Anyone having lutefisk during the holidays?

Jinglebob

Jinglebob

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When I was growing up my mother made lutefisk to celebrate the Christmas holidays. Lutefisk dinners during the Advent season are a Norwegian practice dating back to the Middle Ages.

Mom served lutefisk with boiled potatoes, white sauce and melted butter, turkey and cornbread dressing, green beans, homemade bread, cranberry sauce and homemade pies.

I still have Mom's recipe and I'm thinking about making my own lutefisk this holiday season. It's been decades since I've eaten lutefisk and I remember it being quite good. The recipe calls for dried codfish, reconstituted with lye, rinsed in clean water and boiled in salt water. The result is firm and flaky lutefisk: codfish (fisk) preserved in lye (lut).

Before you gasp, lye is used in preparing foods other than lutefisk. Lye is what gives pretzels their color, texture and flavor. Lye is also used in making homily, the curing of olives and the canning of mandarin oranges. The lye used is food grade or USP grade only – the hardware store cans of lye most certainly contain other chemicals.
 
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My Grandfather was 100% pure Norwegian and hated it because it not only stunk
stock-photo-group-of-six-people-holding-their-noses-bad-smells-in-the-air-53582633.jpg

but ive smelled it cooking and to me, it smelled like:
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l.jpg
 
Ya, you betcha. This time of year, from mid-October up until Christmas is church-basement lutefisk season in Minnesota and NW Wisconsin. Beldenville, Star Prairie, Marine-on-St.-Croix, the Tabor Church down by Maiden Rock, all have lutefisk dinners, all you can eat. My favorite is at West Immanuel, up by Star Prairie:
The mashed rutabaga puts their dinner a bit above the rest. That and some purty good fisk:
lutefisk.jpg

Mashed potato, rutabaga, meatballs, cranberry sauce, fisk, slaw, lefse and a roll. for dessert, rommegrot, krumkake and pie.

Our motorbikes are pretty much put away for the season, except those that are going to Mexico, so this is how we fill up some of the slow evenings during this season when we are still adjusting to the harsh reality of life in a Northern clime.

Then of course, you can't forget the german sausage dinner at St. Mary's in New Trier, with sauerkraut and german potato salad. This year they added a new wrinkle, sliced beets; not for everyone, but well-regarded among the cognoscenti.
 
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Well, I've eaten some strange **** before and I will always try something since there is a fairly good chance I might like it-and by not trying something just because is sounds nasty means one will not eat some truly great things. Lutefisk may or may not be one of those treats but I will withold judgement until I actually try some.
Some if the strange stuff (food) I have eaten and actually liked:
Boudin rouge (blood boudin)
Raw Oysters
Haggis
Raw fish
Steak Tartare
Liederkrantz cheese
Stewed Chicken gizzards, smothered liver
Rabbit,Squirrel,Deer,Goat,nutria,

Strange food I have eaten and NOT liked

Seagull (don't ask :rolleyes:)
Possum, Raccoon
By-catch stew (anybody that has dealt with Vietnamese shrimpers knows what this is).
Armadillo (again don't ask but it also involved mescal, a large fire and three drunk Mexican ranch hands at some ranch in south Texas after a long ago dove hunt. Money changed hands ;)).

So in other words-I'll try just about anything at least once.
 
I lived in Norway for about 3 years during what seems now a previous incarnation. I tried several times but could never eat that rotten fish. I did however like the dried lamb (fenelot?)
 
haven't had any lutefisk since my wifes grandmother passed...I liked it but she didn't and she won't make any...I could go to Ballard (a fishing town in Seattle) but it is 40 miles away....I don't need it that bad....lol
 
CAJUNLAWYER said:
Well, I've eaten some strange **** before and I will always try something since there is a fairly good chance I might like it-and by not trying something just because is sounds nasty means one will not eat some truly great things. Lutefisk may or may not be one of those treats but I will withold judgement until I actually try some.
Some if the strange stuff (food) I have eaten and actually liked:
Boudin rouge (blood boudin)
Raw Oysters
Haggis
Raw fish
Steak Tartare
Liederkrantz cheese
Stewed Chicken gizzards, smothered liver
Rabbit,Squirrel,Deer,Goat,nutria,

Strange food I have eaten and NOT liked

Seagull (don't ask :rolleyes:)
Possum, Raccoon
By-catch stew (anybody that has dealt with Vietnamese shrimpers knows what this is).
Armadillo (again don't ask but it also involved mescal, a large fire and three drunk Mexican ranch hands at some ranch in south Texas after a long ago dove hunt. Money changed hands ;)).

So in other words-I'll try just about anything at least once.
Click to expand...

Since you're a somewhat ballzee gourmand, Caj:
Perhaps a peck or so of mountain oysters would be in order, then.:D I wouldn't recommend 'em raw, though.
 
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I worked with a woman of Norwegian ancestry and she brought some to work one day. I had never seen or tasted this strange food so I gave it a try. It was about the worst thing I ever put into my mouth! Right on a par with Scottish haggis, another ethnic "delicacy" I once, out of politeness, agreed to try. I guess that all of these special foods are ones that you need to start eating when you are very, very young and then they have special nostalgic meaning for you.
 
