What is Norwegian Rakfisk?
Rakfisk is trout sprinkled with salt and fermented in water for – depending on how smelly you like your fish – up to a year. Rakfisk is a product of very different, poverty-stricken times in Norway when, pre-refrigeration, fish was soaked in airtight barrels of water and salt in autumn.
What does Rakfisk smell like?
Rakfisk is char or trout that is salted and fermented for up to a year. The traditional Norwegian dish has such a strong odor—comparisons include old cheese and dirty socks—that most diners chase it with a bracing shot of aquavit.
How is Rakfisk made?
Rakfisk is made from fresh trout or char. After gutting and rinsing, the fish is placed in a bucket and salted. The fish is then placed under pressure with a lid that fits down into the bucket and a weight on top. A brine is formed as the salt draws moisture from the fish.
What kind of fish is Surstromming?
Baltic herring
Small Baltic herring are caught in the spring, salted and left to ferment at leisure before being stuffed in a tin about a month before it hits the tables and shops. The fermentation process continues in the tin; ‘souring’ as the Swedes refer to it, and results in a bulging tin of fermented herring or surströmming.
How bad is fermented fish?
The process of fermenting the fish creates a strong rotten egg smell. People will eat Surströmming as a sandwich on thin slices of bread with butter, potatoes, onions and sour cream.
What does lutefisk taste like?
While generally speaking, people say lutefisk tastes mildly fishy, with a soapy aftertaste and a hint of ammonia on the palate, though there seems to be a lot of variation of its description based on whether people are fans of the stuff or not.
What is the most stinky fish?
surströmming
A newly opened can of surströmming has one of the most putrid food smells in the world, even stronger than similarly fermented fish dishes such as the Korean hongeohoe or Japanese kusaya.
Who eats fermented fish?
Surströmming, a fermented herring considered to be a famous delicacy in Sweden, is also known as one of the most pungent foods in the world. And there’s one more must-have accompaniment: beer. Herring has been a key part of Swedish culture for centuries. Long ago, Swedish workers were even paid in herring.
Why is lutefisk soaked in lye?
Lutefisk starts as cod, traditionally caught in the cold waters off Norway. It’s then dried to the point that it attains the feel of leather and the firmness of corrugated cardboard. Water alone can’t reconstitute the fish, so it’s soaked in lye.