Norwegian cuisine
Norwegian cuisine in its traditional form is based largely on the raw materials readily available in Norway. It differs in many respects from continental cuisine with a stronger focus on game and fish. Many of the traditional dishes are the result of using conserved materials because of the long winters.
Modern Norwegian cuisine, although still strongly influenced by its traditional background, has been influenced by globalization: pasta, pizza, tacos, and the like are as common as meatballs and cod as staple foods.
Typical main meals
Breakfast (''frokost'')
The Norwegian breakfast consists of bread, cheese, and milk. Traditionally this meal included a porridge such as grøt. Different kinds of grøt exist, including rømmegrøt and ''risgrøt''Lunch (''lunsj'')
For most Norwegians, a weekday packed lunch usually consists of very simple open-faced sandwiches known as matpakke, with each slice separated with smaller sheets of wax paper called mellomleggspapir. More extensive open-faced sandwiches are considered smørbrød.Cafeterias commonly feature salad bars, warm meals, and dairy products like yogurt, skyr and kvarg.
Dinner (''middag'')
Norwegians usually eat dinner starting around 4–7 PM. This is the most important meal of the day and typically includes carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes and protein-rich foods such as meat or fish.Evening meal (''kveldsmat'')
Norwegians frequently eat a very small meal later in the evening before bed. This may consist of foods similar to what is prepared for breakfast.Meat
Preserved meat and sausages come in a variety of regional variations, and are sometimes accompanied by sour cream dishes and flatbread or wheat/potato wraps. Fenalår is a slow-cured lamb's leg. Morr is usually a smoked cured sausage, though the exact definition may vary regionally.Lamb and mutton are popular in autumn, often used in fårikål. Pinnekjøtt—steamed cured and sometimes smoked mutton ribs, traditionally on a bed of birch sticks, hence the name, meaning "stick meat" —is traditionally served as Christmas dinner in the western parts of Norway.
Other meat dishes include:
Kjøttkaker: meat patties or burgers about the size of a child's fist, made of ground beef, onion, salt, and pepper and generally served with sauce espagnole. Potatoes, stewed peas or cabbage and carrots are served on the side. Lingonberry jam is a common relish.
Kjøttboller – Meatballs: Similar to Swedish meatballs. Served with mashed potatoes and cream sauce or sauce espagnole depending on the locality.
Svinekoteletter – Pork chops: simply braised and served with potatoes and fried onions or whatever vegetables are available.
Svinestek – Roasted pork: a typical Sunday dinner, served with pickled cabbage, gravy, vegetables, and potatoes.
All good cuts of meat are roasted. Side dishes vary with season and their ability to complement the meat. Roast leg of lamb is an Easter classic, roast beef is not very common and game is often roasted for festive occasions.
Lapskaus – stew: A stew consisting of cooked meat and various vegetables like potatoes, carrots, swede and onion. Lobscouse is often served with flatbrød.
Fårikål – mutton stew: the national dish of Norway. Cabbage and mutton are layered in a pot
along with black peppercorns and salt, covered with water and simmered until the meat is very tender. The dish is served with potatoes.
Stekte pølser – fried sausages: fresh sausages are fried and served with vegetables, potatoes, peas and perhaps some gravy.
Syltelabb is usually eaten around and before Christmas time, made from boiled, salt-cured pig's trotter. They are traditionally eaten using one's fingers, and served as a snack and sometimes served with beetroot, mustard, and fresh bread or with lefse or flatbread. Historically syltelabb is served with the traditional Norwegian juleøl, beer and liquor. This is because Syltelabb is very salty food.
File:Pinnekjott.jpg|thumb|Pinnekjøtt with swede purée and potatoes
Pinnekjøtt is a main course dinner dish of lamb or mutton ribs, and this dish is largely associated with the celebration of Christmas in Western Norway and is rapidly gaining popularity in other regions as well. 31% of Norwegians say they eat pinnekjøtt for their family Christmas dinner. Pinnekjøtt is often served with puréed swede and potatoes, beer and akevitt.
Smalahove is a traditional dish, but really more of a local oddity, usually eaten around Christmas time and made from a sheep's head. The skin and fleece of the head are torched, the brain removed, and the head is salted, sometimes smoked, and dried. The head is boiled for about 3 hours and served with mashed swede and potatoes.
Sodd is a traditional Norwegian soup-like meal with mutton and meatballs. Usually, vegetables such as potatoes or carrots are also included.
Gryterett are stews with ground beef or lamb, rice, tomato, mild spices, and small amounts of other vegetables like peppers, onion, kidney beans or mushrooms. The meal was popularised in the 1970s by Toro powderbag meals with often inaccurate geographical monikers, but is now also found in homemade varieties.
Game
High cuisine is very reliant on game, such as moose, reindeer, mountain hare, duck, rock ptarmigan and fowl. These meats are often hunted and sold or passed around as gifts, but are also available at shops across Norway to be served at social occasions.- Joika – Meatballs made from a mixture of meat from cow, reindeer, lamb, and pork rind, served with mashed potatoes in very thick gravy. The gravy includes brunost or goat milk. The term most commonly refers to a commercial brand with airsealed packaging, with homemade varieties being uncommon.