My grandad came from Norway so in our family it was very traditional. After he passed, my mother took over the job and now that she's passed, we've gone over to the other side. Nothing but Swedish meatballs for us!
Well, we still have lefse, krumkake and all the rest just not the fish.

A lady in our church who turns 100 after the first of the year also came from Norway and a few years back some of her relatives came over for a visit. I asked her if she cooked them up a big batch of lutefisk and she said they're response to that was, "You mean you really eat that stuff??" I guess even the natives have abondoned tradition.
 
Lutefisk

My Dad and his two brothers were first generation American born Swedes. Grandpa emigrated and Grandma was first gen. Swede American. My uncles both married Swedish girls. We had Swede Christmas dinner every Xmas eve. None of these Swedes would have anything to do with lutefisk!! What does that tell ya right there?

The standing family joke was that lutefisk was prepared by nailing salted, dried, cod to a board, reconstitute it with lye and whatever, then take the fish off the board, throw the fish away and eat the board!
 
I'm Norwegian but would rather gnaw on Smalahove than to eat Lutefisk and I stay away from Geitost also.
Ironically eating Lutefisk in most of Southern Norway is all but dead now.
 
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Here's the legend: For everything there is a reason:

"It seems that many centuries ago, Norwegians came to Ireland to escape the bitterness of Norwegian winters. Ireland was having a famine at the time, however, and the immigrants from Norway put increased strain on the food stocks.

"The Norwegians were eating almost all of the fish caught in the sea, leaving nothing but potatoes for the Irish. St. Patrick took matters into his own hands and decided the Norwegians had to go.

"Secretly he organized the IRATRION (Irish Republican Army to Rid Ireland of the Norwegians). Irish members of the IRATRION sabatoged all the power plants in hopes the fish would spoil, forcing the Norwegians to move back to a colder climate, where the fish would keep.

"The fish spoiled all righ,t but Norwegians, as everyone knows, thrive on spoiled fish. Faced with failure, St. Patrick sneaked into the Norwegians' fish storage area hoping to poison the Norwegian intruders by spreading lime over the fish hoards. But the Norwegians thrived on the new concoction and named the new concoction Lutefisk!

"Matters became even worse when the Norwegians began taking over the potato crop and making lefse. Poor old St. Patrick was at his wit's end, and finally on March 17, he told the Norwegians to go to hell, and it worked.

"They all moved to Minnesota."
 
Unfortunately, I won't be having any, but I wish I was. My Better-half grew up in North Dakota and she hates it. I spent seven years at Minot Air Plane Patch and loved lutefisk the first time I ate it.......mmmmmmm. While in NoDak my first wife bought some and made it. My kids' little dog was begging at the table so I put a little bit down on the floor for him........he smelled it and then laid down and rolled in it. I actually miss the stuff.
 
At the risk of thread drift - I got this in an email today:

==============

Pastor Ole is the minister of the local Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Pastor Sven is the minister of the Swedish Covenant Church across the road. One morning they pounded a sign into the ground, which said:


DA END ISS NEAR!
TURN YERSELF AROUNT NOW
BAFOR IT ISS TOO LATE


As a car speeds past them, the driver leans out of his window and yells, "Leave people alone, you Scandahoovian religious nuts!"



From around the curve, they hear screeching tires and a big splash.



Shaking his head, Pastor Ole says, "Dat's da terd one dis mornin."



"Yaa, sure" Pastor Sven agrees, then asks:



"Do ya tink maybe da sign should yust say, 'Bridge Out?'"


======

To get back to the topic -
My now-gone MIL was old-skool Swedish, and 45 years older than Mrs. B. (another story!)

30 years ago, my then-new wife thought it would be one of the last Christmas' we would get to spend with her mom, so she asked mom what she wanted for dinner. "Lutefisk and rice pudding."

Being the not so traditional Swedish daughter, Mrs. B. had to find out where to get the lutefisk, and how to prepare it. She vaguely remembered the white sauce that went with it, so off she went to make mom's wish come true. After stinking up the kitchen preparing this mess, and everyone at the table ready to eat, she served it up into a nice silver bowl to take to the table. I swear that silver turned black before the stuff even touched it!

Her mom ate two helpings of it, claiming it was great. The rest of us ate the "backup" ham.

Oh, and I used to make a great rice pudding, so at least that part was a success we could all share.
 
I can't say I actually like lutefisk, but I'll eat it. Sometimes I'll even take seconds. But mostly I think of it as the dues you pay to get to the meatballs, mashed potatoes, slaw, lefse, drawn butter (Norsk), cream sauce (Svensk), krumkake, rommegrot, mashed, buttered rutabagas, etc.

I also like to experience the event itself. These dinners are extremely well-attended. You buy a ticket and get a number, then wait, sometimes for more than an hour to be seated. in the meantime, you wait in the sacristy, maybe listen to live music, and visit with old friends. Some have driven 50 or 60 miles out from the Cities. Some are local folks I have met over the years of motorcycling around the countryside. And it is an evening out in the company of my good friends in my motorcycle club.
 
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