Icelandic has to be in my top 3 hardest languages to pronounce, so thank you to Gunnlaugur Ólafsson and Ólafur Waage for your help is getting me as far as I could go.
Interesting how they have uniqie names for a few of the things which you also find in Norway: Hardfiskkur = Tørrfisk Svið = Smalahove Brennivín = Akevitt
Oh yay! Two seconds in and I see my hometown! Fun fact, the volcano in those couple seconds is too cold to bake bread. The one a hundred meters left of it is the hot one, I made bread in that one a lot with my friends as a kid. Your research is extremely thorough though, I learned stuff I didn't know like the origin of Þorrablót!
Another reason the dough doesn't turn into hard tack *tack tack* is because rye amylases will saccharify the starches in the flours at lower temperatures. At 100C, it will take a while to denature the enzymes, so the dough has more of a syrupy quality. That and the sealed steaming makes it soft.
See, this is why are almost 37 I want to go back to school to learn molecular gastronomy. This is top shelf stuff a chef should know to take their food to the next level.
Here in Japan, specifically the nearby Kirishima region, we also use volcanic vents to cook food. We make chicken, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, mochi, etc. ; it's quite good;)
@@JacksonDunnoKnows It is great to eat. Doesn't even need any flavouring; the volcano provides that. Can't say whether or not it's fun because all you do is wrap it a bit, put it in, and DING it's done in no time.
Max! I'm so glad you noticed the bees! My great-grandpa was the commercial artist who designed that tin, for Lyle's Golden Syrup. The tins were made by a company called Metal Box in London. It always makes me smile to see his work still in use and appreciated and (mostly) unchanged. You're totally on the money about the backstory, too - I remember being shown the reference material a very long time ago. Oh, and as ever, great episode, both informative and entertaining, and now I have proof of your A+ research quality too ;)
When I visited Iceland there was a nice little restaurant near the large cathedral in Reykjavik called Cafe Loki. They made rye bread ice cream that was out of these nine worlds
Hi Great job on baking and pronouncing these Icelandic words. I’m Icelandic born and raised. There are many different Recipes for Rúgbrauð, depending on where in Iceland you come from. Mine witch is over 100 years old has no brown sugar only syrup and not baking powder but baking soda. Also, I use buttermilk instead of milk and I bake my bread for 10 hours on 120 degrees. I just wanted to share that with you. Good luck 😉
Ohhh! I'd like that version, since I prefer savoury food. Is it the same recipe, just without the sugar and syrup/? (& bp instead of soda). Old recipes, like yours 100 yrs old I'd be SO interested in! I guess I can google it, but *_I'd love to see your recipe!_* 💕 Love dense, rye/dark European breads! 😋
Interesting fact that you probably know but others might not: you need the buttermilk if you use baking soda, because the acid in the buttermilk activates the soda. Baking powder is a modern engineered leavener that doesn't require acid in the recipe... This is a principal that can be used in any recipe (if you substitute soda for powder, also make sure you add some acid--and don't put in the same amount. Soda goes farther than powder!)
Max’s work time must be 50% research, 40% learning pronunciations and 10% cooking ‘cos it’s always a blast to hear foreign words pronounced in what I can only assume to be a proper pronunciation.
As an Icelander, he did an excellent job. I’ve encountered people who have studied Icelandic for many years with much worse pronunciations. It’s really very difficult for foreigners, so I’m impressed.
A fun fact about rye: many people who try to make rye bread for the first time complain that it's very difficult to make a dough with rye flour. The reason why is that rye's gluten, to use a more familiar term, comes from a protein called secalin. Secalin can only be formed in acidic conditions, and that why most rye breads are made from sourdough. Just to be clear, secalin is a gluten protein, so people affected by gluten must avoid it.
Totally worth the effort, though. Rye bread (on a sourdough basis) is such an amazing taste experience. I'd encourage everbody to make their own. It's not at all difficult if you are willing to learn from experience. Tons of excellent videos for beginners, too! That's how I got into it, with no prior experience in baking bread.
As a Canuck who married into a Danish family, I've spent the past 30 years perfecting my rygbrod recipe. And the klipfisk looks great, though I imagine the dried salt cod would have been soaked and even cooked before eating. A recipe you might want to try is 'Fish and Brewis (with or without scrunchins)', an old standard from Newfoundland, where you begin by soaking dried salt fish overnight to rehydrate it and leach out some of the salt, before cooking it in milk along with - gasp - hard bread! (TACK TACK), and serving it with crispy diced fatback (the 'scrunchins'). If you want to go full Newfie, serve it with a side of lemony peas. Great video as always, keep'em coming!
Heh, but no. We Icelanders eat Harðfisk just like that, dry and ready. Many like to butter it up, some skip that part. Actually the Harðfisk isn't the same from every producer here, some retain a little moisture and are easier to chew on, some do it the old way & leave them outside to dry, while others use high temp housing to speed up the process. And needless to say, the flavors & textures depend a bit on the source material, if you're using cod or something else. Personally, I rarely eat them, because I don't have full teeth and they tend to get badly stuck between my teeth, which is frustrating to deal with.
I was coming here to make the same suggestion about Fish and Brewis. Strange coincidence, I'm a also a Newfoundlander. My mother was a Newfie and Dad is a Dane. The bread sounds a bit like Newfie Brown bread.
Hi, I'm Icelandic and a big fan of the channel. Thanks for spreading the delight of Rúgbrauð to everyone! There's a bunch more Icelandic foods that I think you might find palatable, for example kleinur (basically twisted donuts), flatkökur (dark brown flatbread) and hangikjöt (smoked lamb). Feel free to PM me if you need any translations or tips for more Icelandic food you want to try! By the way, when I make rúgbrauð I use súrmjólk (I guess it's similar to buttermilk in the US) instead of milk and I skip the brown sugar and use more syrup instead.
Being a native English speaker (American English at that), flatkökur's pronunciation would indicate what it is, even if the context is different. Flatkökur is pronounced like flat-caker with the 'a' being a soft 'a' sound (as in 'ah'). We would miss the context that it is a flatbread, but cake was originally used to reference kinds of soft breads.
@@darkcrystal86 How do you use skyr with this? I actually have a skyr culture coming and have rye flour on hand, so I'm curious about this accidental discovery.
The history of Rye cultivation is probably the weirdest in all of agriculture. Wheat was the earliest grain to be domesticated and cultivated by the peoples of northern Mesopotamia around 9000 years ago, and they also eventually domesticated barley about 2000 years after that. But there were other grain plants that were mixed in that were troublesome weeds, and these included Rye and Oats. Though Rye is originally from the Levant, it first appears in domestic cultivation 1800 BC, almost exclusively in Central Europe, most notably in the Northern Balkans in what is now Serbia and Romania. Rye grains are almost indistinguishable from Emmer wheat (an evolutionary mimicry called Vavilovian mimicry), meaning that any quantity of wheat grains also held rye unless farmers carefully culled the mature plants. Historians and biologists theorize that northern Balkan peoples at the time acquired wheat mixed with rye, and being noobs, discovered an edible weed that was quite tasty.
The prevalence of rye in northern europe is prettily easily explained thoug. Rye could handle the cold and wet "little ice age" much better than wheat but still could be used to make leavend bread. In areas like my native northern sweden that were to cold to grow anything other than barley. Or costal areas like scotland, the atlantic iles or costal norway that were to wet to grow any other grain than oat people had to rely on unlevend matza like flat bread or porridge untill the arival of imported wheat from poland or the cultivation of potatoes came.
I just recently read an article on the topic which argued that rye cultivation in central and northern Europe is partially responsible for their explosive population growth in the late middle ages. This is because scientific inventions which made tilling fields easier alongside rye which could handle the cold, wet weather north of the alps, made it easier to feed the masses. In antiquity, the urban centers in Gallia or Germania were dependent on grain - wheat - deliveries from all over the Roman Empire, which also explains the dispersed populations of the early middle ages. The history of food and its ingredients is a fascinating thing, it influenced entire continents.
The Romans mixed rye with spelt, but despite this they had a poor regard for the grain due to its bitter taste. Pliny the Elder stated that rye was a "poor food" eaten when wheat was unaffordable or unobtainable, and pretty much trashed it.
an Icelander here. just made Slátur (slaughter) which is also a traditional food for Þorrablót. its two types of basically sausage one made of sheepsblood and fat and the other made with liver and kidney. it is delicious. Rúgbrauð is eaten all year round and most often with fish. This video was great and you're welcome to visit us up north whenever, just be sure to bring a warm coat.
