"Tourtière" or meat pie? The big holiday debate

In Quebec, there is no consensus on how to define tourtière. It varies from one region to another, almost from one family to another. For example, the dish in the photo is commonly called a tourtière.

What? Is that the sound of disagreement? It’s most likely from Saguenay–Lac-St-Jean, where they amicably claim the tourtière du Lac name and recipe. For them, the tourtière is more like a thick pie consisting of cubed meat (or game) and potatoes, onions and pie crusts, simmered for almost five hours in a Dutch oven.

According to the Office québécois de la langue française, a meat pie is defined as a pie whose crusts are filled with ground pork, spices and sometimes a binder, which reminds one of the image below…

Pork: the common denominator

Even if we can’t agree on a definition of tourtière, can we concur that pork can be found in both meat pie and tourtière du Lac? There are some interesting statistics about pork in Canada.

Canada is one of the world’s major pork producers. On July 1, 2022, Canadian hog producers reported 13.9 million hogs on their farms, down 3.0% from the same date in 2021. Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba continued to hold the largest inventories among the provinces. Together, these three provinces are home to over 80% of Canada’s hogs, with Quebec accounting for nearly one-third of Canadian hog inventories, at 4.4 million head.

On July 1, 2022, 7,310 farms reported hog inventories, down 1.5% from the same date the previous year.

What about exports?

Canada exported 3.3 million live hogs in the first half of 2022, up 1.8% from the same period in 2021. Disruptions in pork processing in eastern Canada continued to encourage exports of live hogs to the United States.

Ontario exports remained high for the period from January to June 2022, up 3.7% year over year from the same period in 2021 to 989,200 head, and 54.8% higher than the previous five-year average, as producers sought to offset decreases in domestic slaughter.

Putting a price on hogs

In the first half of 2022, average producer prices in Canada remained above prices received in the first half of 2021.

Slaughter hog prices declined in all provinces in September 2022, as high feed costs and a prolonged drought encouraged farmers to decrease their herds, leading to increased supply for United States processors. The September price declines varied from 10.5% in British Columbia to 16.7% in Quebec, putting an end to both the eight-month upward trend in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia and the four-month upward trend for the other provinces.

Though these data are interesting, they obviously won’t help solve the never ending, highly sensitive debate about the definition of tourtière that has lasted for generations. What is certain, however, is that your grandmother’s is the best. End of story.

Note: The author of this article cannot be held responsible for any controversy at your holiday dinners about the definition of tourtière.