The whole head is eaten, with the exception of the brain (which is considered a delicacy in France). You can get it pre-cooked in a small grocery store called Melabúðin in the west part of town, or frozen in pretty much any supermarket. My mother's favourite food/delicacy is a sheep's head. Photo from Wikimedia, Creative Commons, by the blanz. You will either love it or hate it, but there’s only one way to find out! 6. It's one of my favourite Icelandic foods and I recommend you try it on your travels. In fact, 100g holds about 80-85% of one's daily protein in it. You need to chew each bite very thoroughly before swallowing it! Icelanders eat tonnes of this every year with butter on top, as the texture of the fish is very dry and the butter makes it softer. This is very popular amongst Icelanders, and some foreigners have enjoyed it too. No edits made.Īnother popular food item is the dried fish - usually cod or haddock. Photo from Wikimedia, Creative Commons, by cogdogblog. One option in cooking this bread is to put the dough into special wooden casks in the ground close to a hot spring and pick it up the next day.Ībsolutely delicious! 5. Nonetheless, it's not a pastry and is mostly eaten on its own with butter, accompanying fish or hung and smoked lamb (called hangikjöt, which we will come on to below). It's a dark bread that's got a very particular taste: it’s slightly sweet. The Icelandic rye bread is very popular in the country. Let's move on to something a bit tastier. This is not a common dish anymore - but I have tried it once before, admittedly. I don't really think I need to say much more about this. To preserve them through the winter, the testicles were soured. That, naturally, included the testicles of the ram. Iceland used to be a very poor country, full of poor farmers that would make the most of anything they could eat. That brings us to ram's testicles, a tricky one to justify, no doubt. What more can you expect from a nation who weren't blessed with legal beer until 1989? 3. Brennivín is a schnapps made from fermented potatoes and caraway.Īnd yes, it tastes strongly of caraway, but it is mainly a rapid delivery system to oblivion, which, if you are eating fermented shark and sour ram’s testicles, is probably not such a bad thing. No edits made.īrennivín can be directly translated as 'burning wine' - although it's mostly marketed as 'Black Death'. They just love selling samples to tourists to watch their faces turn sour! For the ones that are extra hardcore, rinse it down with a shot of Brennivín. For others, well, let's just say it's not a common dish anymore it is mostly the older generation in Iceland who still eat and enjoy it.įor a small fee, you can taste a sample in the food section of the Kolaportid flea market on the weekends. Connoisseurs of very strong cheese may take a liking to it on the first bite. So the shark is not rotten (which some people wrongly believe) but it is fermented. This is done to get rid of the acid in the flesh which makes it impossible to eat fresh. It has been cured with a particular fermentation process, consisting of burying the shark underground and hanging it to dry for four to five months. The shark does actually smell of ammonia, which is where the urban myth comes from. ![]() And urine is no longer used in this process, but it was used back in the day before modern culinary techniques could be used. The urinating bit is true, but the shark doesn't rot, it ferments. You'll probably hear that the traditional way of fermenting shark is to bury it in the ground and then urinate on it before letting it rot for some months. ![]() If you want to get to know this unique cuisine, book a food and drink tour in Iceland and try it yourself! Luckily though, Iceland is famed for its lamb and seafood, so there are plenty of delicious Icelandic foods to enjoy, too. Some people have gone on record to claim the domestic cuisine here is the world's most disgusting food. Whereas a few traditional Icelandic dishes are considered a delicacy, commonly eaten by locals and tourists, there are some dishes you might not want to eat in Iceland… that is unless you like a challenge.
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