I was in Akureyri and Grimsey in November 2014. I found most Þorrablót food items to be palatable. I had puffin, minke and boiled sheepshead. Hakarl seemed more like pieces of rubber dunked in ammonia. It didn't taste too bad, but it's really just an excuse to drink more akavit. I enjoy both liver and kidney and I wish that it was more readily available here in the States. I was just wondering, shouldn't the dried fish have been soaked in water for several hours before eating it?
Having watched Max "enjoy" both dried fish and hard tack, it's time for him to put both together, and make Newfoundland Fish and Brewis, and learn the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery, it's links to the slave trade, the British empire, and the wars fought between France and Britain over it.
@@joyful_tanya Portuguese descent here and all I will say is bacalhau if he wants something nicer (lutefisk doesn't sound all that great from what I've read)
Why do you not have an hour-long show on the discovery channel? You’re amazing! One of my favorite cooking shows ever! I just cannot believe that some channel has not scooped you up. ❤️
What he's doing right now is better than Discovery channel. Anyone that has a program on a corporate sponsored distribution network is going to have to compromise their artistic integrity by covering topics the channel will want covered, or meddling with Max's creative process. What he's doing right now is perfect for him. Over the next couple decades, and mark my words sir, television as we know it will spiral into a pit of obsolescence
i can't imagine how shitty this would be with hyper-masculine american narrators going on about how dangerously hot volcanoes are when all I want is exactly what Max is already providing us with
Very fun watching this being Icelandic. Gotta say, your pronounciation was pretty good for a lot of the Icelandic words and names. If you were to try harðfiskur again I personally would reccomend haddock instead of cod, a lot softer and a lot tastier in my opinion!
An advanced rice cooker (the kind that seals with a timer and temp settings) would be safe to use overnight to bake bread. I usually use mine to cook corn bread and have left it overnight with stews in it to great effect, so anyone thinking of doing a recreation of this dish might find it safer than an oven.
Thanks, I was wondering about that. I have a semi-advanced rice cooker with slow cooker settings and it occurred me it might be a good way to cook overnight and have bread in the morning.
As a Danish woman I must say that I am sooo impressed by how good you pronounced “rugbrød”!!👍👍👍 and I love, love your videos -this is such an motivating way to learn history and food culture from the entire world😉 thank you so much🙂🙂🙂👍
The harðfiskur is much easier to eat if you throughly pound it first. Or buy one of the snack-fish brands that is pre-pounded. And then you still cover it with copious amounts of fermented, salted butter. Extra points for using smoked salt when you make the butter. It is an amazing low carb snack if eaten that way, and much easier on your teeth than the non-pounded version.
I feel like in American cooking I've seen it used 'reconstituted' more than eaten as is, where it's soaked in hot water to soften it up before eating. I may be imagining that but I swear I've seen cooks use it that way.
This is one of those things that has taken on a new life with tourism. Growing up, you only heard about this from elderly people thanking the heavens that they no longer have to do this on order to sustain themselves. And then with the post economic crash tourism boom. Making bread like a 17th century peasant became an expensive luxury item, sold for 8-12x what it was worth because people were so in love with the novelty idea of volcano bread that they paid through the nose for the privilege.
As telecommuting becomes more and more common and portable due to pandemic precautions, work-cations abroad also become more practical. It's really up to each land how friendly it wants to be to this.
@@hensonlaura depends if townsends is to go by peasant food tends to be calorie dense due to how "work" is considered done back in the day but the stereotype still kinda remains most people now eat like how kings did in the late 19th century or like the clergy in the 15th century NOW TIME TO GRATE THOSE 1 pound of NUTMEG IN ME CHEESECAKE
Peasant food is often far more nutritious than the modern foods we eat now. Some people are starting to realize this. It's a good thing these foods are making a comeback, even if it's just for the "novelty".
If you're looking for a way to get through the rest of your dried fish, use it in stews or poach it with dairy (usually milk). That is how other dried fishes (like bacalao) are used throughout the world. Also great for stocks (like the bonito in Japanese dashi), since it's an umami bomb.
Oh my!!! I was wondering what use he could make of the rest of the bag - other than cat treats of course and I hope they will profit mightily from that purchase.
@@pontusf9427 What does that do to it? Soften it and make it easier to eat (once you rinse all the lie of very well)? I know lye does that to other foods.
@@ZipplyZane It basicly makes it into the fluffiest and blandest food possible (if a bit slimey and lye-tastig) perfect after a winter Surviving on rancid dried and salted foods. Ofputting to anyone else. Served boiled with sause bechamel, green peas and potatoes in sweden and peamush, melted butter and bacon bits in norway. I actually prefer the norwegian way but would prefer any other fish dish over it. My grandpa on the other hand loves it and dont try to stand between the older generation and the lutfisk at a christmas dinner if you want to survive!😄
Rúgbrauð! So happy you are making this! An fyi, I use an empty milk carton and steam it in a crock pot set to high. This mimic the the steam from a volcano. Not the same as a real volcano but it comes out very similar, and retains much moisture
@@lisaclark361 yes it works great, just remember to check and add more boiled water when it starts to get low. I wrap the whole carton in aluminum foil as well so the carton will not get soggy. It will take a long time to steam, probably about 5-6 hours depending on the size of your container. Happy baking , you will love this bread it’s delicious!
With no Dutch oven, is already been thinking of using my slow cooker because I have no worries about leaving it on overnight. I was just going to ask about what setting to use but now I don't have to. Thanks, Liv!
I tried the fermented shark when I went to Iceland, it’s smells of ammonia and I remember it being more palatable than the Icelandic Schnapps it was served with. I distinctly remember having a shower the following day, the heat from the hot water seemed to have excreted the ammonia smell, through my breath/ pores as I could smell/ taste it again.
as the other guy pointed out the smell wasnt coming from you but rather the geothermally heated water. Funny story, the first time my mom went to iceland she was scared that she would smell like that once she got out of the shower (this of course didnt happen) because she had never experienced the shower smelling weird
yeah, my husband and I tried hakarl on our honeymoon in Iceland and it was...fine? Like, not something I'd choose to eat again but it just wasn't that bad. We were a little disappointed! I asked the waiter if this stuff was milder than it usually is and he said it was pretty standard. At which point I said that I didn't see what all the fuss about it being so horrible was all about and he shrugged and said he agreed. lol The smelly shower water was a bigger surprise, especially once we got out of Reykjavik. Oof! Well worth it though.
Very interesting stuff. Jared Rydelek (Weird Explorer) just uploaded a series of videos on Icelandic geothermal energy, including one where he bakes this bread. Thanks Max for all your great videos, they are binge-worthy and your fan base is wonderful. Kudos to Jose too, hopefully there's more Ketchups to come.
Poor Jared. He actually went to Iceland, toured the country, visited the volcanos, ate this bread, etc. and put out a six-part series on those interesting things. But, he later had to put out a video saying that RUclips was penalizing his channel because his Iceland videos have not gotten that many views compared to his regular fruit tasting videos. I usually like Max Miller's videos, but on this one it just seems he is sitting in his Burbank apartment and jumping onto something done by a more adventurous RUclipsr. Watch this video everyone, then go watch Jared's series.
I just read your Wikipedia page. Interesting and wonderful story. You essentially made up the profession that you were born to do. Reminds me of the amazing fit between Robert Osborn and Turner Classic Movies. And as was that case we all get to share in the results. Thank you!
On behalf of those of us of Scottish ancestry, I would like to thank the people of Iceland for developing traditional foods that make haggis seem unobjectionable by comparison.
I was fairly certain and just looked it up to verify: yep, "brennivín" is literally a cognate of "brandy" - basically "burning wine," because the very first spirits across Europe were based on wines and this plus the monastic practice of distillation is pretty much where most European names for spirits come from (aquavit and akvavit are variants of aqua vitae, which also gave us whiskey), with the exception of "spirits" and the like which is more deeply rooted in the Greek mastery of distillation from the Egyptians.
all brandy/brennivin sounding names come from the german/dutch word brandewijn, which as you say means burning wine. this got messed up when the english tried to pronounce it.
Similar story with "whiskey"; the word is etymologically synonymous with "aquavit" and "vodka", all being shortened terms for "water (of life)", with the Germanic and Slavic terms for "burned wine" being also used in many of the same places... When it comes to "National liquors", the preferred terms seem to be haphazard, since the French use the German word, and the Swedes use the Latin word, and the English use the Gaelic word, etc... but it makes sense when you study the history.
