Add A Canadian Twist To Your Burger For The Ultimate Comfort Meal

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Every country has its own comfort foods, classics that are part of the national identity and that you crave when you're away. One of the biggest in the U.S. is the burger, which appears everywhere from backyard barbeques to upscale restaurants, and propelled the success of McDonald's, the first fast food giant. In America's neighbor to the north, it's the gravy-smothered french fry dish poutine that warms Canadians' hearts. Combining the two in a trans-border burger mashup creates a peak comfort meal crossover.

Poutine is french fries topped with a rich covering of cheese curds and brown gravy. New Jerseyans might recognize it as similar to their disco fries, which are like the Canadian dish with an Italian twist. To make a poutine burger, put the cheese curds and fried potatoes on the cooked patty, and then pour on the gravy. Assemble it on a toasted or grilled bun, which will hold up better to the gravy. You could add other toppings as well, like bacon or sautéed onions or mushrooms, or even some burger classics like pickles, raw onion, or tomato.

Give it another twist by lightly battering and frying the curds, or mixing curd pieces into the ground beef instead of, or in addition to, on the patty. You might also want to use thinner-cut potatoes, even shoestring fries, so they aren't so bulky and sit on top better. Although beef gravy is the usual choice for poutine, you could also use a poultry version, or combine the two.

An essential component of poutine — which is Canadian French slang for "mess" — is the curds, which are very young, fresh cheese. To produce cheese, agents like rennet are initially used to curdle milk and transform it into liquid whey and curds. For the curds we know, those pieces are heated and pressed together to release more whey, before being cut up. They have a mild taste and bouncy texture that makes them famously squeaky when you bite into them. However, that only happens in the immediate days after they're made.

Curds can be harder to find in the U.S., where some supermarkets may carry it, or you can check for them at a cheese shop. You can also buy curds online, such as ones from the Wisconsin Cheese Company, where they're available in different flavors that could add another dimension to your burger. Another option is substituting similar mozzarella, or since poutine usually is made with white cheddar curds, you could use a young cheddar.

Because of poutine's popularity in Canada, fast food chains like McDonald's sell it, which is one of the items from U.S.-based chains you can only get north of the border. Burger King also offers it on its menus there, and once also had a limited-time item that was a kind of flipped poutine burger. Introduced in 2014, Poutine a la Burger topped the traditional dish with a cut-up Whopper patty, pickles, ketchup, and mustard, and could also be ordered with bacon.