Norwegian & Icelandic · Main
Lutefisk
- Advanced
- 30 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, richness that coats and comforts, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 1 kg dried stockfish, cod, sawn into 15 cm pieces
- 30 litres cold water, for the soaks and rinses
- 10 litres cold water, for the lye bath
- 100 g food grade sodium hydroxide, for a 1 percent bath
- 20 g coarse salt, for drawing water before baking
- 200 g smoked bacon, cut in lardons
- 1 kg almond or other waxy potatoes, boiled
- 60 g coarse mustard, to serve
The skills inside
Rendering fat: and cooking in what runs outThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSoaking dried goods back to lifeThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Smoked Fish: Hot vs. ColdStainless Clad (Tri-Ply)
Allergen screen
Found: nuts · fish · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the stockfish in a plastic or stainless tub of cold water at 4 to 8C, changing the water daily, for 5 days, until it has swollen to about three times its dry thickness and a corner gives under a fingernail.
- Wearing gloves and eye protection, add the sodium hydroxide to the 10 litres of cold water and never the reverse, since it heats sharply; submerge the fish and hold at cool room temperature for 2 days, until the flesh is translucent, slippery and wobbles like set jelly.
- Lift the fish out with tongs into fresh cold water and soak a further 4 to 6 days, changing twice a day, until it smells of nothing, feels firm rather than soapy to the fingers, and a poached scrap tastes clean with no burn at the back of the throat.
- Salt the drained fish and leave 25 minutes; water beads on the surface and the flesh tightens. 25 min
- Rinse, lay skin down in a covered dish and bake at 200C (390F) for 10 to 12 minutes, until the flakes part under a fork and are white and glossy; a minute past that and it slumps. 12 min
- Render the bacon until crisp and pour it over with its fat; serve with potatoes and mustard.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
Rendering fat: and cooking in what runs out 73 recipes
- It started cold or low and came up slowly: fat that met a hot pan seizes and scorches before the inside can melt, and there is no recovering it.
- The fat in the pan is clear and clean-smelling, pale to golden, with no dark sediment on the floor and nothing acrid in the steam.
- What is left behind is crisp and deep gold with no soft pale fat still clinging to it and no black burnt edges.
- There is a real volume of it: enough to film the pan floor and be poured off and kept, not a dry smear that never ran.
- Whatever cooks in it browns in it and takes its flavour, rather than sitting in a greasy pool that never gets hot enough to colour anything.
Where it goes wrong The heat was raised to hurry it along, so the outside seized and browned before the interior fat could melt; very little runs out, and the solids come out burnt on the outside and rubbery within.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
- Also Right
- Albariño
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.
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