15 Canadian Comfort Foods Everyone Should Try

If there's one dish that's found favor beyond Canada's borders, it's the perennial poutine. Across Canada, it's enjoyed just as much in fast food as in fine dining restaurants — it looks remarkably elegant when topped with foie gras. Fries, curd cheese, and warm gravy comprise this simple, hearty trinity, and though poutine's exact origins are somewhat contentious, they all point to 1950s Quebec as its birthplace.

Cheese curds, a byproduct of the numerous fromageries dotting the region, were a widely available commodity in rural Quebec snack bars during this period – it was only a matter of time before someone added these squeaky bits of cheddar to an order of fries. As for who thought to top the pairing with gravy, one widespread legend suggests it was Fernand Lachance at the Café Idéal, who slathered gravy over cheese curd fries to keep them from going cold. Though cheese curds have their own textural delights when eaten plain, adding gravy melts them into the perfect consistency. Poutine purists insist that no other form of cheese will achieve the same satisfying effect.

As for the name itself, there is just as much speculation on poutine's etymology. It could have stemmed from "pudding" in English, which is pouding in French. But the best case for the name further solidifies the dish's Quebec roots — "poutine" is Quebecois slang for "mess." To make matters even messier, many Canadians enjoy eating poutine with vinegar or ketchup.

Treading a savory middle ground between corned beef and pastrami, Montreal smoked meat refers to the meat itself as well as the spiced mustard, rye bread sandwich to which the meat is typically added. Across Quebec, one can easily find Montreal smoked meat on the menu, and it has since found its way into other Canadian dishes, most notably as a favored addition to a platter of poutine.

The originator of Montreal smoked meat is purported to be Aaron Sanft, a Jewish immigrant from Romania. Sanft was advertising his smoked meat in Montreal in the 1880s, where he found an eager clientèle for his kosher brisket among the local factory workers (many of whom were also Jewish). Borrowing from the meat smoking traditions that have been a staple in Jewish cuisine for 2,000 years, Montreal smoked meat differs from other smoked varieties in that it is traditionally made from brisket, which gets spiced and then marinated.

"There were and still are several secret formulas based mainly on the combination of salt and spices used to coat the briskets," Eiran Harris, Archivist Emeritus of the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, explained while describing Montreal smoked meat in an interview with Erudit. "Variations in secret curing ingredients will affect flavor, but the most important aspect of a successful outcome is the cooking." Old-school methods let the meat marinate for up to 20 days before it was slowly smoked, resulting in especially tender and succulent meat.

Rappie pie was once the meat and potatoes of Canada's maritime provinces and has been an Acadian staple for over 250 years. Made from grated potatoes and (most commonly) chicken, it consists of simple ingredients but is a labor-intensive dish. Rappie pie has evolved to become more of a special occasion meal in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and parts of Prince Edward Island, but it reflects the history of Acadia as a creation unique to this region.

The Acadians were predominantly French immigrants to the present day coastal provinces of Canada, many of whom were deported during the Great Upheaval of the 18th century when the British took over the area. When they were permitted to return to the area, the Acadians had to settle in rocky terrain, which, while unsuitable for certain agricultural endeavors, proved to be optimal for growing potatoes. Consequently, potatoes became integral to Acadian cuisine, and they form the basis of rappie pie.

The dish is more casserole than pie, though the process of baking it in the oven does brown the potatoes on top into a sort of crust. The meat that gets cooked with the potatoes often varies — other common variations make use of rabbit, venison, and even clams. While some might top a serving of rappie pie with molasses, maple syrup, or chow-chow, it is just as enjoyable plain and it can still be found at a few restaurants in the maritime provinces.

Initially a Scottish food, bannock is a fried flatbread that fur traders introduced to North America. Quick, simple, and fortifying, bannock is made with flour, water, and baking powder, and seasoned with either sugar or salt. Today it is just as often baked and deep fried, but it was originally cooked in a pan or griddle over an open fire, making it a convenient meal for travelers. While indigenous peoples may have adopted this recipe from Scottish settlers, Canada's First Nations were making similar frybreads from flour made of corn, nuts, bark, and bulbs long before European settlers brought their recipes and cooking methods.

According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, native peoples were forced to rely on European bannock once the Canadian government pushed them off their lands and onto reserves with rationed ingredients to live off. Since then, bannock has transformed into a culinary testament to human resilience. "When people think of bannock, they don't think, 'Oh, settlers brought it to us," Tristan Jules, chef at Quaaout Lodge and Spa, told Thrillist. "No, we took the concept and made it our own dish. Go to any pow wow in North America, and I can guarantee you'll have bannock, frybread, or some variation of the two."

