How dried fish is made in Iceland

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/eat_and_drink/2019/06/12/how_dried_fish_is_made/

by bifrost • 7 years ago

119 94 7 years ago

icelandmonitor.mbl.is

uwuhn2• 7 years ago

Soo I've never had fish prepared this way. Where's the best place to buy it in/near SF, or to order from?

bifrost12• 7 years ago

My fave spot for interesting dried fish in SF is "New World Market" on Geary in the Richmond district. Its pretty good but slightly confusing if you don't speak russian.

uwuhn2• 7 years ago

I'll check it out, what should I ask for? Do they call it hardfiskur or is there a Russian word for the equivalent?

exhilaration• 7 years ago

Anyone know if we can get this in the U.S.?

jandrese2• 7 years ago

Killjoys at the FDA would probably make it difficult to import.

kevin_thibedeau2• 7 years ago

Katsuobushi (the basis of bonito flakes and dashi) is prepared in a similar way. It is available in the US.

Nihilartikel• 7 years ago

I certainly haven't tried it myself, but um.. I think that customs usually misses it if you're ever entering the states from Iceland and innocently miss it from your declarations.

Broken_Hippo4• 7 years ago

Oddly enough, fish isn't difficult. Meat, however, is. I can send family in the states dried and canned fish products, but customs will confiscate meat products - much to the disappointment of my brother, who would like to try reindeer sausage.

IIRC, it has more to do with possible disease spreading between continents than anything, though I do think they are a bit ridiculous with their total ban.

bifrost12• 7 years ago

I haven't seen this exact thing.

I have seen a variety of dried fishes available in Slavic and Asian markets though, so I'm sure you could find something similar.

haukur• 7 years ago

You can buy it online from some stores - this is the first one that popped up on Google: https://nammi.is/food-drinks1/dried-fish.html

itronitron• 7 years ago

smoked salmon if you are in the pacific northwest, avoid the thin-sliced stuff though

bifrost12• 7 years ago

Hot Smoked is one of my faves even though I can do a mean cured salmon. I highly advise people have PNW hot smoked salmon!

itchynosedev• 7 years ago

This was our preferred snack on our road trip through Iceland in deep winter. This fish fills you very quickly, doesn't produce the "heavy" feeling in your stomach when snacking on a road trip, and tastes amazing. I was surprised how expensive it was (even for Iceland) but looking at the way they prepare it the price seems justified. This and thermal pools are the things I miss the most about Iceland.

pesfandiar• 7 years ago

Wait until you try it with a bit of butter then! I think the protein-to-price ratio makes sense when you compare it to similar products like beef jerky or pepperoni sticks. I'd bet hardfiskur is a lot healthier than jerky and deli meat though, since at the least it has much less salt.

wallace_f• 7 years ago

With high-quality nutrient-dense foods I get satisfied and full easily; but when shopping, I often forget to consider this when looking at prices. Thanks for reminding me.

lukasm• 7 years ago

I had dried cod with butter, which was pretty good. I went to a cooking class in Reykjavik and tried Arctic char with butter. It was much better.

Shorn• 7 years ago

It is wonderful with a bit of butter - but someone needs to tell the Icelanders that! Watching them eat it, it's a true exercise in restraint not to ask if they want some fish to go with their butter. I know it's traditional and all, but I don't understand how they can even taste the fish.

ajmurmann• 7 years ago

At the Dill restaurant they served it with a little home made mayo and what seemed like powdered, brown butter (made powdery with maltodextrin). It was incredible.

IronWolve• 7 years ago

I didnt know dried fish is also known as a protein bar, well heck, the choice for low carb energy bars is really lacking too. Jerky as an alternative eh, good idea!

ggcdn• 7 years ago

I find foods like this interesting because it goes against my instincts of what's safe to eat. Same with most things cured, fermented, etc.

But one thing I was wondering - in an open drying shack like that, how to they keep the bugs away?

xeroaura• 7 years ago

Maybe its cold enough out for minimal bugs? The pics seem to have snow in the background.

The article mentions they dip the fish in brine before hanging up as well. Google indicates other methods of drying fish include sprinkling salt on to keep bugs away.

jandrese2• 7 years ago

Probably by doing it when it's too cold out for the bugs. They also dip it in brine to neutralize the pathogens on the surface of the fish.