@@sudazima lol, do you think "The English" ever cared about trying to pronounce it? They knew damn well how it was pronounced, but since they are English, they pronounced it in their own way. Don't act like they "tried" and somehow failed because they didn't try hard enough.
he didnt pronounce brauð correctly if I recall my study in icelandic correctly. 'au' always makes somewhat of an 'oi' sound, its kinda hard to describe in English but he pronounced it more like 'bröð". Still a wonderful video :))
He isn't, but he talks to those who speak them or a related language that is close to the parent language. Icelandic is extremely close to Old Norse, being directly descended from it and without the centuries of linguistic drift and melding with other languages that the other Nordic languages have. A native speaker of Icelandic could understand Old Norse with the same capability that a Native English speaker today would be able to understand Early Modern English.
Max, your language pronunciation skills get quite the workout! I appreciate your dedication to tracking down experts to guide you in correctly pronouncing these names and terms! By the way: hard tack! Thank you, Jose, for including our favorite clip!
Even better, turn on the closed captioning - Jose sometimes adds a bit of "flavor" to those, like when Max is trying to eat the fish jerky, and in the cc, it says {struggling} LOL
If the Icelandic tradition is anything like the Swedish one, Brennivín is probably supposed to be taken more like a shot. In Sweden, you traditionally have "snaps" (of which Akvavit, which the Brennivín is a type of is a type) with many holiday meals, and what you will typically do is pause the meal, everyone sings a "snapsvisa" (drinking song) and then downs their glass of snaps. (And speaking of snaps, if you want a real...experience you should try getting ahold of some Besk (Beska Droppar or Piraten Besk are the common brands here, although there is one produced in Chicago called Jeppson's Malört.)
You're right. Brennivín is supposed to be taken as a shot, cooled ice cold as mentioned in the video. We usually drink it during the 23th of December when we eat Skada and Hákarl as a side dish, at least that's what my family does haha.
I'll be honest I've never understood the fascination some people have with "pure" (read: stupid strong) liquors. Like I get that a lot of it much like this case comes down to tradition but uh, guys, we can leave some traditions behind. I mean don't get me wrong I'm not talking alcohol content so much as how it goes down. Well...sorta, up to about 75% you can still get some taste even if it's going to be predominately alcoholic but I've never had anything over that, that wasn't basically just downing ethanol (and indeed, some cheap liquors are that way even at low percentages) and I just don't get the draw. I mean what? You're trying to prove something? You enjoy not feeling your taste-buds for the next 48-hours? I don't know it's always been confusing to me since if the intention is to get drunk anything over 50% is gonna get you there pretty quick regardless and you don't have to sacrifice taste in the process.
@@gwennorthcutt421 I've heard that but for instance my hard liquor of choice is a good peanut butter whiskey (don't knock it till you try it, Rams Head is dirt cheap just to try, Skatterbrain for something actually enjoyable, Arrogant Bastard if I'm celebrating) or sometimes a brown sugar bourbon. Despite the names neither is particularly sweet (I'm sure there's SOME brand that is but I don't know them) but they do have notes of what they get their names from, peanut butter in particular. And while no hard liquor is going to be good for swishing around like a wine drinker I'd still lose those subtle notes if it didn't at least touch my tongue on the way down. I mean we've all done shots of super hard liquor that is basically just that at some point but I never found it particularly enjoyable. Even if I'm not downing a favorite I'm still going to pick a straight whiskey 9/10 and even those that aren't tinted with any flavor (for lords sake I remember the days when Southern Comfort was the only thing I could get) I would still prefer to get some texture and flavor. Guess I'm weird. Edit: And yes I know clear liquors are a bit different I was just using something I'm familiar with as an example of a drink you would lose the actual experience of if you just tossed it down the throat.
@@gwennorthcutt421 No I get it from a purely technical standpoint, like it makes sense. And just used brown liquors as they're what I'm most familiar with since I rarely drink clear liquors outside of bars with friends it would have been disingenuous to insinuate I fully understood them. And so yeah I get it, I just don't "get it" if you... get me. Like, I'm not a wine drinker but when they describe how they taste flavors I can follow the same procedure and experience the same thing they do even if I'm not loving it. But when I throw back vodka (I've had a few clears but vodkas the only one I would consider myself truly familiar with) I can't ever remember inhaling after gulping and thinking "hey, there's some violet!". But still what you say makes sense, people have all sorts of different ways of experiencing things.
So you also drink Schnaps in Sweden? That's nice to know! :-) But why is Akvavit (or Aquavit, water of life here in Germany) supposed a Brennivin, a Brandy, made from wine or the "waste" of its production (like Grappa)? Isn't this stuff made out of wheat or rye, much like a vodka, and later infused with carroway seeds? Or is Brennivin a general term for strong alcoholic beverages like "liquor" is in the US?
Pumpernickel is made in a similar way (although we use ovens in Germany), the low temperature and long cooking times speed up enzymatic processes which give the bread its signature taste and dark color.
Watching Max eat the fish jerky reminded me of Chevy Chase eating the overcooked Christmas turkey in "Christmas Vacation" lol. Bread and butter sounds wonderful. Thanks Max!
Max Miller, you are amazing! Excellent pronunciation for a first-timer, obviously you have a knack for languages. Since you have your icelandic butter and rúgbrauð, try boiling white fish and potatoes, mash them together with butter and eat the whole thing with rúgbrauð. .
@@TastingHistory 🥰 And did you have any Þrumur? I have been addicted to salted butter my whole life, so I completely understand. Have you ever tried the one from Bretagne, with the salt flakes in it. My mother being half bretonne, it was the only butter on the table 😋
@@TheMcgreary It is such a staple, it´s comfort food. My all time favorite is to actually eat it with onion butter and rutabagas along the potatoes and rúgbrauð.
@@TastingHistory You must try 'plokkfiskur' / 'plukkfisk', it's essentially just cod, potatoes, onions and butter. When you serve, crack some black pepper on top. It's almost like a fish/potato porridge. In Iceland we enjoy it buttered rúgbrauð on the side. Oh no, now I'm hungry!
Growing up in New England region it is very common to see Boston brown bread that is steamed in a can. The recipe is very similar. There is the addition of cornmeal and the substitution of molasses and sour or buttermilk. There is also a version that includes raisins.
My father once brought some harðfisk with him on an airplane (before restrictions were as harsh as they are now), He got asked by a flight attendants to please put it away because some of the other passengers became sick because of the smell. I do recommend trying the svið and sviðasulta, it may look gross but it tastes pretty good, especially the tung.
As a Norwegian it was very interesting to see that some of the dishes served at Thorablot are similar to old dishes here in Norway. We call that particular cuisine "Husmannskost", roughly translated to tenant farmers food. And even though it originally was food for the poor, it now is served in fine restaurants and has had a renaissance here in Norway as well. Hardfiskur we call "tørrfisk" = dry fish, and was (and still is) a large export from Norway in the Middle Ages. The sheeps head - we call it "Smalahove", is still a popular autumn dish in some regions, especially to serve to tourists ;) Brennivin, or akevit, is also an important liquor here, and is traditionally served with our (much milder) version of the hákarl, "rakfisk" around Christmas time, or mid-winter.
Smalahove is more of a south-western (you southerners probably just say "western") Norwegian dish; here in the north, most of our traditional "dinner" dishes are fish-based. Akevitt (which current wisdom - unlike that of a few decades ago - says should _not_ be freezing) is a very common complement to lutefisk, served alongside beer/ale. I prefer white wine with my lutefisk, however, since I like neither beer nor brandy.
The German term is Hausmannskost meaning traditional cuisine, the kind of food that people made at home a hundred years ago. Lots of meat and dumplings...
@@c.w.8200 Yes, that's what's usually served in restaurants advertising with Hausmannskost but to the average people of the generation of our grandparents when they were young this was more of a Sunday meal, the rest of the week it was leftovers, stews and other simpler dishes with less prep time. Like the rest of the dumplings, sliced and fried with some eggs, which is delicious in itself. :-)
Max is every bit as entertaining and informative as David Rosengarten ("Taste") and Alton Brown ("Good Eats"), two of my favorite hosts/shows from the better days of the Food/cooking channel CableTV days... The best part is, no one has done history+food in the same way as Max... What a gold mine for him, I hope!
