RJIE 11: Poutine @ 5 Dogs

Say that in the most Canadian accent you have within you

What is poutine? Poutine is super Canadian food composed of the utterly delicious, completely disgusting looking, carb overload that is deep fried potato chips, semi melted fresh cheese curds and a rich brown gravy. It looks like someone puked over a bunch of nice chips but goddamn is it delicious.

POUTINE

These days when I crave something unhealthy, I don't think of a Maccas cheeseburger anymore, I think, damn, I want me some poutine. I think its up there with drunk people food like kebabs, Maccas, convenience store hot dogs and that sort of thing, things to eat when blindly drunk, but maybe not whilst sober. I dread to think of the number of calories in this meal.

Work poutine

Once I was half an hour early to work so I went downstairs to the cafeteria to buy something for lunch. I had a brainwave and bought hot chips and gravy, and plastic melted cheese and made bastardised poutine. My god it was delicious.

Despite its small list of ingredients, it is very hard to find in Queensland. Google, "poutine - brisbane", and you see pages of homesick Canadians wondering where to find this treat, in fact let me google that for you. This is because to have a truly authentic poutine you need, fresh cheese curds, something you cannot get because there is a ban on Australian made unpasteurised/raw milk products in Australia. At the time of writing, we import all our raw milk cheeses such as parmigiano reggiano, roquefort and gruyere. This is very common in most countries around the world, to reduce the pathogen risk in unpasteurised milk, however they are allowed to make their own cheese or allow the sale of dairy products made from raw cheese within a certain time frame.

Why don't we import cheese curds? Fresh cheese curds are made from soured raw milk and go off within hours of being made. They apparently have a mild flavour, and squeak when eaten. I guess like haloumi does, with more melt properties? Thanks to wikipedia for this information, since I haven't tried cheese curds before. You can make cheese curds from milk, but you can't buy raw milk to make it with either, since raw milk is banned under the same act. Unless you want to buy raw milk in the form of bath milk, reportedly about $4.50/L from this website. Making cheese curds is annoying but, you need a lot of chemistry stuff like rennet and bacterial cultures.

Mmmmm corrupted

That being said, I'm not a Canadian purist, and will happily accept any bastardised poutine I find. This particular one is at 5Dogs in Fortitude Valley. The large portion is indeed very large at about $5 from memory and it was glorious. I ate half the box before reluctantly throwing it all away. I think he uses a mozarella/tasty cheese mix with a really solid brown oniony gravy. The chips were scorching hot out of the fryer and really crunchy, they were sprinkled with chicken salt. It is goooood stuff.

If you find yourself in the Valley near the McWhirter's Arcade, head towards 5Dogs and treat yourself to some poutine. You'll thank me, or curse me down as you succumb to a heart attack.