North America

Ragoût de Boulettes: Quebec's Spiced Meatball Stew for the New Year

Name: Ragoût de Boulettes: Quebec's Spiced Meatball Stew for the New Year
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 40 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Quebecois
Ingredients: 1 kg Ground pork (lean); 1 Onion; 2 tbsp Fresh parsley; 1/4 tsp Cinnamon (ground); 1/4 tsp Nutmeg (ground); 1/8 tsp Cloves (ground); 1 1/2 tsp Salt; 1/2 tsp Pepper; 2 tbsp Butter; 750 ml Chicken broth; 100 g All-purpose flour; 60 ml Cold water; 6 (about 900 g) Potatoes; 1 tbsp Fresh parsley

A recipe for ragoût de boulettes, the Christmas and New Year dish of Quebec, Canada: pork meatballs scented with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves in a sauce thickened with browned flour. Covers the origin in an 1840 cookbook, how to make the browned flour, and checking the core temperature.

Published: October 25, 2026Total: 1 hr 40 minLevel: Beginner

Cooking flow

Cooking steps

STEP 11 / 6

Bake flour in the oven to make browned flour

20–25 min

Baking flour spread on a baking sheet in the oven into copper-colored browned flour — Bake until it is all a copper-like brown and smells toasty

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment and spread 100 g all-purpose flour thinly. Take it out every 5 minutes, stir with a spatula, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. It is done when the whole flour turns a copper-like brown and, still loose and powdery, gives off a faint toasty smell. The edges scorch easily, so when stirring, push the flour from the edges toward the center.

STEP 22 / 6

Mix the spices and meat

5 min

Kneading ground pork with onion, parsley and spices in a bowl — The spices spread through, and it turns sticky and comes together

In a bowl, first mix the chopped onion, parsley, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Add the ground pork, salt and pepper, and knead by hand for 1 to 2 minutes. It is enough when the color of the spices has spread throughout, and the meat has become sticky and comes together as one mass.

STEP 33 / 6

Roll into 4 cm meatballs

10 min

Rolling the meat mixture into 4 cm meatballs and lining them up on a tray — Make smooth spheres 4 cm across with no cracks on the surface

Wet your hands lightly and roll the meat mixture into balls about 4 cm across. 1 kg makes about 30. If the surface has no cracks and is rolled smooth, they are less likely to fall apart while simmering. Line the rolled balls up on a tray.

STEP 44 / 6

Brown the meatballs in butter

5 min

Melting butter in a heavy pot and browning the meatballs — Rolling them, brown the whole surface lightly

Melt 2 tbsp butter in a heavy pot over medium heat, and when the foam settles, arrange the meatballs. Brown for about 5 minutes, shaking the pot now and then to roll them. A faint brown color over the whole surface is enough; they don't need to be cooked through. If they don't all fit in the pot, do it in 2 batches.

STEP 55 / 6

Simmer gently in chicken broth

Simmering meatballs in chicken broth over low heat with the lid on — Cover and simmer over low heat, with the surface trembling slightly

Return all the meatballs to the pot and pour in 750 ml chicken broth. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then immediately lower to low, cover and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. Keeping the heat so that the surface only trembles slightly lets the meatballs come out plump without breaking. If the liquid reduces and the tops of the meatballs show well above it, add 100 ml hot water at a time.

STEP 66 / 6

Thicken with the browned flour

10 min

Adding dissolved browned flour to the cooking liquid to thicken it and returning the meatballs — Thickens to coat the back of a spoon thinly, and the color turns brown

Take the meatballs out with a slotted spoon. In a small bowl, put 4 tbsp browned flour and 60 ml cold water, and dissolve well until no lumps remain. Put the cooking liquid over medium-low heat and pour in the mixture a little at a time while whisking. In 2 to 3 minutes the sauce thickens to a point where the back of a spoon is thinly coated, and when the color has turned brown, return the meatballs and warm for 5 minutes. Finally, break open the largest meatball and check that it has changed color inside, and with a thermometer that the center is 75°C or above.