Yes. Max is probably the most entertaining and informative cooking program host currently in the business. I used to enjoy the food Network until it became the Food Competition Network. Don't get me wrong a cook-off can make for a fun and entertaining program but by necessity there is no time to teach either the history of a dish nor the cooking techniques involved in its creation. I much prefer an educational sort of program like Max is doing here. If this had been on the Food Network back in the day this would have been the top rated program.
I never get tired of the “Hardtack” punchline. The look on your face is great. Your sense of comic timing is on point. Is the bread anything like brown bread in a can?
What is missing from your list of foods from Þorrablót is Hangikjöt with uppstúf. This is the quintessential Icelandic traditional food that is missing from all the Icelandic food lists because it is not "weird" or shocking. It is smoked lamb that is usually boiled and served either hot or cold in slices, traditionally with potatoes in béchamel sauce and green peas, or in thin slices on bread such as flatkaka or rúgbrauð or laufabrauð. I recommend that you try that for a good taste of Iceland.
Thanks, Max! You made a very bad day bright. I haven't laughed so much in a long time. The expression on your face when you opened the pack of dried fish was priceless. It's one of my favorite snacks. Having lived in Norway for most of my adult life, I've tried most of the things on your menu. I've drawn the line at sheep's head. When it comes to the Brennivin, the word is used as a catch-all term for strong alcohol. It consists of two parts, Vin, which means wine, and Brenn, which means burn. in other words: a wine that burns on the way down your throat.
Burn on the way down is accurate, as I've drunk plenty of Brännvin here in Sweden. I'm surprised Norway, Sweden and Iceland doesn't have closer ties, in modern times. They're still so similar.
Sheep heads are actually a childhood favourite of mine. Lightly roast the outside with an open flame (or a torch) cut in half, scoop the brain out and throw in a big pot and add an unhealthy amount of salt. My great grandfather used to have a saying "þú getur aldrei of saltað svið" or translated you can never over salt sheep's heads.
@@orribirgisson421 I admire you for that. It's one of the few things I don't have the guts to try. But who knows, I might find the courage one day... 🙂
Here in Denmark we call it brændevin. It means the same, but "brænde" (burn) actually refers to the process of distilling. "Hjemmebrændt" means homemade alcohol.
I made this bread for Midsommar here in Sweden last week, and it was a huge hit with everyone! Really simple to make, and absolutely delicious. Thanks for the recipe!
Fantastic!! Being an Icelandic Folklorist I would say you did pretty well on almost all fronts (history, baking and tasting). What is missing is the 20th century history as the modern Þorrablót was revived in the 1960s and the story about it is pretty fantastic :) Your naled the pronunciation, but I recommend eating some more Harðfiskur, it will grow on you I promise, if not give it to cats... They will go ballistic for it :D
My father was from Iceland, and we would go there very often when i was a child. I loooved eating the dried fish and black bread with butter. but nothing tops an Icelandic Hotdog!
Sheep's head and pickle ram testicles? Shudder. I'm not making fun of it, just makes some of the more bizarre Eastern European food my mother made taste like 5 star restaurant food.
@@srvntlilly sheeps head is really only scary in the looks department. The flavour is wonderful, I need mashed potatoes with mine to complete the dish.
another great episode in the books! this bread looks interesting and yummy! also, love how we're still keeping the hard tack jokes going. they will never get old...much like hard tack.
My husband has now "discovered" your channel. Which I was made aware of one evening while slaving over a manuscript from HELL, when Husbeing said "Hey, you should see this guy... he's making Viking Mead! Oh! and there's one on Posca and Lard!" and I said "Max Miller? The guy you watched me watch make Pumpion Pie? Yeah he's cool. Watch the one about Conditum...."
I’ve seen the hartfiskur pounded with a mallet and then rehydrated and baked. Actually turns back into flakey yummy fish! I wouldn’t eat it hard like that!
yeah I was like 'dude if it's eaten with butter they prolly Bake it a little to let the butter seep in and rehydrate it a little That would be incredible I bet
It sounds like you’re referring to stockfish which is indeed dried, however it is not the same produce. Stockfish is generally very tough and dry and needs preparation like you mention. Hardfish can be bought crispy, brittle, almost soft, quite tough or even as bite sized snack pieces and it’s simply served like in the video, no preparation or cooking needed. Your comment made me ponder if one would be able to rehydrate hardfish in a similar manner to stockfish, but I doubt it.
Rågbröd is such an incredible common bread up here in the Nordics, I never would've thought it would make for a new experience to anyone. Great fun to watch someone react to and experience for the first time something that you've always taken for granted.
I just love when you do nordic recipes since we're all connected through our history and culture. I grew up on rye bread and it's still my favourite type of bread. I would say Finns and Danes have the best rye bread, but I haven't tried Icelandic yet and you seem to like it a lot so I'll definitely try it when I go there
I was surprised to see that we didn't get a Chinese new year dedicated video, then I remembered that we had one last year. Time really flies these days, thanks for making Tuesdays fun!
"We come from the land of the ice and snow, From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow..." This song always pops into my head anytime someone talks about anything Scandinavian. I'd definitely give this bread a try.
@@tobbi11 Right, but it is *culturally* Scandinavian, not geographically. It's a Nordic country geographically. You're being pedantic to a degree where you look a bit silly. The song is really just about viking raiders and conquerors in England, not particularly about Iceland despite the mention of hot springs - that's more of a poetic license thing.
Rye bread is a staple food in all of the Nordics not just Iceland. It's especially popular in Denmark and Finland and is usually eaten for lunch with basically whatever you want on top of it but at least in Denmark liver paté is the most common topping. Usually seeds are also added to make it more tasty. In Denmark it's also used for smørrebrød which is like a really complex open sandwich and is a fairly common lunch food for events like business meetings or family gatherings. It's generally popular because it's very filling, healthy and easy to make, while also not sitting very heavily in the stomach.
@@marissa46934 well all you guys in the US/CAN/Mexico will be toast, and the rest of us will probably suffer some terrible conditions. Here’s hoping it sleeps for many more years lol
@@marissa46934 as it turns out, we no longer need to worry about it. It has been determined that the magma core has moved itself under the Rocky Mountains, making an eruption very nearly impossible.
We took a family trip there 3 years ago, and just the other day, I was reminiscing about this bread. Every morning my Dad and I would have a slab or 2 of this with a thick shmear of butter, and it was fabulous. Just grabbed it from the grocery store so I couldn't remember if it had a brand name. All the food was phenomenal there! So fresh and rich. Except the fermented shark, that stuff was heinous. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe, I am so happy!
I love this episode as a Swedish native, since I recognize a lot of the dishes as the Nordic/Scandinavian "Husmanskost" and things we eat and drink at Easter, Midsummer and Crayfish celebrations. Thank you for a lovely and informative episode!
When I tell my friends back in the US about this, I tell them that the closest thing "back home" is Boston Brown Bread! This is deliscious with Plokk Fiskur, or a potato/root vegetable and mashed fish stew sort of meal!
When I was studying to be a pastry chef (In Denmark), one of my teachers was Icelandic, and taught us to make Icelandic Rugbrød (as it is spelled in danish), and it was delicious and very sweet, after being baked for 24 hours… Danish rugbrød is more bitter, has a lot of whole kernels and has much more of the sour dough that we make it with… 😊
I suggest you save your money and go to Iceland: it's worth it! I went there in 2008, and want to go back. Given that they ( the Icelandic folk) eat a range of foods not eaten elsewhere You could turn the trip into a Tasting History Special!
@@TastingHistory Iceland Air have good rates to Europe and you can take a 3 day break in Iceland for free in case you are thinking of going anywhere else in Europe. It is how most Swedes visit Iceland, on the way to NYC. :) Brennivin/brannvin btw is generic term all over Scandinavia that simply means booze, mostly of a native sort. It used to be low quality, a bit like moonshine, but is gaining in both quality and popularity.
Your Icelandic pronunciation is very good! I can tell you did your research and know your IPA. I appreciate the extra mile you go through in producing these fantastic quality videos! Keep it up
Max did credit the people he used to help with pronunciation in a pinned comment. He's one of a small handful of RUclipsrs I've seen do this, but it really should be a standard. One of the reasons he's an amazing content creator is that he goes to great lengths to try to get language, history, and culture as correct as he can in spite of not experiencing those things himself. I definitely send up my appreciation with yours.
