Poutine, like pizza, is only three simple ingredients that when combined produce something wonderful. Like the resonant frequency of a well played chord each note is important, and screwing up one of them ruins everything. And none of it has to be fancy, just well cooked fries, a good gravy, and some squeaky cheese curds.
In honour of Canada Day I present my version of poutine, and it all starts with thrice cooked potatoes.
Why thrice? Well, it’s better than twice, but I don’t know the word for four times. After a quick Google it seems there is no word that comes after thrice, so even if cooking the potatoes a fourth time would improve them, we’ll stop at thrice.
The first step is to simmer them in heavily salted water until they are just barely al dente. This is going to do three things for us: 1) cook the starches on the surface of the potato to make a crispier fry 2) get salt inside the potato so it’s seasoned all the way through, and 3) makes sure that the potato will be completely cooked after we fry it. If you cook them too long they’ll become mushy and fall apart.
The next step is to let the potatoes dry a bit, then blanch them in hot oil, about 300F. Long enough to finish cooking them, but not so long that they brown. At this point the fry is about 99% cooked, and can be frozen for later use. If you are going to bother with all this trouble, you might as well cook a bunch, freeze them in a single layer on a sheet pan, then load into ziptop bags.
The last step is to drop them into extremely hot oil (350-375F) until they are as golden brown as you can get them, which will only take a couple of minutes. The goal is to thoroughly caramelized the starches (sugar) on the surface of the potato because caramelized sugars are delicious. And since the potato was already cooked through we can put all of our focus on that deep dark caramel colour. The initial simmer will also cause a nice crispy exterior to the fry as well.
What’s nice about this method is that the first two steps can be done days, weeks, or months in advance. That means the last step can be done at the very last minute.
At this point we have some delicious fries, all we need to do is give them a generous sprinkle of salt, a generous sprinkle of cheese curds, and a nice ladleful of your favourite gravy.
Unless of course you’re like me, and you can’t leave well enough alone. In the process of making gravy I began to wonder what would happen if I made a beefy,cheesy dipping sauce, could I call it Poutine Sauce™?
So with 200g of very reduced beef stock, I added 6g of sodium citrate, and 150g of cheese curds. Then over low heat whisked to combine.
The result was strange in a good way. Kind of beefy, kind of cheesy, definitely salty. And when combined with one of my potato rounds tasted like mediocre poutine. I think some things are best left as they are.
