Adventures in Sausage & the Search for the Perfect Poutine Sauce Recipe

While my (also Celiac) sister was visiting, we got the bright idea (or, rather, Charles did) to make our own sausages while taking a lovely stroll through Parc National d'Oka.  We gathered recipes and our supplies and went to work!

I don't have the exact recipes saved, but we made two types: chicken-sage-apple and pork-chipotle-beer.  Both were GF (I actually found a halfway-decent Quebec-made GF beer) and delicious!

If you want recipes and information about making your own sausages, Charles found them here, on TheSpicySausage.com.

Getting it started after the casing had to be cut.

Yeah, sausage!

The completed raw pork sausages, in natural casing.

Now, for poutine.

If you don't know what this is, fret not, you just haven't been to Montreal or Canada and had the heart-attack-in-a-bowl that is (at its very basic state) fries (fried in lard, typically), cheese curds, and "poutine sauce".

The recipe for poutine sauce has eluded me for ages.  No one's online recipes seem to get it right.  Something is always MISSING.  It is NOT just chicken gravy, like many people would have you believe.  But this time around, I HAVE DISCOVERED THE MISSING INGREDIENT.

It is soy sauce.

Not much.  Not more than a few dashes.  But just a tad to deliver its heavy umami flavor.

I didn't write down my recipe (good job, Amy), but, basically, it is:

1 1/2 cups each chicken and beef broth.
A few dashes of soy sauce.
Salt & pepper.
2 T. each cornstarch & water to thicken.

Heat broths in a saucepan until boiling.  Add in soy and S&P.  Add in cornstarch and allow to cook down to a gravy consistency (or thicker).

The taste was DEAD-ON this time, but it was a little thin.  I was too excited.

Also, cheese curds are a necessity.  No substitutions work quite as well.  They are fresh from the cheese factory here and they squeak when you bite into them.

Gluten-free poutine!

We baked our sausages on a bed of peppers and onions.

Complete meal!