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FOOD AND DRINK

5 things to know about aligot – France’s cheesy winter dish

It's delicious, it involves French cheese and you can also get involved in competitions to stretch it - what's not to love about the winter delicacy aligot?

Published: 20 October 2022 17:32 CEST
Updated: 21 October 2022 15:08 CEST
5 things to know about aligot - France's cheesy winter dish
Cooks prepare the traditional French dish aligot. Photo by ERIC CABANIS / AFP

What is it?

If you haven’t come across aligot before, it’s basically a superior form of cheesy mash – it’s made by mixing mashed potato with butter, garlic, cream and cheese.

The traditional cheese used is Laguiole but you can also use tomme or any cheese that goes stringy when stretched. The stretchiness is important, and we’ll come back to that later.

Where can I find it?

Aligot (pronounced alley-go) is a traditional dish of the Aveyron département in southern France, but it’s also popular in the Auvergne area and is pretty widely available across France, particularly in the centre and south.

As well as being served in restaurants it’s also a staple dish for sale at France’s various Christmas markets and winter festivals, where it’s often served with a sausage.

You can of course make your own – recipe here.

When should I eat it?

It’s generally served in the winter. There isn’t a hard-and-fast rule on this, but mashed potato in general tends to be more of a winter comfort food and as we mentioned aligot is a popular offering at Christmas markets. Some sports grounds also sell it as a pre-match snack.

How should I eat it?

It goes with most things but is often served as a side to meaty dishes like a bœuf bourguignon, while a Toulouse sausage is also a classic accompaniment. 

And before you eat it, you should see how far you can stretch it – just for fun.

As we mentioned, the cheese you use needs to be one that goes stringy when heated and this means that a classic aligot is a very stretchy foodstuff indeed.

In fact, festivals in central and southern France often include a stretching competition to see who can produce the stretchiest mash.

The preferred technique for this seems to be a vertical stretch – the contestant mounts a ladder or cherry-picker and works in a team with the person on the ground next to the pan of aligot to keep stretching it upwards until the string finally breaks.

The world record for the stretchiest aligot was set in 2020 by four brothers who managed to stretch theirs for 6.2 metres, getting it as high as the roof of their house.

READ MORE: Rules of Raclette: How to make France’s cheesy winter classic

Check out the very hilarious video below of their record-breaking efforts (the record-breaking championships tend to take place in the summer when it is easier to keep the aligot warm and therefore at maximum stretchiness).

You can hear more about aligot – as well as some of France’s more bizarre food festivals – in the latest edition of the Talking France podcast.

Find all episodes of the podcast HERE.

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HEALTH

Perrier problems: What’s going on with French mineral water?

Perrier has halted production of 1-litre bottles of its famous carbonated water because of a contamination problem - the latest in a series of problems with some of France's most famous mineral water brands.

Published: 14 June 2024 15:03 CEST
Perrier problems: What’s going on with French mineral water?

The French love bottled water. They spent an estimated €2.5 billion and drank an average of 145 bottles each of the stuff in 2023.

The country is both the world’s biggest exporter of bottled water and the home of its most famous brands from Volvic to Evian, Vittel to Perrier.

But all is far from well in the highly lucrative bottled water market.

In January, it was reported that a third of French mineral water brands received treatments which are banned for the supposedly ‘natural’ products and, in April, France’s health watchdog demanded a clampdown at Nestlé water sites after traces of “faecal” contamination were found.

Meanwhile drought conditions last year raised concerns about overproduction of bottled water in France, with companies exempted from water restrictions that everyone else faced.

Perrier problems

Now, it has emerged that Nestlé has halted production of one-litre bottles of Perrier water at its facility in Vergèze, in the Gard département in south-west France, according to Le Monde and Radio France.

After learning in April that one of the plant’s wells had been shut down following a ‘contamination episode’ after flooding caused by Storm Monica, the investigation has found that two more wells have recently undergone disinfection operations – which the Nestlé group said was a ‘regular maintenance operation’.

Following the April contamination warning, State authorities ordered the destruction of a batch of at least two million bottles of Perrier. The final number of destroyed bottles was around 2.9 million, according to Nestlé group’s own estimates.

Officials, including members of the Occitanie regional health authority, visited the Vergèze facility on May 30th to inspect the plant, boreholes and water quality monitoring laboratory. The findings of this inspection have not yet been made public.

But of seven wells used to produce Perrier brand fizzy mineral water, most are currently out of service, the investigation found – prompting production of the famous one-litre green bottles of Perrier water to be halted until at least the end of summer.

A préfectural decree means the company can draw water from two boreholes to produce a drink called Maison Perrier, which will not have ‘natural mineral water’ status.

Water conditions

The risk to water quality is not confined to the Vergèze operation. Safety concerns have been known by health authorities for years in the Vosges region where the Hépar, Contrex and Vittel brands are drawn, the investigation found, citing a confidential report in which officials expressed concern about the withdrawal of illicit treatments, which could “expose consumers to a health risk, as the treatments were put in place to compensate for a quality defect in the resource”.

In June 2023, in a letter sent to food safety watchdog the Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire alimentaire nationale (Anses), the director of Occitanie’s regional health authority referred to “regular bacteriological contamination of raw water in at least five of the seven drilling”. 

In October of the same year, Anses alerted the government of an “insufficient level of confidence” to ensure “the health quality of finished products”.

Nestlé’s response

Nestlé said that it had initiated a plan to transform its factories, in agreement with authorities. “We have invested significantly, and will continue to do so, to protect this unique heritage and ensure its future,” the group told journalists from Le Monde and Radio France.

But unions are concerned about the future of the plant and its 1,000 employees and have triggered a clause in the Code du travail meaning they will be alerted of “facts likely to affect the economic situation of the company”, amid concerns authorities could order the shutdown of the plant for safety reasons.

So, is bottled water in France safe to drink?

There are two main types of bottled water in France – spring water and mineral water. 

Spring water is subject to the same safety regulations as tap water. But it cannot undergo disinfection treatment. Be aware, a single brand of spring water can in fact come from several sources located in different regions, and the composition can change bottle-by-bottle, depending on the origin.

Mineral waters are not subject to the same safety rules as tap water – in fact, some mineral waters would not be allowed in the public drinking water system because they would not meet strict criteria. For example, fluoride levels are limited at 1.5 mg/l for tap water; mineral waters, however, can contain up to 5 mg/l.

Like spring water, mineral water should not be subject to disinfection treatments.

But, on the whole, and despite recent concerns, bottled water in France is safe to drink.

And which one is the cheapest?

Tap water. According to consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir it costs €0.003 per litre, on average, or less than €2 per year for a consumption of 1.5 litres of tap water every day.

And it is subjected to all kinds of routine checks – 54 different parameters are monitored pretty much all the time.

6 things to know about tap water in France

If you’re not a fan of the taste, you could always run it through a water filter. It will be more expensive, but still cheaper than bottled water – and still subject to the same number of safety checks, plus it has been filtered.

It’s also better for the planet because tap water doesn’t involve plastic bottles – the city of Paris is currently running a campaign to encourage people to drink tap water in order to reduce waste in the form of plastic bottles. The city has hundreds of drinking water fountains and businesses that display the L’Eau de Paris’ label will refill your water bottle for free.

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