Offal
Seafood
The one traditional Norse dish with a claim to international popularity is smoked salmon. It is now a major export, and could be considered the most important Scandinavian contribution to modern international cuisine. Smoked salmon exists traditionally in many varieties, and is often served with scrambled eggs, dill, sandwiches and mustard sauce. Another traditional salmon product is gravlaks. Traditionally, gravlaks would be cured for 24 hours in a mix of sugar, salt and herbs. The salmon may then be frozen or kept in a chilled area. Since grav means "buried", it is a common misunderstanding that the salmon is buried in the ground. This was the case in the medieval ages because the fermenting process was important; however, this is not the case today. Gravlaks is often sold under more sales-friendly names internationally. Another Norwegian fish dish is rakfisk, which consists of fermented trout, similar to Swedish surströmming.Until the 20th century, shellfish were not eaten to any extent. This was partly due to the abundance of fish and the time involved in catching shellfish as compared to its nutritional value, as well as the fact that such food spoils rather quickly, even in a northern climate. However, prawns, crabs, and mussels have become quite popular, especially during summer. Lobster is popular, but restrictions on the catch limit consumption. Lobster has become rather rare and expensive.
People gather for krabbefest, which translates to "crab party" feasts, either eating readily cooked crabs from a fishmonger or cooking live crabs in a large pan. This is typically done outdoors, the style being rather rustic with only bread, mayonnaise, and wedges of lemon to go with the crab. Crabs are caught in pots by both professionals and amateurs; prawns are caught by small trawlers and sold cooked at the quays. It is popular to buy half a kilogram of pie prawns and to eat it on the quay, feeding the waste to seagulls. Beer or white wine is the normal accompaniment.
The largest Norwegian food export in the past has been stockfish. The Atlantic cod variety known as skrei because of its migrating habits, has been a source of wealth for millennia, fished annually in what is known as the Lofotfiske named for the island chain of Lofoten. Stockfish has been a staple food internationally for centuries, in particular on the Iberian peninsula and the African coast. Both during the age of sail and in the industrial age, stockfish played a part in world history as an enabling food for cross-Atlantic trade and the slave trade triangle.
A large number of fish dishes are popular today, based on such species as salmon, cod, herring, sardine, and mackerel. Seafood is used fresh, smoked, salted or pickled. Variations on creamed seafood soups are common along the coastline.
Due to seafood's availability, seafood dishes along the coast are usually based on fresh produce, typically poached and very lightly spiced with herbs, pepper, and salt. While coastal Norwegians may consider the head, roe, and liver an inseparable part of a seafood meal, most inland restaurants do not include these in the meal. In Northern Norway, a dish called mølje, consisting of poached fish, roe, and liver, is often considered a "national dish" of the region, and it is common for friends and family to get together at least once during winter for a møljekalas. A number of the fish species available have traditionally been avoided or reserved for bait, but most common seafood is part of the modern menu.
Because of industrial whaling, whale meat was commonly used as a cheap substitute for beef early in the 20th century. Consumption has been declining over time, but it is still widely available in all parts of the country and most Norwegians eat it occasionally. It is not considered controversial in Norway.
Other fish dishes include:
Rakfisk – Norwegian fish dish made from trout or sometimes char, salted and fermented for two to three months, or even up to a year, then eaten without further cooking. Rakfisk must be prepared and stored very hygienically, due to the risk of developing Clostridium botulinum if the fish contain certain bacteria during the fermentation process.
Torsk – Cod: poached, simply served with boiled potatoes and melted butter. Carrots, fried
bacon, roe and cod liver may also accompany the fish. A delicacy which is somewhat popular in Norway is torsketunger, cod's tongue.
Lutefisk – lyed fish: a modern preparation made of stockfish or klippfisk that has been steeped in lye. It was prepared this way as a way to preserve the fish for longer periods prior to refrigeration. It is somewhat popular in the United States as a heritage food. It retains a place in Norwegian cuisine as a traditional food around Christmas time.
Preparation and accompaniment is as for fresh cod, although beer and aquavit is served on the side.
Stekt fisk – braised fish: almost all fish are braised, but as a rule, the larger specimens tend to be poached and the smaller braised. The fish is filleted, dusted with flour, salt and pepper and braised in butter. Potatoes are served on the side, and the butter from the pan used as a sauce or food cream is added to the butter to make a creamy sauce.
Fatty fish like herring and brisling are given the same treatment. Popular accompaniments are sliced and fresh-pickled cucumbers and sour cream.
Fiskesuppe – fish soup: A white, milk-based soup with vegetables, usually carrots, onions, potato and various kinds of fish.
Spekesild – salt cured herring which for centuries was used to fight hunger, along with boiled potatoes, beets, raw onions, dill, butter and flatbrød.
Sursild – pickled herring: a variety of pickle-sauces are used, ranging from simple vinegar-
sugar-based sauces with tomato, mustard, and sherry-based sauces. Pickled herring is served as an hors-d'oeuvre or on rye bread as a lunch buffet. This dish is a popular Christmas and New Year's Eve/holiday lunch in Norway.