Christmas

A tourtière is a meat pie originating from Quebec, usually made with ground pork and/or veal, or beef. It is a traditional Christmas and New Year's Eve dish in Quebec, but is also enjoyed and sold in grocery stores all year long. This kind of pie is known as pâté à la viande (literally, meat pie) in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. Tourtière is not exclusive to the province of Québec. Tourtière is a traditional French-Canadian dish served by generations of French-Canadian families throughout Canada. In the U.S. state of Vermont citizens of Québécois ancestry have introduced the recipe to the state's culture, and it is traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve.

Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean

The tourtières of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area are deep-dish meat pies made with potatoes and various meats (often including game), which are cut into small cubes. In Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, this variety of tourtière is sometimes referred to in French and in English as tourtière du Lac Saint-Jean to distinguish it from the varieties of tourtière with ground meat, described above.