An ode to Canadian food
Celebrating Canada Day is always a little dicey. I mean, on the one hand who doesn’t love a stat holiday, but on the other, glossing over all the genocide and slavery that built the Canadian state and celebrating with the Canada D’eh blizzard is gross (and will definitely give you diarrhea).
I’ve lived in the U.S. for seven years now and my identity consists of desperately clinging to being Canadian while criticizing it at every turn. The identity paradox is lost on most Americans and Canadians who instead mostly react by just listing everything they know or think is great about Canada regardless of accuracy or relevance to our previous conversation. Montreal! (which, okay fair.) Toronto! (Raptors baby!) Free health care! (it’s actually single payer and funded through taxes, but okay.) It’s dismissive and a tad reductive, especially given the new not-Trump card both countries just love to use. Remember, just because Justin Trudeau is not Trump doesn’t mean he’s not trash. Also, people (me) are allowed to criticize seriously terrible things while simultaneously enjoying things too! If you are living under the broad-strokes banner “Canada is great!” I suggest you deeply consider who and what that applies and doesn’t apply to.
But you didn’t come here to read about politics and my identity crisis! You came to eat! So I’ve compiled another incomplete list, this year on the Canadian culinary canon and its American equivalents (I left out the obvious ones because we get it). Enjoy!
Jiggs Dinner
A special Sunday night dinner at your grandmother’s house consisting of salt beef (corned beef preserved in brine) and a roast turkey or roast pork, some mixture of turnips, carrots, cabbage or boiled potatoes, pease pudding (a mash of boiled legumes, split peas, and a pork joint of some kind), and pickled beets, finished off with a duff (breadloaf-like dessert usually mixed with raisins and molasses boiled alongside dinner). And yes, the meat does come in a bucket.
Canadian rep: A classic dinner in Newfoundland and Labrador that rarely sets foot outside the province, probably because the rest of Canada doesn’t get the bucket meat or have such a strong affinity for boiling things.
American conversion: Take a traditional New England boiled dinner but then mash some of the vegetables together, put them in a bag and boil them, grab your favourite dessert, mash it up, put it in a bag and boil it, throw your meat in a plastic bucket, and serve in generous portions.
McCain’s Deep and Delicious Chocolate Cake
A questionably addictive cake with layers of stiff, yet moist, chocolate cake and incredibly synthetic icing that’s texture can only be described as puffy. You don’t know why you love this cake, but you do.
Canadian rep: This cake used to come as part of a KFC meal deal in Canada and was the single greatest part of any child’s birthday party in the 1990s. While that meal deal has long since vanished, the Deep and Delicious has remained in freezers across the nation, mysteriously unfrozen, and in our hearts with one of the strangest commercials of all time.
American conversion: Take a Sara Lee Chocolate Cake, cram it with more fat and oils (yeah), scrap off the thin layer of dark chocolate icing, spike on a frothy milk chocolate frosting and stick it in the freezer and then eat the whole thing in one sitting straight out of the foil container.
Tourtière
The singular French-Canadian meat pie that has no singular recipe.
Canadian rep: In Quebec, usually a New Year’s Eve treat of minced meat (pork, beef, veal, or whatever’s available) heavy spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, savoury, pepper) and maybe a diced potato or onion in a flaky pastry that all melts in the mouth, especially when ketchup is slathered over it. (I just incited a riot with that ketchup remark.)
American conversion: Take a chicken pot pie, throw it in the garbage, and instead build a delicious pie crust and pile it with fresh ground meats and spices and cover it in BBQ sauce or ranch dressing knowing America.
Saskatoon Berry Pie
A fresh hot pie filled with delicious saskatoon berries — a berry so delicious (juicy! sweet! almond-y!), a whole city was named after it.
Canadian rep: More commonly made in prairie provinces like Saskatchewan, everyone is always excited to see “Saskatoon Berry Pie” on the menu, accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but is not surprised when “Blueberry Pie okay, hun?” follows.
American conversion: Take a blueberry pie and just eat it. I mean, it’s not that different, but still, there’s no Blueberry, USA, is there?
Bannock
A round, flat quick bread that has roots in First Nations, Inuit, and Métis dishes, not to mention a sprig of colonialism.
Canadian rep: Regarded as either a testament to First Nations’ resiliency against Canada’s genocidal treatment of Indigenous people or a sombre marker of those colonial forces, or both, Bannock is commonly found at big celebrations across Canada.
