A Journey to Poutine

The tiniest said that one of her bucket list items was to eat poutine, and could we have it for dinner? Well, challenge accepted, youngest spawn. Tiny Octopus could have just bought fries from somewhere and put cheese and gravy on them, but that wouldn't be...sporting, would it?

So...he decided to make some from scratch.

Russet potatoes, cut into fry shape. Use a knife. Don't try to karate chop the potatoes. You want them to be french fries, not hash browns.

Gravy. starting with a basic cooked roux. A roux is 1 part fat to 1 part flour with some basic spices tossed in. Want the best roux? Use bacon grease. Don't have any bacon grease? Fry some bacon then. Render the fat until it is clear. Use it like butter.

Let the roux cook for five minutes or so to get golden brown and stop it from tasting like raw flour. This is important, unless you're making a white gravy. But Tiny Octopus isn't making a white gravy. He's making...

The tinier doesn't like beef gravy, so Tiny Octopus made chicken gravy. But don't panic just yet, discerning Canadians and poutine-ophiles. Chicken gravy is easy. You just splash in chicken stock into your cooked roux, turn the heat down, and keep whisking until your arm falls off. Then reattach it, use another arm and keep whisking so you don't get lumps in your gravy.

Lumps in your gravy are a sign that your heat is too high, you're not whisking enough, or you've put something lumpy in your gravy. No judgement here. Add enough stock so your gravy is your preferred gravy consistency. Like your gravy to slide out like a clump of wet cement? You do you, weirdo. Want gravy that is so watery you could wash your hair? Ew, but okay.

Heating up the oil. Shooting for 350, so when adding colder potatoes, the temp drops to 325, which is the cooking temperature you want. Yes, that's a lot of oil. But you want your food to move in the oil so that the outside crisps and seals and the inside steams. Otherwise, soggy and oily fries, and that's just gross.

First small test batch of fries in the oil...Notice the temperature dropped down a bit? That's the ticket. Stir them a bit. Keep 'em moving like they owe you money.

Four minutes later, they're done. Salt them while they're still hot. Shake 'em around, then taste 'em. You might like your fries a little crispier. If so, up the temperature of the oil. These were perfect. Salted, tested, and approved by both the tinier and tiniest.

Cheese curds, because otherwise it's just something weird. Tiny Octopus wasn't going to disrespect all of his Canadian friends by using cheez whiz or Velveeta.

Crumbled up the curds and put them and some of the fries into a 6-inch skillet to be put into the oven under the broiler.

Made the gravy brown, because according to @MadameRainbowPants, if you use regular chicken gravy, it's just potatoes, cheese, and chicken gravy.

FINE. :D Red food coloring and Green food coloring combine to make the gravy a rich brown. Looks like that's how it was meant to be, right?

Finished product. According to the tiniest (she got half of this), it was very filling, and very delicious. Start to finish, including waiting 20 minutes for the oil to heat up, took about 40 minutes. Not bad for a Saturday night dinner.

Cat tax. Dr Wobbinstocks helping Tiny Octopus play WoW.

Thanks for making it this far.