What I'm curious about is what they do if they put a batch out and then a warm front blows through unexpectedly. Do they take the fish down and stuff them in a freezer until the weather cools off again? I can't imagine they let the whole batch get ruined.

kansface• 7 years ago

I don't think there are many bugs in Iceland so long as you don't fish-shack-up near a lake, ponies, or puffins.

jacquesm3• 7 years ago

Bug season in Iceland is relatively short but very intense.

Similar to the Nordics and Canada.

The black fly is the worst of them imo.

tomcam• 7 years ago

We use netting

Broken_Hippo4• 7 years ago

I'm gonna guess netting in the warm months, but honestly, they are far enough north to not worry as much as one would in a warmer climate.

I was shocked by the lack of screens in windows in Norway, and I'm guessing Iceland is the same. The only time it has actually bothered me was on a farm when the cows were in the nearest pasture - there were so many flies!

Tor3• 7 years ago

The drying season is the first winter months of the year, e.g. February, March, April. Before the flies are back.

radicalbyte• 7 years ago

The white fish (code/haddock) version of this is really nice. It's like a fishy version of Biltong only all of the flavour is natural. I didn't like the darker one (which is pictured in the article).

I've not been able to find it outside of Iceland though.

mu_killnine• 7 years ago

I just watched a fascinating video on 18th century cooking where this same kind of fish (cod) is prepared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzAt6e1l-c

I thought the step where they beat the fish with a mallet was so wild. It's certainly led me down a rabbit hole of seeing how we used to prepare food a few hundred years ago.

mrighele• 7 years ago

Stockfish has been the main ingredient of a very traditional plate in north east Italy for more than four hundred years [1]. These days it is not used as much as in the past, but you can still find stockfish in a number of supermarkets. Preparing the fish for cooking takes 2-3 days, and the first step is of course beating it with a mallet :-)

[1] It was in fact considered food for poor people which is quite strange since it was imported from far places.

kbenson• 7 years ago

It was in fact considered food for poor people which is quite strange since it was imported from far places.

Well, so was lobster at one point...

tejtm• 7 years ago

wonder if this was for softening up or killing macro parasites and eggs

lam• 7 years ago

It's for softening. The process breaks up the meat fibers both for easier chewing and for absorbing your saliva into the fibers. The latter makes it tastier when you chew it longer.

You can find similar dried fish / squids in Korean and Vietnamese grocery stores. Roast them slightly and they go really well with beers.

masklinn4• 7 years ago

I thought the step where they beat the fish with a mallet was so wild.

Is it really so wild? Beating on it remains a common way of tenderising meat.

equalunique• 7 years ago

I really want to try some of this. I'm a fan of Cambodian-style fermented fish, and so this Icelandic fish seems like it might be another option for me.

GrumpyNl• 7 years ago

I have a treat for you, Norske lutefisk. Its one of the, for me, most disgusting things i have eaten. All the side dishes made it bearable.

bifrost12• 7 years ago

Dude, you gotta try Surströmming!

YeGoblynQueenne• 7 years ago

Apparently, the truth about the lutefisk is that you should never eat the lutefisk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wTCJ5bqK2A

semi-extrinsic• 7 years ago

Well, if it's cooked poorly, it's a gelatinous off-tasting mess. If it's cooked right, that is with enough salt and heat to absorb the excess moisture, it's relatively firm and quite delicious.

Broken_Hippo4• 7 years ago

I've been told that since I'm mostly vegetarian (I eat some fish), I cannot possibly eat lutefisk: https://youtu.be/E7X6Z_SV-Pc

Luckily, no one in Norway has tried to make it for me yet and my Norwegian spouse says if I try to cook it, he's going to be out of the house a few days. I guess the smell is quite... special.

bifrost12• 7 years ago

Cambodian fermented pork is amaaazingly tasty. It was way less fragrant than I thought it would be too.

nkurz• 7 years ago

The most surprising part for me about the dried fish trade was the role of Nigeria!