American conversion: Take Navajo fry bread, the generational trauma endured by Native Americans at the hands of American colonialism, and have both countries take accountability and transformational actions against the continued horrid treatment of Indigenous people.
Tiger Tail Ice Cream
Orange and black striped ice cream with the flavours of orange and black licorice found at dairy bars and ice cream shops all across the country.
Canadian rep: The best ice cream ever eaten by a nine-year-old. Results vary from there.
American conversion: Take an orange creamsicle and throw some black licorice in there and give that a go (it will be terrible).
Hickory Sticks
A bag of hickory-smoked potato sticks that is the last vestige of the once former great Canadian chip brand Hostess now owned by corporate giant Frito-Lays. *stares in Canadian*
Canadian rep: Delicious if not underrated. They are a bit difficult to eat given the matchstick-like pieces, but that’s never stopped anyone from shoving handfuls in their mouth or just straight up tipping the bag down their gullet. I once compared them to Keanu Reeves and I am not wrong.
American conversion: Take the American obsession with cream-based and experimental chip flavours and take a good look at yourself. Then take BBQ chips, up the smokey savoury notes by 1000, julienne the potatoes, and enter it as “hickory smoked BBQ ribs” into the next Lay’s Do Us a Flavor challenge.
P.E.I. Potato Pie
Thinly sliced layers of potatoes stacked over and over again with cheese baked in a cast-iron skillet for a crisp outer texture and soft gooey inner texture — the more intense version of scalloped potatoes.
Canadian Rep: Like the U.S., Canada forgets about parts of itself until election season, so it is relatively unsurprising this incredible dish is mostly unknown in a country that considers P.E.I. to be only Anne of Green Gables and red dirt. But that glorious red dirt births P.E.I. potatoes and creates a potato pie so good and so delicious you will lick the plate clean, get another slice, try to recreate the Prince Edward Island Preserve Company version with maple bacon cream sauce at home, burn it, and then just give up and still eat the entire thing.
American conversion: Take an English potato pie, drop the crust, drop the cream, drop the fancy cheese, and definitely drop the nutmeg — this dish is pure potato on cheese on potato sometimes wrapped, ya wrapped, in bacon.
Orbitz
To quote the great wikipedia: “[Orbitz] was introduced in 1997 and quickly disappeared due to poor sales. Made with small floating edible balls, the drink was marketed as a ‘texturally enhanced alternative beverage’ but some consumers compared it to a potable lava lamp.”
Canadian rep: Your mom bought these because they were *~cool~* but it was honestly one of the grossest things ever, and I used to drink Fruitopia from my public school’s vending machine.
American conversion: Take the horrifying knowledge that Blueberry Melon Strawberry and Vanilla Orange Orbitz used to exist and hurl.
Butter tart
A perfect pocket treat of butter, syrup, sugar, and eggs wrapped in a flaky pastry and eaten at least two at a time on the way to a cottage or body of water in the summertime.
Canadian rep: Regarded as the quintessential Canadian treat, everyone has their favourite homemade purveyor, and like most, mine is from a roadside shack in Ontario made by a delightful elderly woman who magically never ages despite the years that have worn on.
American conversion: Take a pecan pie and remove all the pecans and then make it smaller, deeper, and cup-like and somehow sweeter with hints of maple-y brown sugar (preferably) and more butter (yah). A close approximation is the Quebecois “sugar pie” — take from that what you will.
Webers Burgers
Hamburger [n]: a ground beef patty, fried or grilled, typically served on a bun and garnished with various condiments. Popularly considered to be an American invention.
Webers burger [n]: a charcoal grilled burger made off Highway 11 in Orillia Ontario.
Canadian rep: This burger is so sought after that a barrier was erected in an attempt to curb hungry cottagers from jaywalking across the highway, but they just climbed the wall anyway dammit! So instead, a pedestrian footbridge was built over the highway to provide access for everyone to these delicious and beloved burgers. Let that metaphor sink in…
American conversion: Take your Shake Shack, Whattaburger, and In & Out burgers and open your mind to the possibility of other burgers like the A&W mama burger with cheese, Harvey’s build-your-own char-grilled burger and Webers double cheeseburger with fries. We all deserve good burgers.
Rappie Pie
An Acadian casserole-style dish of shredded potatoes, drained and enriched with chicken broth and stirred together with onions and shredded meat (beef, chicken, rabbit, or others!), baked to perfection in a HUGE dish, like serving size starts at 10 or more, huge dish.