By the 2/3 rye and 1/3 wheat it sounds really similar the Lithuanian bread which I really like. Only that has caraway seeds inside too. And if it is as foolproof than it seems I should take a try to make it, becose I really miss that rye-caraway bread that nowhere can be bought out of Northeastern Europe.
hey, you might want to try and make Baccalà Mantecato. it's stockfish, soaked and then beaten up with milk for a very long time until it's super creamy. super popular in Venice
@@TastingHistory "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." Good old Doug Adams.
Don’t give up!! I just couldn’t cook rice properly for years. It didn’t matter what recipe/method I tried it didn’t work. It just felt like I was cursed to never be able to cook my favourite carb, but In the end I was able to figure out what was going wrong, and now I know all the tricks on how to fix it when does go wrong!
Pickled herring and eggs an onion on rúgbrauð is a danish tradition, called smørrebrød. Their rye bread is very different, it is lighter, has a bunch of seeds in and isn't nearly as sweet😊 In iceland rúgbrauð is usually eaten with butter, or maybe butter and cheese, and it's usually eaten as a side with poached/boiled fish
Also have Hardfiskur here but it's more like in "snack size" so if you pound it till its soft(er) and rip it into small pieces it is way more enjoyable to eat. But yeah its pretty smelly but tastes really nice i think. Also it was probbably used like any other dried fish in soups or rehydrated before eating. Cool that i have something here that you tried aswell :)
My dad bought some of the dried fish in a store when we visited Iceland. The tour guide also mentioned rehydration after my dad failed at eating it in its jerky form 😛
Norwegian dried cod was exported all over europe in the middle ages. Sometimes nicknamed the "White Gold". Its part of portugese cuisine for example. There is a dish called Bacalhau a Bras made with norwegian dried cod. Its pretty good. Its like a fish and potato hash. Edit: there is a delicious Nordic recipe with cod, diced or mashed potatoes, horseradish, melted salted butter mixed with a boiled egg scrambled to pieces on top. Often served with peas. The horseradish is really what makes it taste kind of exotic. And melted butter and potatoes are always good together. It can have Dill on it too. Nordics somehow like Dill. Its not a common spice in most places.
Just for reference, those "cardboard" milk containers that you were concerned about using are actually heated to high temperatures during the packaging process already- it's not quite identical to canning things in glass jars, but it's reasonably close. So, it _likely_ is safe to do this with them _everywhere_ that is safe to drink things from them in the first place.
PROTIP: I've found that you can also use sugar-beet syrup or molasses and it turns out just as well. Even honey or fig syrup might work, though they'll affect the taste.
Thank you! I'm not sure I want to invest in golden syrup for this-or, rather, I want to make it right away and I don't want to wait to order golden syrup!-and was wondering what a good sub might be. Was thinking Karo syrup but molasses sounds like the ticket. It's so good in rye bread anyway.
Korea has a similar fish dish that’s dried out in the cold wind, and incorporated into a soup called 북어국! (Bukeoguk) I used to eat it as a snack during road trips and it’s commonly left on graves for deceased family members to consume alongside soju.
I think most northern coastal regions have something similar, in Norway they hang the cod in racks on the beaches in the fall to let it dry over the winter. that was their main export commodity before they found oil and started to farm salmon.
I noticed "The Other Side of History" in the Wondrium ad. Highly recommend it. And finally a recipe I can make with items I already have! (Except the golden syrup, but I bet the British grocery store has it.)
that type of brown bread (although maybe not cooked in volcanic hotsprings) is very common in all of Scandinavia, and so is brännvin (swedish). It's not only flavoured with caraway seeds, but all sorts of herbs, specifically old medicinal ones, as this kind of liquor (like in most places) was used as medicine in the olden days. One of my favourites is the one with wormwood.
Aw, Laki! My precious baby. I am literally doing my degree in geology because of Icelandic volcanos, and I am aiming to do my master in Iceland. Apparently others see volcanos and go "oh that's cool" and then leave it at that, I go "I want to be a geologist", and then I proceed to become one. Because chill is boring. But any video about Icelandic volcanos is going to be better than other videos. This one was not an exception. (Yay Laki!)
I’ve eaten hákarl in Iceland! It’s very soft, and at first it’s just like white fish, but a second later it hits you with a wave of ammonia, which is definitely an acquired taste. Most places have Icelandic portions, and portions for foreigners, which is typically a couple cm3 on skewers, since most won’t have more than a bite lol
Icelandic butter is also just SO good. I actually had quite a lot of good food when I visited (some of the best lamb and Arctic char I’ve ever had) but was particularly blown away by some of the bread and butter I ate, as simple as that is.
As an icelandic person I was afraid of watching this video. The way people say icelandic words often kills me, thankfully you said it well enough that it didn't make me want to turn the video off. Good job. The history of the volcano is also really fun, I knew about it but- good for more people to know.
@@gudnisnaer8171 Já, það getur verið fyndið eða erfitt. Bara eftir skapi. Sérstaklega þegar það er borið framm nær sænsku eða norsku. Hann gerir það samt vel. Í einu video sem ég horfði á frá öðrum sagði einn berserk gangur eins og "berserker gang" "like a street gang?" Mjúki ameríski framburðurinn er ekki nógu góður fyrir sögurnar.
I tried hákarl several years back - one of my DnD friends brought a little tin back from her vacation in Iceland. We instituted a rule that anyone who rolled a 1 during our game had to eat a piece - but they had to go out to the balcony to do it so they wouldn't stink up the apartment. 😂
I had it in Iceland. A couple locals told me about it and said I should try it. When they were explaining it to me they were explaining that the shark is poisonous normally and had to be cured. "We call it 'purified' shark. It is wonderful, but it is hard to get accustomed to the taste." So I tried it-- I have almost no sense of smell so the smell wouldn't deter me. I was enjoying it at first but then there was a slow creeping feeling of "Something isn't right..." Afterwards it occurred to me that they might have been saying "putrefied" and not "purified". lol They were stressing the word "purified" a lot as if I wasn't understanding. lol
Icelandic has to be in my top 3 hardest languages to pronounce, so thank you to Gunnlaugur Ólafsson and Ólafur Waage for your help is getting me as far as I could go.
You did an impressive job!
You did well! Much better than you usually see from youtubers trying to pronounce Icelandic or Norse words.
Interesting how they have uniqie names for a few of the things which you also find in Norway:
Hardfiskkur = Tørrfisk
Svið = Smalahove
Brennivín = Akevitt
I am no expert; but the pronunciation sounded convincing to me.
You must have worked hard cause you did a great job!
Oh yay! Two seconds in and I see my hometown! Fun fact, the volcano in those couple seconds is too cold to bake bread. The one a hundred meters left of it is the hot one, I made bread in that one a lot with my friends as a kid. Your research is extremely thorough though, I learned stuff I didn't know like the origin of Þorrablót!
næss
I'd have loved doing that as a kid.
So would you say that the cold volcano is the re-heating volcano
Everyone else -"Oh my god they bake bread with volcanoes in Iceland!"
People I'm Iceland -"pffft. Not THOSE volcanoes"
@@whiterex66 it's 6 am and you killed me
Another reason the dough doesn't turn into hard tack *tack tack* is because rye amylases will saccharify the starches in the flours at lower temperatures. At 100C, it will take a while to denature the enzymes, so the dough has more of a syrupy quality. That and the sealed steaming makes it soft.
And rye bread is best a few days after baking, unlike wheat bread which tends to be best when fresh.
Lol hard *tack tack*
See, this is why are almost 37 I want to go back to school to learn molecular gastronomy. This is top shelf stuff a chef should know to take their food to the next level.
What a happy thing! Yummy
Didn't understand anything, but have found it very interesting.
Love how almost every time Max mentions hard-tack he inserts a clip of his hitting two hard-tack biscuits together.
It's become a meme at this point
Love the Hard Tack video cameo
Never gets old 😂😂😂
Agreed 🤝
Here in Japan, specifically the nearby Kirishima region, we also use volcanic vents to cook food. We make chicken, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, mochi, etc. ; it's quite good;)
And of course, onsen
@@dayaninikhaton Yes, the onsen throughout the prefecture are some of the best in Japan!
That sounds amazing!
Sounds great and fun to do.
@@JacksonDunnoKnows It is great to eat. Doesn't even need any flavouring; the volcano provides that.
Can't say whether or not it's fun because all you do is wrap it a bit, put it in, and DING it's done in no time.