"Enterprising Icelanders have figured out how to salvage the waste from the fish factories. They take the discarded carcasses and heads to hang them on racks to dry and send to Nigeria. There are football fields of hand tied fish heads in the lava fields outside Hafnafjord (near the blue lagoon). Portuguese gave the Nigerians a taste for dried fish heads at and Icelanders are very smart and capitalizing on the protein drain in Africa." https://olsonfarlow.com/editorial-images/polish-worker-hangi...

"The heads are primarily sold to Nigeria, where dried fish heads are considered a delicacy." https://icelandmag.is/tags/cod-heads

jacquesm3• 7 years ago

In Iceland they also eat the heads, it's a local delicacy, I would caution against it.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

Can you provide a comparison if possible to other types of food; I have that typical Westerner squeamishness towards the idea of eating fish "heads"

andridk3• 7 years ago

I'm Icelandic and my mom eats _everything_. Yet, I've never heard of anyone eating cod heads. Do you have a source?

selimthegrim• 7 years ago

The roots of their demand are somewhat tragic:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42137476

gruez• 7 years ago

Skip to the bottom few paragraphs if you want to get straight to the reason.

izuchukwu• 7 years ago

I’m first-generation and my family is Nigerian, and while I personally don’t eat the heads, we do entire dried fish quite a bit. Locally, we refer to it as “oporoko,” and it’s primarily imported from Norway, rather than Iceland, as another commenter has mentioned. It’s also very widely available in African and Nigerian food stores in the United States.

Similar to the what’s said in the link another commenter posted, I would say it is one of my favorite foods.

edvald• 7 years ago

I actually worked one summer doing exactly that, back when I was 15. Without any doubt, the absolute worst job I've had. I'd previously worked summers in my uncle's _fresh_ fish processing and that was totally fine. The stuff we were racking and drying at that other place though was anything but fresh. Ugh, the textures, the smells, it's all coming back to me... Kinda hard to reconcile that as a delicacy.

It sure was formative though. All uphill from there, haha.

bifrost12• 7 years ago

The old joke about "knowing how the sausage is made" is also true about drying fish.

vermontdevil• 7 years ago

Didn’t realize the TLD for Iceland is .is

landonxjames• 7 years ago

I tried Hákarl[1] when I was in Iceland and I do not think I have ever felt so betrayed by a food. It really destroyed my interest in trying any other aged fish dishes, but one of my friends loved it.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl

athenot• 7 years ago

Pretty much any fermeted food is going to be an acquired taste and take a while to get used to (if ever).

I happen to love French cheeses but I know some of my foodie friends won't find them enjoyable.

I suspect this to be a natural distrust of the body regarding fermented things, slowly easing the taste into things that the body can recognize as safe. But I don't have any evidence to back that up.

cr18953• 7 years ago

I suspect this to be a natural distrust of the body regarding fermented things

I wonder if the opposite is true, from an evolutionary perspective. Fermentation is a way food remains safe to eat where otherwise it might have rotted or made one sick.

gambiting• 7 years ago

So I went to the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö(would recommend going!) And they had a little tasting section at the end. Pretty much everything else was absolutely fine, even surstromming was ok, I can totally see myself enjoying it with some vodka and a gherkin. But Hakarl? Jesus I honestly wanted to vomit afterwards. All of the foods there had some redeeming quality - if the smell was bad, the taste was good, or at least the texture was. Hakarl was bad on all 3 counts - smell that could wake the dead, texture that was somewhere between a snot and egg yolk and the tests was just of something that died long ago and was left to rot.

bifrost12• 7 years ago

oh wow, I didn't know that was there! I'll have to go next time I go to Sweden.

meheleventyone• 7 years ago

The next upgrade is Skata which in my experience actually gets eaten a lot more. There is Þorláksmessa on the 23rd of December where bucketloads of the stuff get eaten all over the place. It’s perfect if you really want to stink of ammonia in a deep seated way.

enriquto• 7 years ago

This is a really exceptional food. There's a lot of "aged fish dishes" that are perfectly appropriate for everybody.

cr18953• 7 years ago

I was a bit underwhelmed by how moderately off-putting it was...I was led to believe it's the worst thing ever. It certainly smelled pretty awful, but there wasn't a wretch-inducing taste. The icy Brennivín definitely helped.