Canadian rep: After the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, exiled Acadians returned to the Maritimes in 1764 with cooking tips, like shredding potatoes, they had learned from immigrants groups down south and thus rappie pie was born! (Yes, I learned that from wikipedia because for most non-Maritimers this dish rarely makes an appearance outside its Maritimes home or apparently Canadian history books.)
American conversion: Take that Minnesotan classic Hotdish casserole and get rid of literally all the vegetables, replace ground beef with a shredded beef probably, swap canned soup with canned broth, and nix all toppings and bam! You’ve got rappie pie.
Ginger Beef
Thin strips of beef marinated in sweet ginger soy sauce, coated and deep fried TWICE in a hot skillet until crunchy, yet soft, mixed with sauteed carrots, onions, ginger, and hot peppers and topped with another, this time vinegary, soy sauce.
Canadian rep: An indelible part of the food scenes in Calgary, Alberta and western Canadian and a paragon of the 1970s Chinese-Canadian immigrant experience and a must order item on many menus. One time in university, my two friends had a minor falling out over a tin of toppled ginger beef after a particularly tough study day. The emotionless “please just leave the room” still reverberates off those dorm room walls.
American conversion: Take beef and broccoli and immediately toss out the broccoli and replace it with a mirepoix and hot peppers. Coat some beef in ginger marinade and deep fry and liberally coat everything with packets of duck sauce and soy sauce and you’re still not anywhere close.
Caesar
A delicious tomato-clam broth (Clamato) forward cocktail mixed with vodka, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce in a celery salt-rimmed glass usually garnished with a spicy bean or celery stalk. Canada loves celery.
Canadian rep: The staple brunch, BBQ, and afternoon cocktail, and legendary hangover cure, it is Canada’s most popular mixed drink as decided by Motts, the maker of Clamato juice (so take that with a grain of celery salt).
American conversion: Take your precious bloody mary and add actual spice and depth and less viscosity and more clam juice! Apparently America has a problem with clam juice, but not Mountain Dew…okay America.
Pea Soup
A traditional Quebecois dish, soupe aux pois, made with whole yellow split peas, salt pork or bacon, and herbs simmered together to create a rich, thick and creamy soup.
Canadian rep: The perfect dish in winter to absolutely coat your insides and make you at least 10 degrees (Celsius) warmer. If you can’t get an impeccably homemade version, an enormous can of Habitant pea soup is the best (and sometimes better!) option.
American conversion: Take the green, thin and runny American pea soup and fortify it with the hearty offerings fit for a Habitant (re: ham).
Shreddies
A square shredded whole wheat bran cereal that resembles perforated cardboard.
Canadian Rep: Your grandparents’ standby cereal or your parents’ “healthy” cereal option. The only way you got through mornings eating it was by absolutely dumping brown sugar on it from the opaque plastic tub from the backroom.
American conversion: Take Chex cereal and hold onto it tight because as far as faux-healthy kids cereals go, this one is an absolute gem.
Flipper pie
A meat pie from Newfoundland and Labrador made by searing seal flippers in fat (rendered salt pork fat if you’ve got it!), sauteing with a mix of carrots, celery, and onion, thickening with a roux, and covering the whole thing with pastry and baking.
Canadian Rep: Unsurprisingly, this pie hasn’t taken off in other parts of Canada mostly due to the lack of availability of seal meat, unfamiliarity eating the product, and misinformed attempts to criticize and block the sustainable seal hunting practices of Indigenous and Inuit people.
American conversion: Take your chicken pot pie recipe and this time swap chicken meat for rabbit or hare meat — apparently seal flipper meat tastes kind of like rabbit, who knew?
Maple Taffy
Maple sap boiled to a thicker consistency than maple syrup and poured in the snow to cool. Initially done at a good old-fashioned Quebec sugar shack and now popularly practiced on people’s snow-covered front lawns.
Canadian rep: A legitimate reason for kids to eat straight sugar without getting in trouble and a legitimate excuse for their parents to actually convince kids to go outside during the winters.
American conversion: Take passable Vermont maple syrup, heat it up (probably in a microwave), and just straight up pour it into the snow. Use a stick or a fork to pick it up. You’re welcome.
Lotta pies, lotta pies. Tell me your favourite or least favourite dishes or favourite Trudeau burns. No wrong answers.
