Poutine: The Underrated Thanksgiving Leftovers Meal

Poutine. Canada’s culinary gift to the world. Created in 1957, I don’t know why it took so long for humans to realize that cheese curds, gravy, and fries go together like peanut butter and jelly, beer and peanuts, or Hall and Oates. It seems like a dish America would have/should have come up with, but we dropped the ball. Luckily, our friendly neighbors to the north picked up that ball and ran with it. Ball? Puck? Ran? Skated? My mixed metaphors not withstanding, thank you Canada. Thank you for inventing what would become my new favorite Thanksgiving leftover meal: Poutine. Thank you.

This year, my girlfriend and I made a full Thanksgiving meal with all the classic favorites. Turkey, mashed potatoes, two types of stuffing, cranberry sauce (store bought and, yes, that's important), rolls, sweet potatoes, and, of course, gravy. It was a feast fit for a King, and a Queen, and a Prince, and a Princess. It was a lot of food.

Any other year this would have been no problem, as we would have had the rest of my family there to take care of it. But it's 2020, there's a pandemic. These are extreme times. This meal was equally extreme. After we ate, we froze as much as we could and the next day, the arduous task of tackling the leftovers became a reality. We made turkey wraps, turkey enchiladas, turkey sandwiches. All Turkey. All the time. This went on for a couple days.

We didn't quite know what to do with all our leftover gravy. Like I said, there was a lot. It was time to get creative. I went through our cabinets and cupboards trying desperately to find something, anything to go with all this delicious brown goo. Nothing seemed to work and I was beginning to think I'd have to buy another turkey just to make use of it all. Then I moved a can in the right direction to reveal a whole sack of potatoes we recently bought on our last big grocery run.

The proverbial light bulb went off in my head: Poutine! The perfect cold weather food.

I made the best non-traditional poutine my girlfriend or I had ever had. Twice oven-baked fries, the leftover turkey gravy, broken-up Baby Belle's, cheese curds, herbs and spices (don't skip over the dill). Add some sour cream and hot sauce on the side and you've got yourself a hit!

I'll still make all the other kinds of leftover dishes, but moving forward Poutine will be the must-have Thanksgiving leftover meal on my list. There's just something comforting about hearing the crunch of a fries under the warm sloppiness of gravy mixed with cheese that makes a cold fall night feel extra cozy.

So take it from me, don't sleep on Poutine next Thanksgiving. Make your own and add your specific flare to it.