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Ingredients

1 / 3

Meatballs

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Ground pork (lean)	1 kg	With very fatty ground meat, fat tends to float in the sauce
Onion	1	Finely chopped
Fresh parsley	2 tbsp	Finely chopped
Cinnamon (ground)	1/4 tsp	About "3 pinches" as a guide
Nutmeg (ground)	1/4 tsp	About "3 pinches" as a guide
Cloves (ground)	1/8 tsp	Strong in aroma, so use sparingly
Salt	1 1/2 tsp
Pepper	1/2 tsp

2 / 3

Cooking liquid and browned flour

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Butter	2 tbsp	For browning the meatballs
Chicken broth	750 ml	Western-style chicken bouillon dissolved in hot water is fine
All-purpose flour	100 g	To make the browned flour. Only 4 tbsp is used; the rest keeps
Cold water	60 ml	To dissolve the browned flour

3 / 3

To serve

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Potatoes	6 (about 900 g)	Boiled, or made into mashed potatoes
Fresh parsley	1 tbsp	Scattered to finish

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December in Quebec, with snow on the ground. When the family comes back from midnight Mass and gathers in the kitchen, a pot kept warm all night waits on the stove. Lift the lid and the sweet scent of cinnamon and cloves spreads, with round meatballs tumbling in brown sauce. On the table are homemade ketchup and pickled beets. This is ragoût de boulettes, the stew that cannot be missing from Quebec's Christmas and New Year table.

The name in French is simply "meatball stew." Spices are mixed into ground pork, rolled, simmered in broth, and at the end thickened with browned flour, called "browned flour." Most of the ingredients are available at an ordinary supermarket, and the only part that takes effort is making the browned flour.

A winter stew that goes back to an 1840 cookbook

Ragoût de boulettes and side dishes on a Quebec New Year table

According to the English-language Wikipedia, the origin of ragoût de boulettes is unclear. The earliest recipe on record is in the cookbook La Cuisinière canadienne (The Canadian Cook), published in Quebec in 1840. But what appears there is a stew of pig's feet, ragoût de pattes de cochon, to which meatballs were often added. Pig's-foot stew and meatballs have long met in the same pot.

Even now, Quebec often makes the two together as "ragoût de boulettes et de pattes." The American food magazine Saveur presents this combined stew as a dish no Quebec réveillon (the festive meal on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve) is without, and writes that it is eaten with boiled potatoes or mashed potatoes.

Good to know

Immigrant Québec, an information site for people settling in Quebec, in an article on traditional holiday dishes, calls ragoût de boulettes a dish that is "always named." On the same table, they say, are the pig's-foot stew simmered for hours in a clove-scented broth, and the cipaille, in which meat and potatoes are layered alternately with pastry and baked.

The character of this stew lies in using cinnamon and cloves in a meat dish. In Japan they are strongly associated with sweets, but in French-Canadian home cooking, they are a standard combination that removes the gaminess of meat and adds winter warmth. Saveur's recipe uses épices mélangées, a traditional Quebec spice blend of savory, sage, thyme, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

Ingredients (serves 6)

The ingredients for ragoût de boulettes: ground pork, onion, parsley, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and flour

Based on a home recipe on the Quebec site Noovo Moi, with the measurements converted.

Tip

Use ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, all of them. If you only have whole cloves, grind them in a spice mill, or instead of putting them in the meatballs, drop 2 to 3 into the cooking liquid to pass on the aroma. A very small amount of cloves is enough to scent it.

How to make ragoût de boulettes

Allow about 40 minutes for the browned flour and meatball prep, and about 60 minutes for simmering and thickening. If you make the browned flour the day before, the day's work gets much easier.

Caution

Cook ground pork thoroughly to the center. The US food-safety site FoodSafety.gov gives a safe core temperature for ground meat of 71°C (160°F) or above. This article uses 75°C as a target to leave a margin. Color alone can mislead, so check the temperature at the center of a larger meatball.

