Poutine Râpée

Ingredients

• 300g salt pork, cut into 12-18 small cubes
• 2.7kg (about 8 large) raw potatoes, peeled
• 3 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks (for mashing)
• 1 tsp salt, plus more for the mashed potatoes and cooking water
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• Flour, for dusting hands and dumplings
• Butter or molasses, for serving

Before you cook

• Place the cubed salt pork in a bowl of cold water and refrigerate it to soak for at least 4 hours or overnight, to pull out some of its saltiness.
• Peel the 3 potatoes for mashing, cut them into chunks, boil them in salted water until tender, then drain and mash them plain, with no butter or milk, and set aside to cool.
• Peel the raw potatoes for grating and keep them in a bowl of cold water until you're ready to grate them, to stop them browning.
• Drain the soaked salt pork just before you start assembling the dumplings.
• Set a very large pot of generously salted water on the stove and bring it to a gentle boil.

Steps

1. Grate the raw potatoes on the fine side of a box grater into a large bowl.
2. Working in batches, gather the grated potato into a clean kitchen towel and twist it tightly over the sink to wring out as much liquid as possible.
3. Combine the squeezed grated potato with the plain mashed potato in a large bowl, using about two parts grated to one part mashed.
4. Season the potato mixture with the salt and pepper and mix well; this is your dumpling dough.
5. Dust your hands with flour and scoop out about 1.5 cups of the potato dough.
6. Flatten the dough in your palm into a disc about 1cm thick.
7. Place 2-3 cubes of the soaked salt pork in the center of the disc.
8. Fold the edges of the potato dough up and around the pork, pinching and smoothing the seams closed until you have a solid ball about the size of a large orange with no cracks.
9. Dust the outside of the ball lightly with flour and set it aside.
10. Repeat forming dumplings with the remaining potato dough and salt pork until it's all used.
11. Lower the dumplings gently into the pot of boiling salted water, 2 or 3 at a time so they don't knock together.
12. Keep the water at a steady simmer, uncovered, and cook the dumplings for 2 to 2.5 hours, until they turn a translucent greyish color and feel firm all the way through.
13. Lift the cooked dumplings out of the pot with a slotted spoon and drain them briefly.
14. Serve the dumplings hot, split open at the table, with butter or a drizzle of molasses.