour the remaining liquid in while whisking to continue to prevent clumps. When all the broth has been added, allow the gravy to come to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

🥔 Mediocre Tip: If the gravy isn’t thick enough to your liking, make a cornstarch slurry of 2 tbsp cornstarch to 1 tbsp water, and add a little to your gravy. Allow the gravy to come to a simmer and then check to see if you need to add more cornstarch slurry.

That’s it. That’s the most basic gravy you’ll ever make, and it tastes better than the premade stuff that comes out of a can or packet. (The secret is to use the combination of chicken broth AND beef broth, who knew?)

On the night we made poutine we also tried a variation of this recipe that involved worcestershire sauce and ketchup. It wasn’t to our liking, but we think a dash of worcestershire sauce would probably be alright to help cut some of the richness of a gravy. (Let us know if you add some to the above gravy recipe.)

If you’re suuuuuper lazy and don’t want to make gravy but crave poutine, we suggest buying the No Name gravy, as it won out of the canned gravy we tried. DO NOT GET THE ST. HUBERT SMOKED BACON POUTINE GRAVY IT IS DISGUSTING. You have been warned.

Our Mediocre Thoughts

👩‍🍳 Brittany: Poutine can do no wrong. I love poutine. That is all.

👨‍🍳 Trevor: See Brittany’s thoughts.

Our Final Review

Taste: 5 hungry Quebecers out of 5 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤

Presentation: 5 Fairmont Le Château Frontenac’s out of 5 🏰🏰🏰🏰🏰

Affordability: 5 at least its not eggs out of 5 🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚

Not much to say here. Poutine is delicious. It looks like what you’d expect — fries and gravy and cheese curds. That sounds beautiful to us. This is a reasonably affordable dish, if inflation weren’t such a B.