A Canadian take on meat pie, the double-crusted tourtière has been a holiday dish for hundreds of years, dating back to 17th century Quebec. Minced pork, mutton, or beef were traditionally incorporated into the dish, but tourtière has often been mixed with an array of local game, from rabbit to moose. What makes tourtière unique is the selection of spices used to season the meat; commonly cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cloves, which grant the dish a distinctive holiday flavor. Purists serve tourtière solely for the holidays, and usually late at night — after a midnight mass on Christmas Eve, or after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day.

Though tourtière likely descends from a long-line of meat pies that date back to ancient times, one of the earliest recipes for the dish didn't appear until an 1840 cookbook, "La Cuisinière Canadienne", which may have contributed to the dish's continued and lingering popularity.

Today, according to Canadian Geographic, tourtière tends to be made from ground pork or beef, and it's often seasoned with cinnamon and thyme. Sometimes potatoes are also added to the meat mixture. Tourtière is typically only available during the holiday season, when these meat-filled pastries in rich, flaky crusts appear in varying shapes and sizes in Quebec's bakeries. As a topping, many Canadians eat it with ketchup.

Contrary to the misleading misnomer, Hawaiian pizza really has nothing to do with Hawaii, and its attribution to Canada is fairly circumstantial too. It was Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant to Canada, who is credited with dreaming up this combination in the 1960s. The only thing Hawaiian about the dish is that both ham and pineapple are common ingredients found among the islands of Hawaii. And the only Canadian thing about it — besides the fact that Panopoulos introduced it to the world through his restaurant in Chatham, Ontario – is that the ham it uses resembles Canadian bacon, though is not in fact the same thing.

The success of this sweet-yet-savory Greco-Canadian innovation may have been due to a mid-century cultural moment. Hawaii became an official US state in 1959, inspiring a surge in tropical tastes and an increase in pineapples imported from the island. As the BBC reports, Panopoulos' pineapple pizza came out around the same time as Golden Circle's "Tropical Recipe Book," which marked an influx of pineapple-centric dishes across North America throughout the 1960s. It was probably inevitable that pineapple would eventually find its way onto a pizza, but there was never a guarantee that it would have universal appeal. Though pineapple remains a divisive pizza topping, the fact that Hawaiian pizza originated in the Great White North might not be all that surprising — a name suggesting ocean breezes could have been especially enticing during a frigid Ontario winter.

A Chinese-Canadian dish, ginger beef is attributed to George Wong, a Chinese émigré to Calgary, Alberta who was experimenting with pseudo-fusion cuisine in the 1970s. The Silver Inn, a restaurant he ran with his wife, was part of a longstanding tradition of North-Americanized Chinese food in Canada. Leading up to the 20th century, discriminatory laws posed housing and employment limitations for Asian immigrants in Canada, which prompted many to start their own businesses. Restaurants were a popular choice and allowed people to adapt dishes from their homelands to suit a Westernized palate.

In hopes of wrangling more clientèle, Wong strove for equal parts creativity and simplicity in devising a new dish, though his experiments with beef posed an additional challenge with Calgarians as customers. Alberta is renowned the world over for its rich, grass-fed beef, which has acclimated meat-loving locals to a premium tenderness. After trying a few fairly traditional beef variations that weren't particularly successful, Wong discovered that battering the beef before frying it resulted in a crunchy outside with a tender interior — the perfect textural contrast. 

Ginger beef was initially called exactly what it was, "deep-fried shredded beef in chili sauce", but its sweet-and-sour tang simultaneously thrilled and confused Canadian taste buds. "It caught on and became known as 'ginger beef,'" Karen Anderson, president of Alberta Food Tours, told Food Network, "because Canadians mistakenly believed there was ginger in the sauce."

Halfway between a pancake and a biscuit, toutons make for a traditional stick-to-the-ribs kind of Newfoundland breakfast. Though the ingredients and cooking process are nothing complex, the dish is still a local favorite, perhaps because eating toutons "will make you happier than you ever knew was possible," as International Traveller put it.

The Dictionary of Newfoundland English suggests the recipe for toutons has existed under the same name since the early 1800s, though earlier origin theories suggest an adaptation of culinary methodologies from the British Isles. Characteristically thicker than the typical pancake, toutons are made from dough left to rise overnight and are traditionally fried in pork fat. The toppings of choice are molasses and butter, or occasionally jam. As a further testament to the region's British influences, toutons are sometimes paired with baked beans — perhaps a Newfoundlander take on the traditional English breakfast.

While the touton recipe is timeworn and revered for its simplicity, restaurants in Newfoundland have started to experiment with this classic. The owners of Touton Lane in St. John's, for example, have discovered that toutons make for an ideally innovative sandwich, a sort of Maritime arepa equally suited to sweet and savory combinations. While fried dough is a ubiquitous concept that belongs to most cuisines of the world, the continued popularity of toutons is indicative of simplicity being no less delicious.