Tips for the browned flour and the thickening

Comparison of white flour before baking and browned flour after baking

The brown color of the ragoût de boulettes sauce is the color not of meat juices but of the browned flour. Browning the flour adds, along with thickening, a nutty toastiness to the sauce. Thicken with flour left white and you get a pale sauce with a quite different taste.

Tip

Besides the oven, browned flour can be made in a heavy skillet. Put the flour in over low heat with no oil, stir constantly with a wooden spatula, and toast it until it reaches the same copper color as in the oven. It scorches all at once if you look away, so don't leave the stove.

Tip

Browned flour absorbs water less readily than unbaked flour, and thickens less strongly. If 4 tbsp seems loose, add browned flour dissolved in cold water, 1 tbsp at a time. Cooled browned flour keeps in an airtight container and can be used in the next gravy or stew.

The traditional version with pig's feet

Ragoût de boulettes et de pattes, combining pig's-foot stew and meatballs

For a more festive version, try "ragoût de boulettes et de pattes," combined with pig's-foot stew. In Saveur's recipe, the pig's feet are simmered from cold water for 2 to 3 hours with parsley, bay leaf, carrot, celery and onion, and when the cartilage is soft and the meat is about to come off the bone, the liquid is strained. The liquid is chilled, the fat removed, and used as the cooking liquid for the meatballs. The gelatin from the pig's feet dissolves into the sauce and makes the mouthfeel much richer.

Changing the spices is another way to enjoy it. Following Saveur's épices mélangées, add small amounts of dried savory, sage and thyme for a herbal aroma. Wikipedia also notes that there are recipes that add Worcestershire sauce, ginger or mustard.

How to eat it

The finished ragoût de boulettes with mashed potatoes and pickled beets — Meatballs and sauce over mashed potatoes, scattered with parsley

Put boiled or mashed potatoes on the plate, spoon plenty of meatballs and sauce over them, and scatter parsley. At the Quebec table, homemade tomato ketchup and pickles of beets or cucumbers are the standard accompaniments. A sour side goes well with the sauce scented with sweet spices.

To make one more Quebec Christmas dish, there is the tourtière, spiced ground meat wrapped in pastry and baked. With the same cinnamon and clove combination as the meatball stew, you can really sense the aroma of the Quebec winter. And for something sweet afterward, try the butter tart.

FAQ

Ground cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves with browned flour laid out

Can I make it with ground beef?

Yes. The Immigrant Québec article also says the meatballs are made with ground beef or pork. Ground beef alone firms up a little hard, so mixing beef and pork half and half makes it easier to eat.

Can I make it ahead?

Yes. The sauce stiffens as it cools, so add a little hot water and reheat over low heat, and confirm that the meatballs are hot to the center. I can't give a clear storage time, so refrigerate it and finish it soon.

Is there a way to skip making the browned flour?

You can substitute a store-bought brown roux or gravy mix for convenience, but the toastiness falls short of browned flour. Browned flour can be made in a batch, so making it once is recommended.

Which ingredients should I watch for allergies?

It uses wheat in the browned flour and butter (milk) for browning the meatballs. The butter can be replaced with vegetable oil. If you avoid wheat, baking rice flour in the oven in the same way as browned flour lets you thicken it.

Sources

Wikipedia, "Ragoût de boulettes." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rago%C3%BBt_de_boulettes
Rita Trudel, "Ragoût de Boulettes et Pattes (Stewed Meatballs and Pork Trotter Gravy)," Saveur, published 16 December 2025. (accessed and checked 22 October 2026). https://www.saveur.com/recipes/ragout-boulettes-pattes-meatball-pork-trotter-stew/
Noovo Moi, "Ragoût de boulettes (avec option à la mijoteuse)." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026). https://www.noovomoi.ca/cuisiner/recettes/recette.ragout-de-boulettes.1.1072966.html
Immigrant Québec, "Cuisine traditionnelle québécoise au temps des Fêtes." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026). https://immigrantquebec.com/fr/actualites/cuisine-traditionnelle-quebecoise-au-temps-des-fetes/
FoodSafety.gov, "Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature." (accessed and checked 22 October 2026). https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/safe-minimum-internal-temperatures