🍽️ Gastronomic adventure in Scandinavia: top 10 unusual dishes
The inhabitants of the Kandy Nava Peninsula and their closest neighbors live up to their proud title of descendants of the Vikings. They have learned to make the most of the resources available to them – and they clearly have strong stomachs.
What do they eat? We'll talk about this today. Catch a selection of the most outlandish Scandinavian dishes. Spoiler: most of them are fish, the sea is nearby after all.
You can bring your love for some products of the northern land home. This happened to me with Brunost cheese. Try the rest on the level of extreme rim and how to jump with a parachute. Some are really dangerous to your health. So get ready.
Surströmming
Let's go with trump cards, the first place in our top is occupied by “rotten fish”, if you accidentally drop it on your clothes, feel free to throw it away.
Swedish stink herring is a quest for the brave. Some people even want to ban it for use in multi-storey buildings. No wonder, such a strong smell will wake up all the neighbors.
How is surströmming done? The fish is first soaked in a saline solution for several days, then put into barrels for fermentation. It is believed that the dish appeared during the war between the Swedes and Prussian feudal lords. Allegedly, salt reserves were running out and were not enough to properly preserve fish. Naturally, the herring began to wander. But the warring Swedes were okay with this.
Fish stinks because acetic and propionic acids are released from it, which give it its peculiar smell. But for the locals it is a culinary landmark , their pride and delicacy. Surströmming is eaten with tomatoes, bread and onions. And festivals are regularly dedicated to him.
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Rakfisk
A bit reminiscent of the first lot. Norwegian beauty. Also fish (usually trout, sometimes whitefish or char), also with a strong smell. It is also salted, rolled into barrels and forgotten about, sometimes for a couple of months, sometimes for six months. Whatever a person gets used to! Despite the smell, Norwegians eat hundreds of tons of this vigorous fish per year. Rakfisk is served with onions, black bread and sour cream.
Lutefisk
It looks like a white anti-stress slug. The fish (usually cod) is first dried and then soaked in lye. Amazing dish. And that's why. On the one hand, this is a classic of the Scandinavian Christmas table. The same familiar dish for them as Olivier for the holidays. It would seem, what's the catch?
And it exists, because if you look at the product from the other side, it is extremely dangerous to health. Lutefisk can only be eaten after careful heat treatment. The product contains a toxic substance – the amino acid lysinoazaline. It causes acute renal failure.
People with unprepared stomachs are better off not trying it; even the locals don’t eat lutefisk more than once a month.
By the way, there is also a 16th century legend about how the dish appeared. Centuries ago, a fish warehouse burned down from a lightning strike, all its contents mixed with ash. The Vikings are an inventive people. They decided to eat at least what was left, after only soaking the fish in water. Due to a chemical reaction with alkali, the fish became jelly-like and people liked it.
Nowadays, lutefisk is often eaten with bacon, onions, mashed potatoes, and sometimes even with sweet cheese—we’ll talk about it later.
Brunost
Let's dilute our fish range a little with dairy products. Brunost cheese is one of the rarest and youngest types of cheese. It was invented by Norwegian farmer Anna Hove at the end of the 19th century. She saved her Gudbrandsdalen valley from impoverishment in the 1880s thanks to her discovery. In Norway, whey was previously boiled to create a soft, sweet brown cheese. Anna decided to add sour cream to it too – and her invention took off and is still in demand.
The cheese tastes like boiled condensed milk or salted caramel. There are different variations, but this is a sweet cheese, although there may be no sugar at all. Usually brunost is prepared from a mixture of cow's and goat's milk in different proportions, sometimes sheep's milk is added. I can at least recommend trying this product!
Hakarl
Would you like to try some shark meat? It's a shame it's rotten again. Greenland shark meat is saturated with ammonia and urea because the fish do not have kidneys. So shark meat cannot be eaten fresh. But the Scandinavians are experienced people, let it ferment in a barrel, it will be good for eating. In supermarkets in Iceland, hakarl is sold packaged and used as a snack with beer.
Jolebrod
Speaking of beer. Yolebrod – beer soup. Popular and beloved in Norway. But after preparation, only the name in the composition and a light amber will remain from the beer. They prepare soup from beer and milk, adding a little flour, honey, sometimes eggs, various spices, and crackers. There are different variations. It is considered a dish that strengthens the immune system. It doesn’t cause kidney failure – and that’s already good!
Kalakukko
Here's some bread to go with the soup. Traditional Finnish bread: rye dough on the outside, lard on the inside and chopped salmon fish. Interestingly, no one removes the bones from the fillet. The bread is cooked for up to six hours. During this time, the bones themselves soften.
Maktak
How about some leather wrapping? Yes, not a simple one, but a whale one! Yes, yes, maktak is frozen whale skin with lard. Whales, like sharks, are common foods in the Scandinavian diet. They eat maktak in small cubes with onions, garlic, and bread. Although whale skin, when thawed, is also suitable for food, it is sometimes dried.
In Greenland, maktak is always on the Christmas table, another unusual analogue of our Olivier. But let us emphasize again: a non-hazardous analogue.
In general, Scandinavian cuisine has a lot of interesting things: porridge made from sour cream, dishes made from moss, caviar sold in tubes, venison snacks, bone marrow tartare and much more.
Try, experiment, learn from experience, for example, all sorts of cranberry additives, which even with potato pancakes are good for a sweet soul – one Norwegian once taught.
PS: What from the list did you want to try, or vice versa, what would you never agree to try?