Not that I'm eager to ever try it again...

masklinn4• 7 years ago

Hakarl is a very peculiar one though. It's treated and fermented fish, not a dried one, and is well known for being… an acquired taste (https://youtu.be/vTOfhQ_SZEg?t=121)

ww5202• 7 years ago

Hákarl FTW. I got couple Icelandic friends and they said the way to make Surströmming was to dig a hole in the sand, put the fish in, piss on it, and cover it up to let it ferment, to get the legendary authentic smell out of it. Not sure how true that is.

nixy• 7 years ago

Funny, in Sweden where surströmming is from I have heard the exact same words used to describe the production of Hákarl. But Hákarl is easy to smell and eat compared to surströmming, which is gut-wrenching when you smell it.

ww5202• 7 years ago

I think they wash Hákarl before packaging it while Surströmming is still fermenting in the can until opened. The right way to open Surströmming is to submerge the can in water and wash the fish before serve. Much less smell.

jaytaylor2• 7 years ago

  One of the most popular snacks in Iceland
  is dried fish.

I'm curious, how much of this fish consumption is sustainable?

andridk3• 7 years ago

Well, it's not like "harðfiskur" is cheap. 100 grams go for about $8. Icelanders don't eat a lot of fish any more. Almost all of it is exported.

Is the fishing sustainable? I don't know. Probably not.

Someone• 7 years ago

There are about 340,000 Icelanders, and Iceland has a 200 mile exclusive fishing zone around its coast.

Such a zone around a single point already is over 120,000 square miles.

So, at less than 3 Icelanders per square mile of ocean, I doubt they could eat all the fish in ‘their’ ocean.

Drying fish is highly sustainable, as it is done on low-tech solar power.

The only concern could be the method of catching fish. I doubt that makes much impact, though, and if it does, there’s bigger fish to fry elsewhere (pun intended)

jaytaylor2• 7 years ago

How does the fish cure rather than rotting with this technique?

And since it's outdoors, how are insects kept away from the meat?

steve_adams_86• 7 years ago

I imagine it's similar to dry aging beef. With the right temperature and humidity, you support only bacteria that are safe to eat and you end up with a dry protective exterior before long which allows the fish to begin safely fermenting. You can do this with a surprising number of things. The trick is to have the correct initial conditions which prevents the proliferation of counterproductive bacteria. They also dip the fish in a brine to promote the right bacteria and prevent others from taking hold.

As for insects, it's likely that it's too cold outside (I think the article mentioned that it's kept outside in cool weather). Once it's done doing the cool weather thing it goes inside.

Gustomaximus• 7 years ago

I saw the home version of this in Norway near Lofoten where people literally nail a gutted fish to their boatsheds: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UNEA7favnWmQ4TCV9

If you ever have the chance to go up there, do. Its one of the more naturally beautiful places I've been: https://photos.app.goo.gl/d6EpUXrbwjMUZS2v5

Broken_Hippo4• 7 years ago

I second the suggestion to visit if you can. I moved to Norway about 6 years back and I'm still amazed at the beauty of things, especially when I get out of the city.

This summer, I'm heading generally North myself :)

galfarragem• 7 years ago

I'm surprised that nobody spoke about Portugal. One of most important ingredients in Portuguese cuisine is dried codfish. Note that there isn't codfish in Portuguese waters, it's mostly imported from Norway.

Eating codfish heads is still popular (probably less than decades ago) and it is called caras de bacalhau [0]. Once you try it can easily become one of your favourite dishes. While you can't beat the preconcept you can try bacalhau a bras, the most "easy-going" dried codfish dish [1].

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=caras+de+bacalhau&t=h_&iar=images&...

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bacalhau+a+bras&t=h_&iar=images&ia...

simonebrunozzi• 7 years ago

Few people know that "Baccalà" (stockfish) became popular in Italy in a very peculiar way [0]:

"He is known for being shipwrecked in Røst, in northern Norway, in the winter of 1432, and subsequently returning to Venice, where he wrote a report of his travels for the senate. He is also credited with popularizing Stockfish in the Veneto region, where it is prepared as Bacalà alla Vicentina."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini

How dried fish is made in Iceland

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