Poutine pt.1: Homemade

 I decided to post about this first cause it's the easiest of the 3 I have left to post, and also has the least pictures. Which is important cause my phone hiccups and freezes and has to be rebooted after every 3 pictures I upload to Google Drive. I can't wait to have a new phone...

Poutine is fast food consisting of fries, cheese, and gravy, sometimes with other stuff thrown in. Very popular here in Quebec, it has spawned entire restaurants dedicated to it. I made some yesterday and decided to go all out and do a poutine tasting, with two different brands each of cheese, fries, and gravy. I love the stuff, but I only started liking it when I moved to Quebec, maybe due to the quality of the ones I had while I was living in Ontario as a kid.

Here are the fries I bought:

I didn't want to buy the fries of the brand with the largest share of the market (I think) cause hey they have enough money let's support the underdog. And I like trying brands of food I haven't tried before. I should have taken a pic of these out of the bag. Basically the Cavendish ones are long and brown with the skins still on, and the other ones are short and pale. I liked them both.

And the cheese:

This is fresh curd cheese (a.k.a. "squeaky cheese" cause it squeaks against your teeth when you eat it) that is sold all over Quebec. A lot of people argue that it's the only cheese to use for "authentic" poutine, personally I don't care what kind of cheese is on there as long as there's a lot of it. Most places that sell poutine who don't use curd cheese will use grated mozzarella. I prefer the brand in the small bag with the blue label personally, the flavor tastes more like curd cheese flavor to me rather than just cheddar.

And the gravy:

You can find cans or packets of instant mix of this stuff in every grocery store. There are several brands of it but I didn't have any preference among the store-bought stuff yet so I bought these two. St-Hubert is a chain of restaurants that has commercialized their poutine sauce, but I prefer the flavor of the Cordon Bleu brand personally. They're both ok, but the best poutine sauce I have had recently is from a little pizzeria inside Guy-Concordia metro. I dunno what's in it but it's awesome! I could eat that stuff forever. My next post about poutine will be about theirs.

And here's the finished product: