Poutine is to Canadians as Nachos are to folks in the southwest; a great bar food that is also a good food to serve at a home gathering. My daughter requested this for her 18th birthday party along with a chicken pot pie – sometimes they just don’t want to grow up.
Traditional Poutine is a rich brown gravy served over fired potatoes mixed with curds. While I strive to keep the gravy tradition, I’d rather bake frozen potatoes and substitute mozzarella cheese for curds. I know how to make curds quickly, but I prefer the taste of mozzarella – and it’s an easier sell to the kids.
The reasons I use frozen potatoes is a) no deep frying mess, b) the fries are crunchier and hold up to the gravy without getting soggy, and it’s faster and a lot of the times I decide to make Poutine, is a late night spur of the moment thing – I didn’t say while drinking, but I think it’s assumed.
Ingredients
- 1 TBL Olive oil
- 1 lb beef – steak that’s on sale, chuck or whatever
- 4 TBL butter
- 1 Onion – diced
- 3/4 cup flour
- 32 oz beef broth
- 16 oz frozen fires – I like thin cut, my kids like regular cut
- 1 cup mozzarella cheese – diced medium size
- 1 tsp chives if I have them
The only real trick to this dish is making the gravy. I don’t think we need to tell you how to bake frozen potatoes or dice cheese.
Poutine Gravy Process
- Mise en Place – measure out your ingredients
- Sauté steak in a cast iron pot. When hot, add the olive oil. Let it warm for a moment then add the steak. I like to cook the steak whole (I will dice it later). In the mise en place photo you can see I used cut chunks of steak – that’s what was on sale.
- Sauté butter and onions: Remove cooked steak and add the butter and diced onion. Sautee until translucent (3-4 minutes). Add salt and pepper and maybe something special like green chili or cayenne pepper.
- Make Roux: Stir in flour to make a roux. Keep stirring until the flour toasts to a nice nutting aroma (2-3 minutes).
- Add broth in stages while stirring to keep roux from getting lumpy. As you soon as you add the initial broth the roux will thicken. Don’t worry, just keep slowing adding broth while stirring. Keep adding broth until it’s all in and there are no lumps.
- Bring gravy to a boil and then turn down to a simmer.
- Bake the potatoes, dice the cheese (medium) and dice the steak (medium).
- Add the steak into the gravy
- Let gravy simmer 15-20 minutes to thicken. Season to taste.
Plating: Serve the same either in one group party bowl or in individual bowls.
- Put potatoes in bottom of bowl
- Sprinkle diced cheese on top of potatoes
- Soak in gravy and top with chives (optional)
- Serve
