Aside from poutine, Quebec’s most famous culinary export has to be maple syrup. Maple syrup is a dark, super sweet confection made by boiling the sap from a maple tree to a specific temperature for a specific amount of time. This delicious syrup has been a stable of the Quebecois diet for hundreds of years and each spring hundreds of sugar-loving sap alchemists disappear into shacks on their maple plantations to render the year’s crop of maple syrup.
The Sugar Shack Meal – A Tradition
Once the weather starts to warm up, and the sap in the trees starts to flow, Montrealers know it will soon be time to leave the city to head to their favorite sugar shack and gorge themselves silly on maple taffy. Also known as ‘sugar on snow’, the maple syrup is heated up to just the right temperature and then poured over freshly packed snow. After a few minutes the confection has solidified enough to be wound around wooden sticks or forks and eaten while it is still warm and encrusted with icey goodness.
Given that maple syrup is incredibly sweet, it’s not surprising that there is only so much that a person can eat at any given time. Even the most hardcore taffy fan has to pace themselves in order to get the most enjoyment out of their sugar shack experience and not go into sugar shock. Most of the time, the shack has much more to offer your palate than delicious maple syrup. To curtail the sensory overload that all that sugar brings to your taste buds, sour pickles and home made apple cider are on hand. If you want to soak up some of the lingering maple taste in your mouth, plain brown donuts are often the perfect solution. Another favorite on the sugar shack menu are ‘fèves au lard’, or brown baked beans, which give you a way to fill up your belly and give your pancreas a chance to heal. The experienced taffy aficionado will intersperse their sugar binges with breaks for any of these alternate foods in order to prolong their maple syrup pleasure as long as possible.
Where To Go To Find A Sugar Shack?
Generally speaking, the farther away you can get from the city, the better in terms of finding a sugar shack that won’t be too busy or crowded. There are two regions in Quebec which are about an hour’s drive from Montreal and which both have a healthy scattering of sugar shacks and maple tree plantations. The first is the Laurentians, the mountainous region to the northwest of the island. The area around St-Jerome and St-Jovite, two of the larger towns, is littered with ‘cabanes a sucre’. Another great place to visit on your hunt for taffy is the Eastern Townships. Towns like Lennoxville, North Hatley, Granby and Magog are located in prime maple tree growing country and there are close to 50 sugar shacks open to the public.
The best thing you can do, however, is to befriend someone who has a family maple plantation and who will bring you along to one of their family sugaring offs. These are truly some of the best, most authentic Quebecois experiences you can have while visiting the province, and you will leave with a sugar-induced smile stuck to your face for days afterwards.
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