Poutines
Ingredients:
- 10 pounds of potatoes
- 1/2 pound of ground pork
- 1/4 pound salt pork
- salt and pepper to taste
- cheese cloth
Start by dividing the potatoes into thirds.
Take one third of them and cut into pieces. Boil, season, and mash them. Set them aside. The other two thirds are to be grated to a watery pulp. We've hand grated them for years but, my mom got a Ninja blender for Christmas this year and it worked quite nicely.
Once you've grated the potatoes, take a piece of cheese cloth and squeeze the water from them. Do it in small sections so you can really get out the excess water.
Once you've finished, and you dump the water from the pulp, the starch from the potatoes will have gathered in the bottom of the bowl. Set it aside.
Next, take equal amounts of the mashed potato and potato pulp and mix together with half of the starch from the bottom of the bowl. My mom covers the counter in plastic wrap and mixes the potato by hand. Then, mix together the porks and form meatballs.
Shape the potato mixture into balls, and place the meatballs into the center of each potato ball.
Cut the cheese cloth into square sections and wrap each poutine. Tie together the corners. Place them into a pot of water and boil them for about 2 hours.
There you have it, poutines rapee!
I remember my parents every new years made poutines. They had a motorized potato grinder on wheels, potatoes in the sink, in bowls and plastic covering the table then it was a race against time to grind the potatoes before they turned red from oxidation. Each year they made 50 to 60 poutines and it was cold enough to store them outside. My parents gave poutines to everyone. My brother and I are the two to continue this tradition. The taste brings me back to those days of my childhood, yum.:-) Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteIt really does not matter if the grated potato oxidises and turns pink or a brownish color,they still taste the same after being cooked, and if you save some of the starch water that you squeeze out and pour it into the boiling pans as they cook, it will help to turn the poutines white again.
DeleteI just Made 25 over the past weekend with my mom and dad using a homemade grater that my great great grand father used to use. It is a family tradition that spans back many generations. I remember when I was younger helping to grate and squeeze potatoes over my grandparents house. When they made them, we never used to wrap them in cheesecloth and they always came out fine. My grandparents are long gone and it is just my brother and mom and dad and myself who continue to make them for the remaining members of our family and we have tried doing it without wrapping them in cheesecloth and have ended up with nothing but a Pan of sludge more than once after all that work! so now we wrap every one in cheesecloth and I am happy to say I am sitting here right now with the smell of poutine in the air as they are warming up on the stove for my dinner merry Christmas to all
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