Max! I'm so glad you noticed the bees! My great-grandpa was the commercial artist who designed that tin, for Lyle's Golden Syrup. The tins were made by a company called Metal Box in London. It always makes me smile to see his work still in use and appreciated and (mostly) unchanged. You're totally on the money about the backstory, too - I remember being shown the reference material a very long time ago. Oh, and as ever, great episode, both informative and entertaining, and now I have proof of your A+ research quality too ;)
Wow, that is so cool, thanks for sharing that!
How cool! 💞
Wonderful story!
That's so neat! I love that
what a coincidence! really cool. 🙏❤️
When I visited Iceland there was a nice little restaurant near the large cathedral in Reykjavik called Cafe Loki. They made rye bread ice cream that was out of these nine worlds
I'm intrigued.
I love Iceland! They're rye bread ice cream is amazing!
Ate at that cafe years ago. I don't remember having the rye bread ice cream, but the Hakarl was amazing!!
Been there, loved it.
Cafe Loki? I heard the food is great, but it's very chaotic.
Hi
Great job on baking and pronouncing these Icelandic words.
I’m Icelandic born and raised. There are many different Recipes for Rúgbrauð, depending on where in Iceland you come from. Mine witch is over 100 years old has no brown sugar only syrup and not baking powder but baking soda. Also, I use buttermilk instead of milk and I bake my bread for 10 hours on 120 degrees. I just wanted to share that with you. Good luck 😉
What would that be in Fahrenheit? If it's only 10 hours, I just might try it.
Ohhh! I'd like that version, since I prefer savoury food. Is it the same recipe, just without the sugar and syrup/? (& bp instead of soda). Old recipes, like yours 100 yrs old I'd be SO interested in! I guess I can google it, but *_I'd love to see your recipe!_* 💕
Love dense, rye/dark European breads! 😋
Interesting fact that you probably know but others might not: you need the buttermilk if you use baking soda, because the acid in the buttermilk activates the soda. Baking powder is a modern engineered leavener that doesn't require acid in the recipe... This is a principal that can be used in any recipe (if you substitute soda for powder, also make sure you add some acid--and don't put in the same amount. Soda goes farther than powder!)
Would Maple Syrup work ?
@@srvntlilly 120 Centigrade is around 250 Fahrenheit
Max’s work time must be 50% research, 40% learning pronunciations and 10% cooking ‘cos it’s always a blast to hear foreign words pronounced in what I can only assume to be a proper pronunciation.
As an Icelander, he did an excellent job. I’ve encountered people who have studied Icelandic for many years with much worse pronunciations. It’s really very difficult for foreigners, so I’m impressed.
I love when you “hard tac” us it’s like being Rick Rolled 😂
Tack-clacked.
That is hilarious 😂
222
*tack tack*
I laugh every time 😆
I love how the moment he starts talking about baking bread for 24 hours gets my "hard tack" sense tingling
*CLACK CLACK*
I was ready for it 😁
Pottymouth
@Emi Taylor it never gets old lol 😁!
Me too! I was totally expecting the clip.
Hey! I remember Gordon Ramsay actually baking this in a volcano only to have some local Icelander steal it overnight! Must be some darn good stuff.
It was probably the elves
@@tokeeriksen2425 The elves have gone too far this time!!
It's slow baked bread made with a large amount of sugar, of course it's good.
The Finns have their own variant called Malax limpa.
Link?
@@Scorpio7500 Little late but here: ruclips.net/video/a40VeD8YxiU/видео.html
A fun fact about rye: many people who try to make rye bread for the first time complain that it's very difficult to make a dough with rye flour. The reason why is that rye's gluten, to use a more familiar term, comes from a protein called secalin. Secalin can only be formed in acidic conditions, and that why most rye breads are made from sourdough. Just to be clear, secalin is a gluten protein, so people affected by gluten must avoid it.
I’m actually not happy that I did
Totally worth the effort, though. Rye bread (on a sourdough basis) is such an amazing taste experience.
I'd encourage everbody to make their own. It's not at all difficult if you are willing to learn from experience.
Tons of excellent videos for beginners, too! That's how I got into it, with no prior experience in baking bread.
My 2 favorite breads are Rye and Sourdough.
The acidic culture also stops the rye from digesting itself and preserves the pentosans which allow for the bubbles/rise.
finally something really new that i now know. thank you so much. thats fascinating and amazing.
As a Canuck who married into a Danish family, I've spent the past 30 years perfecting my rygbrod recipe. And the klipfisk looks great, though I imagine the dried salt cod would have been soaked and even cooked before eating. A recipe you might want to try is 'Fish and Brewis (with or without scrunchins)', an old standard from Newfoundland, where you begin by soaking dried salt fish overnight to rehydrate it and leach out some of the salt, before cooking it in milk along with - gasp - hard bread! (TACK TACK), and serving it with crispy diced fatback (the 'scrunchins'). If you want to go full Newfie, serve it with a side of lemony peas. Great video as always, keep'em coming!
Heh, but no. We Icelanders eat Harðfisk just like that, dry and ready. Many like to butter it up, some skip that part.
Actually the Harðfisk isn't the same from every producer here, some retain a little moisture and are easier to chew on, some do it the old way & leave them outside to dry, while others use high temp housing to speed up the process. And needless to say, the flavors & textures depend a bit on the source material, if you're using cod or something else.
Personally, I rarely eat them, because I don't have full teeth and they tend to get badly stuck between my teeth, which is frustrating to deal with.
I was coming here to make the same suggestion about Fish and Brewis. Strange coincidence, I'm a also a Newfoundlander. My mother was a Newfie and Dad is a Dane. The bread sounds a bit like Newfie Brown bread.
Fish and Brewis is one delicious dish. I have only had it once, but I still think about it every now then.
Klippfisk is a lot saltier, as it's salted for about a month before drying.
@@rockorc42 You guys take your time to beat the dried fish with a hammer to soften it?
Almost my favourite part.
Hi, I'm Icelandic and a big fan of the channel. Thanks for spreading the delight of Rúgbrauð to everyone! There's a bunch more Icelandic foods that I think you might find palatable, for example kleinur (basically twisted donuts), flatkökur (dark brown flatbread) and hangikjöt (smoked lamb). Feel free to PM me if you need any translations or tips for more Icelandic food you want to try!
By the way, when I make rúgbrauð I use súrmjólk (I guess it's similar to buttermilk in the US) instead of milk and I skip the brown sugar and use more syrup instead.
And skyr as well.
Being a native English speaker (American English at that), flatkökur's pronunciation would indicate what it is, even if the context is different. Flatkökur is pronounced like flat-caker with the 'a' being a soft 'a' sound (as in 'ah'). We would miss the context that it is a flatbread, but cake was originally used to reference kinds of soft breads.
Would this be from the Icelandic Cookbook I sent you? (Wanda)
@@darkcrystal86 How do you use skyr with this? I actually have a skyr culture coming and have rye flour on hand, so I'm curious about this accidental discovery.
The history of Rye cultivation is probably the weirdest in all of agriculture. Wheat was the earliest grain to be domesticated and cultivated by the peoples of northern Mesopotamia around 9000 years ago, and they also eventually domesticated barley about 2000 years after that. But there were other grain plants that were mixed in that were troublesome weeds, and these included Rye and Oats. Though Rye is originally from the Levant, it first appears in domestic cultivation 1800 BC, almost exclusively in Central Europe, most notably in the Northern Balkans in what is now Serbia and Romania. Rye grains are almost indistinguishable from Emmer wheat (an evolutionary mimicry called Vavilovian mimicry), meaning that any quantity of wheat grains also held rye unless farmers carefully culled the mature plants. Historians and biologists theorize that northern Balkan peoples at the time acquired wheat mixed with rye, and being noobs, discovered an edible weed that was quite tasty.
The prevalence of rye in northern europe is prettily easily explained thoug. Rye could handle the cold and wet "little ice age" much better than wheat but still could be used to make leavend bread. In areas like my native northern sweden that were to cold to grow anything other than barley. Or costal areas like scotland, the atlantic iles or costal norway that were to wet to grow any other grain than oat people had to rely on unlevend matza like flat bread or porridge untill the arival of imported wheat from poland or the cultivation of potatoes came.
