On a day when you’re not going to cook healthy food, you should treat yourself to a sinful poutine.

Poutine is a strange creature of a fast food dish. It appeared in the 1950s in Quebec, Canada. Many have claimed the original, but until now it is unclear where the dish was first served.

During the first decades, poutine occupied a very low place in the gastronomic hierarchy, along with other typical fast foods. The dish was served in street carts and pubs, and was usually eaten after a humid evening on the town. But it turned out that poutine had greater potential. Over time, this dish has gone viral, appearing on menus around the world and gaining status as Canada’s national dish.

A traditional poutine consists of steaming hot fries served in a basket, with small dollops of fresh cream cheese and a drape of brown gravy. It’s salty, fatty, crunchy and a little chewy – and very good.

Here I made a version with a sauce a little richer in protein and complex. Additionally, I replaced the cream cheese with a few generous layers of dark yellow English cheddar, fat and good. And I actually saved a little fat by baking the fries in the oven rather than frying them in oil.

It is a simple portion with few elements, and it does not exactly meet the “plate model” when it comes to food composition. But here there are possibilities for variations and embroidery. For example, you can replace the potatoes with sweet potatoes or a mixture of different root vegetables like turnips, celery root and beets. If you want a more complete dinner, I can recommend serving poutine as an accompaniment to roast chicken – or good pork neck steaks, seasoned with plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

Crispy fries with melted cheese and brown bacon sauce

Ingredients (2 people)

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500 g fries or fries (or 2 baked potatoes)
a little sunflower oil
salt
150g yellow English cheddar
150 g of dry salted bacon
1 shallot
2 tablespoons of wheat flour
2 tablespoons of dairy butter
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
3 dl of chicken broth
salt
pepper
maybe some fresh green herbs

Procedure

If there are people at home, I buy frozen fries. They are breaded and covered with a thin layer of vegetable oil, which makes them crispy and good in the oven. These work great for this dish.

If you want to make your own fries, you can use baked potatoes. Peel them and first cut them into 1 cm thick slices. Stack the slices and cut 1 cm wide sticks. Place the potato sticks in a bowl and rinse them in cold water until the water runs clear and most of the starch is gone.

Then cook them in a pan of well-salted water for 5 minutes. Drain the water and let the potato sticks dry well before placing them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Apply a thin layer of sunflower oil and a pinch of salt. Bake the golden and crispy potato sticks in the oven at 170 degrees for about 40 minutes.

When the potatoes are ready, add thick slices of cheddar and cook for another 5 minutes until the cheese melts and almost becomes a little crispy in places.

Cut the bacon into cubes and brown it with butter in a pan. When the bacon is crispy, remove it from the butter (which you keep in the pan). Reserve bacon until ready to serve.

Finely chop a shallot, and brown it shiny in the mixture of butter and bacon fat. Add 2 tablespoons of wheat flour and let the flour mixture turn dark brown over medium heat. Add the vinegar and chicken broth. Let the sauce simmer for 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the bacon pieces to the sauce when serving. Feel free to sprinkle some green herbs, like parsley, on top.

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