Culinary Traditions In Iceland

Video: Culinary Traditions In Iceland

Video: Culinary Traditions In Iceland
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Culinary Traditions In Iceland
Culinary Traditions In Iceland
Anonim

Due to the harsh northern climate, people in Iceland did not have a choice of products and were content with their livelihood. The livelihood in Iceland today is mainly fishing and sheep farming. For some time now, with the help of natural energy and heat, geysers have been growing greenhouse vegetables. Everything else is imported. The dishes of Icelandic cuisine are simple, tasty and nutritious, fully in line with the cold weather and the needs of the human body.

The old-fashioned ways of processing food are still used, as in the days when freezers and refrigerators did not exist. The meat is mainly smoked, and the fish - dried, marinated and salted.

Fish dishes are incredibly exquisite and are available on almost every corner. The menu of the fish restaurants includes salmon, halibut, shrimp prepared in various ways, even shark prepared according to special Icelandic recipes.

Some of the country's traditional dishes can only be eaten by locals. An example of this is hakarl - rotten shark meat buried for six months to decompose to the required degree. In Iceland, eating hakarl is a kind of test for the transition from adolescence to masculinity. Only a mature man can consume the stinking mass in cold blood.

Lamb's head
Lamb's head

Other traditional Icelandic dishes are hrutspungur - mutton testicles marinated in milk brine, flattened like biscuits; svid - a sheep's head, cut in two, boiled and served almost raw or marinated together with the eyes; slatur - chopped sheep offal cooked in the belly (something like blood sausage).

Other exotic delicacies are whale lips, whale steaks, sea cat meat. One of the unique dishes is skyr, something between cottage cheese and yogurt made from cream and bacterial culture.

The meat is of high quality, as in Iceland it is strictly forbidden to add hormones to animal feed. Cheese and dairy products are another important part of the Icelandic menu, with more than 80 types of cheese already produced in the country. The most common vegetables are potatoes and cabbage.

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