I just recently read an article on the topic which argued that rye cultivation in central and northern Europe is partially responsible for their explosive population growth in the late middle ages. This is because scientific inventions which made tilling fields easier alongside rye which could handle the cold, wet weather north of the alps, made it easier to feed the masses. In antiquity, the urban centers in Gallia or Germania were dependent on grain - wheat - deliveries from all over the Roman Empire, which also explains the dispersed populations of the early middle ages. The history of food and its ingredients is a fascinating thing, it influenced entire continents.
The Romans mixed rye with spelt, but despite this they had a poor regard for the grain due to its bitter taste. Pliny the Elder stated that rye was a "poor food" eaten when wheat was unaffordable or unobtainable, and pretty much trashed it.
an Icelander here. just made Slátur (slaughter) which is also a traditional food for Þorrablót. its two types of basically sausage one made of sheepsblood and fat and the other made with liver and kidney. it is delicious. Rúgbrauð is eaten all year round and most often with fish. This video was great and you're welcome to visit us up north whenever, just be sure to bring a warm coat.
I was in Akureyri and Grimsey in November 2014. I found most Þorrablót food items to be palatable. I had puffin, minke and boiled sheepshead. Hakarl seemed more like pieces of rubber dunked in ammonia. It didn't taste too bad, but it's really just an excuse to drink more akavit. I enjoy both liver and kidney and I wish that it was more readily available here in the States. I was just wondering, shouldn't the dried fish have been soaked in water for several hours before eating it?
Having watched Max "enjoy" both dried fish and hard tack, it's time for him to put both together, and make Newfoundland Fish and Brewis, and learn the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery, it's links to the slave trade, the British empire, and the wars fought between France and Britain over it.
Norwegian descent here and all I will say is lutefisk.
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if he's familiar with puritans hard bread biscuits?
I wonder if he would has eaten Poutine?
@@joyful_tanya Portuguese descent here and all I will say is bacalhau if he wants something nicer (lutefisk doesn't sound all that great from what I've read)
Seeing Max unable to say "liquid hot magma" without letting out a mild Dr Evil impression makes me smile
I came here to say it XD
It's the only way to say it.
I couldn't resist either.
Why do you not have an hour-long show on the discovery channel? You’re amazing! One of my favorite cooking shows ever! I just cannot believe that some channel has not scooped you up. ❤️
Quality over quantity 😃
What he's doing right now is better than Discovery channel.
Anyone that has a program on a corporate sponsored distribution network is going to have to compromise their artistic integrity by covering topics the channel will want covered, or meddling with Max's creative process. What he's doing right now is perfect for him.
Over the next couple decades, and mark my words sir, television as we know it will spiral into a pit of obsolescence
because if he was on discovery channel it would turn into a ghost hunt show or something
He has guest-starred on the History channel's version which is hosted by Sohla who used to be at BA.
i can't imagine how shitty this would be with hyper-masculine american narrators going on about how dangerously hot volcanoes are when all I want is exactly what Max is already providing us with
Without even realizing it he is pretty much one of the best online history teachers to ever post a video.
Very fun watching this being Icelandic. Gotta say, your pronounciation was pretty good for a lot of the Icelandic words and names. If you were to try harðfiskur again I personally would reccomend haddock instead of cod, a lot softer and a lot tastier in my opinion!
You can tell from other videos that Max always tries his best to pronounce every foreign word correctly. I find it very admirable :3
An advanced rice cooker (the kind that seals with a timer and temp settings) would be safe to use overnight to bake bread. I usually use mine to cook corn bread and have left it overnight with stews in it to great effect, so anyone thinking of doing a recreation of this dish might find it safer than an oven.
Thanks, I was wondering about that. I have a semi-advanced rice cooker with slow cooker settings and it occurred me it might be a good way to cook overnight and have bread in the morning.
As a Danish woman I must say that I am sooo impressed by how good you pronounced “rugbrød”!!👍👍👍 and I love, love your videos -this is such an motivating way to learn history and food culture from the entire world😉 thank you so much🙂🙂🙂👍
The harðfiskur is much easier to eat if you throughly pound it first. Or buy one of the snack-fish brands that is pre-pounded. And then you still cover it with copious amounts of fermented, salted butter. Extra points for using smoked salt when you make the butter. It is an amazing low carb snack if eaten that way, and much easier on your teeth than the non-pounded version.
I wondered if there was something you needed to do to it.
I feel like in American cooking I've seen it used 'reconstituted' more than eaten as is, where it's soaked in hot water to soften it up before eating. I may be imagining that but I swear I've seen cooks use it that way.
This is one of those things that has taken on a new life with tourism. Growing up, you only heard about this from elderly people thanking the heavens that they no longer have to do this on order to sustain themselves. And then with the post economic crash tourism boom. Making bread like a 17th century peasant became an expensive luxury item, sold for 8-12x what it was worth because people were so in love with the novelty idea of volcano bread that they paid through the nose for the privilege.
As telecommuting becomes more and more common and portable due to pandemic precautions, work-cations abroad also become more practical. It's really up to each land how friendly it wants to be to this.
Even peasants can cabbage on to good ideas if necessity forces them to live with it daily.
Hey. Turns out rye bread is healthy.
@@hensonlaura depends if townsends is to go by peasant food tends to be calorie dense due to how "work" is considered done back in the day but the stereotype still kinda remains most people now eat like how kings did in the late 19th century or like the clergy in the 15th century NOW TIME TO GRATE THOSE 1 pound of NUTMEG IN ME CHEESECAKE
Peasant food is often far more nutritious than the modern foods we eat now. Some people are starting to realize this. It's a good thing these foods are making a comeback, even if it's just for the "novelty".
My late husband would've called that dried fish a butter delivery device 🤣
Thanks for another great episode!
~ Carrie
That is how we eat dried fish 😎
And he would have been right on the money! ❤
In this particular food pairing, you could also think of the butter as a "protein lubricant" 😁
If you're looking for a way to get through the rest of your dried fish, use it in stews or poach it with dairy (usually milk). That is how other dried fishes (like bacalao) are used throughout the world. Also great for stocks (like the bonito in Japanese dashi), since it's an umami bomb.
In Sweden, Norway and Finland we soak it in lye for a few days.
Oh my!!! I was wondering what use he could make of the rest of the bag - other than cat treats of course and I hope they will profit mightily from that purchase.
I wonder what would happen if he fried it like Filipino bulad.
@@pontusf9427 What does that do to it? Soften it and make it easier to eat (once you rinse all the lie of very well)? I know lye does that to other foods.
@@ZipplyZane It basicly makes it into the fluffiest and blandest food possible (if a bit slimey and lye-tastig) perfect after a winter
Surviving on rancid dried and salted foods. Ofputting to anyone else. Served boiled with sause bechamel, green peas and potatoes in sweden and peamush, melted butter and bacon bits in norway. I actually prefer the norwegian way but would prefer any other fish dish over it. My grandpa on the other hand loves it and dont try to stand between the older generation and the lutfisk at a christmas dinner if you want to survive!😄
Rúgbrauð! So happy you are making this!
An fyi, I use an empty milk carton and steam it in a crock pot set to high.
This mimic the the steam from a volcano.
Not the same as a real volcano but it comes out very similar, and retains much moisture
I was wondering if a crock pot would work, thank you!
@@lisaclark361 yes it works great, just remember to check and add more boiled water when it starts to get low.
I wrap the whole carton in aluminum foil as well so the carton will not get soggy.
It will take a long time to steam, probably about 5-6 hours depending on the size of your container.
Happy baking , you will love this bread it’s delicious!
With no Dutch oven, is already been thinking of using my slow cooker because I have no worries about leaving it on overnight. I was just going to ask about what setting to use but now I don't have to. Thanks, Liv!
@@livbirka403 thank you so much! I'm fascinated with Iceland:)
I bet an Instant Pot would work great as I make my Christmas pudding in it and it turns out wonderful.
Nothing can beat the combination of freshly baked bread with butter on top. It feels like a warm hug, especially with some red wine.
I tried the fermented shark when I went to Iceland, it’s smells of ammonia and I remember it being more palatable than the Icelandic Schnapps it was served with. I distinctly remember having a shower the following day, the heat from the hot water seemed to have excreted the ammonia smell, through my breath/ pores as I could smell/ taste it again.
oh yeah, the hot water there is generally sulfurous due to being geothermally heated.
as the other guy pointed out the smell wasnt coming from you but rather the geothermally heated water. Funny story, the first time my mom went to iceland she was scared that she would smell like that once she got out of the shower (this of course didnt happen) because she had never experienced the shower smelling weird
yeah, my husband and I tried hakarl on our honeymoon in Iceland and it was...fine? Like, not something I'd choose to eat again but it just wasn't that bad. We were a little disappointed! I asked the waiter if this stuff was milder than it usually is and he said it was pretty standard. At which point I said that I didn't see what all the fuss about it being so horrible was all about and he shrugged and said he agreed. lol
The smelly shower water was a bigger surprise, especially once we got out of Reykjavik. Oof! Well worth it though.
