Boards, snacks and starters
Poutine
Quebec's dish of chips topped with squeaky fresh cheese curds and hot brown gravy.
Poutine is a dish of French fries topped with fresh cheese curds and covered in hot brown gravy, which softens the curds without fully melting them. It comes from rural Quebec in the 1950s and is now eaten all over Canada, in roadside snack bars, late-night counters and restaurants.
What goes in
- Fresh cheese curds529%, Squeaky, at room temperature.
- French fries847%, Double fried.
- Brown gravy424%, Hot, light and peppery.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Fry Cut potatoes into thick fries and fry them once at a lower heat. Step 2: Simmer Make a light, well-seasoned brown gravy and keep it hot. Step 3: Fry Fry the potatoes again at high heat until crisp. Step 4: Layer Pile the fries in a bowl and scatter cheese curds over them. Step 5: Serve Pour hot gravy over so the curds soften but keep their shape, and eat at once. Finished Poutine, by share.
A disputed birthplace
Several towns in the Centre-du-Québec region claim to have invented poutine in the 1950s, including Warwick, Victoriaville and Drummondville. One story has a customer asking a restaurant owner to put cheese curds on his fries, to which the owner replied that it would make a mess, une maudite poutine. The word poutine is Quebec slang for a mess. No claim has been settled.
The curds
Fresh cheese curds are pieces of young Cheddar curd, sold the day they are made. Very fresh curds squeak against the teeth. Quebec has many small cheese dairies selling curds daily, which is why poutine started there. Grated cheese or older curds do not give the same result. Variations add pulled pork, smoked meat, sausage or peas.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
Also part of it, and being written: Cheddar cheese (The cheese the curds would become.).
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.