“Real” poutine involves a roux (flour and fat – usually pork or butter), plus tons of veal, beef, or chicken stock (bones, vegetables, and herbs), and about two days of labour and steam. There are easier ways where you make the simple roux and just add cans, boxes, or cubes of stock (or powdered versions) that take almost no time at all. But the advantage of a poutine sauce (or gravy) recipe with miso (beside the fact that it’s vegetarian) is that there’s a body and depth to the flavour from the “umami” of the miso that you just don’t get unless you actually have a very good meat-based stock.
The recipe is completely MSG-free (make sure your miso has no MSG in it…Often powdered stocks are laden with it too) and it gets bumped up a level on the delicious scale by the addition of the mushrooms. The green peppers and sweet potatoes balance each other out in terms of sweetness, but make the dish with whatever toppings or fries you want.
In this lead up to this article (originally posted on Midnight Poutine) I made about 5 different kinds of poutine chez moi. 
I used different kinds of potatoes (see the sweet potatoes above – they’re not “traditional”, but they are delicious), different sauces (regular, vegetarian, “italienne”), different cheeses (I tried a Tomme de Savoie that was soaked, coated and aged in grape must, giving the cheese a strong flavour of red wine – perfect with beef bourguignonne poutine), and different layering systems (cheese on top of gravy, under gravy, layers of fries then cheese then gravy, then more fries then more cheese then more gravy), and my all-time favourite idea of keeping the fries and gravy hot in the oven and on the stove while you add just enough to a small plate at a time, so your fries never get soggy and you cheese never melts completely, and every bite of gravy is piping hot. (You can also do this with aluminum foil for the fries and a fondue pot for the gravy so you don’t have to keep getting up and going to the stove).
After all this testing, sweet potato fries with cheese and this miso mushroom gravy won the award for my favourite make-at-home variety. The miso is sweet (though you can use different kinds for different flavours) so it goes well with the sweet potato fries (for the fries, see recipe below).
Apparently you can also get vegetarian poutines at a few restaurants in the city (Comptoir 21 and Araucaria), but this is such an easy and delicious recipe to make at home.
Vegetarian Poutine with Miso-Mushroom Gravy (aka the sort of healthy version of poutine)
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons of red or yellow miso
1 1/2 cups of water
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 package mushrooms (button, cremini, or portobello), cleaned and chopped – Just hack them up
3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast (optional)
3 tablespoons of unbleached flour (or cornstarch)
For the rest of the poutine:
1 bag of cheese curds that squeak (do not refrigerate them!)
10-15 big Idaho or Yukon Gold potatoes (or so…3-6 per person depending on hunger), washed, and chopped into your fry thickness of choice
Gravy Directions:
1. In a medium-sized pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. When hot (test it by sprinkling a few drops of water on it. The water should bubble and steam a little), add the onion and garlic and saute for 3-4 minutes, or until onion is tender and translucent.
2. Add the mushrooms and continue cooking 3-5 minutes, until the mushrooms start to release their juices and soften.
3. Reduce the heat to low and add the flour (or cornstarch) and nutritional yeast. Stir for 1-2 minutes.
4. Add the water in a slow drizzle while stirring quickly. Bring the heat up to medium and continue to stir regularly for about 10 minutes, or until gravy begins to thicken. Don’t skimp on this time like I did or you’ll end up with a thin gravy and start dreaming of Chez Claudette‘s thick, thick (though bland) brown sauce.
5. Once the gravy has just started to thicken, reduce the heat to medium-low. Keep the pan uncovered and stir occasionally. It typically takes about 15 minutes for the gravy to fully thicken and become smooth. Again, patience!
6. When you’re happy with the thickness of the gravy, take the pan off the heat and add the miso. Taste to make sure it’s salty/sweet/savoury enough. For more salt or savoury add more miso. For more sweet you could add a little sugar if you wanted, but remember that the sweet potato fries will be sweet too. If it’s bland for some reason try adding a little soy sauce or better yet, tomato sauce since the acid might help. Or a tiny bit of apple cider vinegar if you don’t have any tomato sauce handy. Think of all the possibilities of poutine and add some extra veggies (maybe even pickled veggies if you really like acidity), olives, or other cheeses. The world is your poutine oyster. Probably avoid oyster poutine unless you are Martin Picard and you own Au Pied de Cochon or you’re Chuck Hughes and you own Garde-Manger…Fois gras and lobster poutines are recipes to play with carefully.
Baked French Fries
I gave the traditional double-frying french fry method in my previous poutine post, but here’s a recipe for baking the fries. It’s a whole lot healthier, though I’ll admit it’s not as delicious. Still, baked sweet potato fries are about the best thing ever, and those you probably won’t find at your neighbourhood casse-croute.
Makes 2 servings:
6-9 Idaho or Yukon Gold potatoes or 3-5 sweet potatoes per person (5 would be a LOT for 2 people)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil (I also tried walnut oil, hazelnut oil, and sunflower oil in my poutine trials, and walnut won. Mostly because it stayed out of the way. Peanut oil is the standard, though)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (220 Celcius).
2. Scrub the potatoes (or peel them, but if you’re doing this for health, there’s more nutrition in the skins than in the potatoes themselves) and cut them into your favourite size of french fry.
3. Dry them off with a paper towel and toss them in a large bowl or directly on a baking sheet with the oil, salt, and pepper so they’re well coated.
4. Arrange the fries in a single layer on the baking sheet (or two baking sheets…or four baking sheets if you make a double or triple recipe as I did…) and pop them in the oven for 15 minutes.
5. After 15 minutes remove them from the oven and flip the fries over. Put them back in the oven for another 15-20 minutes for regular potatoes or 10-15 for sweet potatoes, depending on the thickness of the fry. Thinner fries will cook in less time.
6. Eat right away or cover the fries with aluminum foil to keep them warm. If you know you won’t be eating them right away a good trick is to leave them covered in aluminum foil in the turned off oven with the door open or closed while you prepare the sauce. If you leave them uncovered they may dry out.
You can also sauté some green peppers or any other poutine topping you can think of to go along with this. I actually did MORE mushrooms. Just can’t get enough…
Or you can turn the poutine into an “italienne” by adding a little tomato sauce to the finished gravy. Enhanced gravy, in true Montreal fashion! I added a little acidic regular tomato sauce from Pasta Casareccia in NDG. Wasn’t so impressed with their pasta but the sauce was great with the miso gravy.
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