I had a few friends try it too and they said it taste like ammonia
Very interesting stuff. Jared Rydelek (Weird Explorer) just uploaded a series of videos on Icelandic geothermal energy, including one where he bakes this bread. Thanks Max for all your great videos, they are binge-worthy and your fan base is wonderful. Kudos to Jose too, hopefully there's more Ketchups to come.
Yes! I've been missing Ketchup!
Poor Jared. He actually went to Iceland, toured the country, visited the volcanos, ate this bread, etc. and put out a six-part series on those interesting things. But, he later had to put out a video saying that RUclips was penalizing his channel because his Iceland videos have not gotten that many views compared to his regular fruit tasting videos. I usually like Max Miller's videos, but on this one it just seems he is sitting in his Burbank apartment and jumping onto something done by a more adventurous RUclipsr. Watch this video everyone, then go watch Jared's series.
I love weird explorer..he got me to grow some unique fruit
I’ve been enjoying Weird Explorer’s Icelandic series on the geothermal/greenhouse Bananas ❄️🍌
Another vote for more Ketchups!
I just read your Wikipedia page. Interesting and wonderful story. You essentially made up the profession that you were born to do. Reminds me of the amazing fit between Robert Osborn and Turner Classic Movies. And as was that case we all get to share in the results. Thank you!
On behalf of those of us of Scottish ancestry, I would like to thank the people of Iceland for developing traditional foods that make haggis seem unobjectionable by comparison.
🤣
Haggis is fucking delicious tho
@@redbirddeerjazz whatch thy language
Haggis is delicious, just don't think about what you're eating!
I have always wanted to try haggis
I was fairly certain and just looked it up to verify: yep, "brennivín" is literally a cognate of "brandy" - basically "burning wine," because the very first spirits across Europe were based on wines and this plus the monastic practice of distillation is pretty much where most European names for spirits come from (aquavit and akvavit are variants of aqua vitae, which also gave us whiskey), with the exception of "spirits" and the like which is more deeply rooted in the Greek mastery of distillation from the Egyptians.
all brandy/brennivin sounding names come from the german/dutch word brandewijn, which as you say means burning wine. this got messed up when the english tried to pronounce it.
@@sudazima No brandy is just the shortened form of brandywine (brandewijn).
Similar story with "whiskey"; the word is etymologically synonymous with "aquavit" and "vodka", all being shortened terms for "water (of life)", with the Germanic and Slavic terms for "burned wine" being also used in many of the same places... When it comes to "National liquors", the preferred terms seem to be haphazard, since the French use the German word, and the Swedes use the Latin word, and the English use the Gaelic word, etc... but it makes sense when you study the history.
One question, my Greek cousin; what is the story of the words ούζο and μεταχα?
@@sudazima lol, do you think "The English" ever cared about trying to pronounce it? They knew damn well how it was pronounced, but since they are English, they pronounced it in their own way. Don't act like they "tried" and somehow failed because they didn't try hard enough.
Max pronunciation of other languages makes me think he's actually a linguist with how accurate it always sounds...
he didnt pronounce brauð correctly if I recall my study in icelandic correctly. 'au' always makes somewhat of an 'oi' sound, its kinda hard to describe in English but he pronounced it more like 'bröð". Still a wonderful video :))
@@lotter4390yeah it was much closer to the danish "Rugbrød"
Except for the harsh front-roll of the Rs
He isn't, but he talks to those who speak them or a related language that is close to the parent language. Icelandic is extremely close to Old Norse, being directly descended from it and without the centuries of linguistic drift and melding with other languages that the other Nordic languages have. A native speaker of Icelandic could understand Old Norse with the same capability that a Native English speaker today would be able to understand Early Modern English.
Max, your language pronunciation skills get quite the workout! I appreciate your dedication to tracking down experts to guide you in correctly pronouncing these names and terms!
By the way: hard tack! Thank you, Jose, for including our favorite clip!
Even better, turn on the closed captioning - Jose sometimes adds a bit of "flavor" to those, like when Max is trying to eat the fish jerky, and in the cc, it says {struggling} LOL
If the Icelandic tradition is anything like the Swedish one, Brennivín is probably supposed to be taken more like a shot. In Sweden, you traditionally have "snaps" (of which Akvavit, which the Brennivín is a type of is a type) with many holiday meals, and what you will typically do is pause the meal, everyone sings a "snapsvisa" (drinking song) and then downs their glass of snaps.
(And speaking of snaps, if you want a real...experience you should try getting ahold of some Besk (Beska Droppar or Piraten Besk are the common brands here, although there is one produced in Chicago called Jeppson's Malört.)
You're right. Brennivín is supposed to be taken as a shot, cooled ice cold as mentioned in the video. We usually drink it during the 23th of December when we eat Skada and Hákarl as a side dish, at least that's what my family does haha.
I'll be honest I've never understood the fascination some people have with "pure" (read: stupid strong) liquors. Like I get that a lot of it much like this case comes down to tradition but uh, guys, we can leave some traditions behind. I mean don't get me wrong I'm not talking alcohol content so much as how it goes down. Well...sorta, up to about 75% you can still get some taste even if it's going to be predominately alcoholic but I've never had anything over that, that wasn't basically just downing ethanol (and indeed, some cheap liquors are that way even at low percentages) and I just don't get the draw.
I mean what? You're trying to prove something? You enjoy not feeling your taste-buds for the next 48-hours? I don't know it's always been confusing to me since if the intention is to get drunk anything over 50% is gonna get you there pretty quick regardless and you don't have to sacrifice taste in the process.
@@gwennorthcutt421 I've heard that but for instance my hard liquor of choice is a good peanut butter whiskey (don't knock it till you try it, Rams Head is dirt cheap just to try, Skatterbrain for something actually enjoyable, Arrogant Bastard if I'm celebrating) or sometimes a brown sugar bourbon. Despite the names neither is particularly sweet (I'm sure there's SOME brand that is but I don't know them) but they do have notes of what they get their names from, peanut butter in particular. And while no hard liquor is going to be good for swishing around like a wine drinker I'd still lose those subtle notes if it didn't at least touch my tongue on the way down. I mean we've all done shots of super hard liquor that is basically just that at some point but I never found it particularly enjoyable. Even if I'm not downing a favorite I'm still going to pick a straight whiskey 9/10 and even those that aren't tinted with any flavor (for lords sake I remember the days when Southern Comfort was the only thing I could get) I would still prefer to get some texture and flavor. Guess I'm weird.
Edit: And yes I know clear liquors are a bit different I was just using something I'm familiar with as an example of a drink you would lose the actual experience of if you just tossed it down the throat.
@@gwennorthcutt421 No I get it from a purely technical standpoint, like it makes sense. And just used brown liquors as they're what I'm most familiar with since I rarely drink clear liquors outside of bars with friends it would have been disingenuous to insinuate I fully understood them. And so yeah I get it, I just don't "get it" if you... get me. Like, I'm not a wine drinker but when they describe how they taste flavors I can follow the same procedure and experience the same thing they do even if I'm not loving it. But when I throw back vodka (I've had a few clears but vodkas the only one I would consider myself truly familiar with) I can't ever remember inhaling after gulping and thinking "hey, there's some violet!". But still what you say makes sense, people have all sorts of different ways of experiencing things.
So you also drink Schnaps in Sweden? That's nice to know! :-)
But why is Akvavit (or Aquavit, water of life here in Germany) supposed a Brennivin, a Brandy, made from wine or the "waste" of its production (like Grappa)?
Isn't this stuff made out of wheat or rye, much like a vodka, and later infused with carroway seeds?
Or is Brennivin a general term for strong alcoholic beverages like "liquor" is in the US?
Pumpernickel is made in a similar way (although we use ovens in Germany), the low temperature and long cooking times speed up enzymatic processes which give the bread its signature taste and dark color.
Watching Max eat the fish jerky reminded me of Chevy Chase eating the overcooked Christmas turkey in "Christmas Vacation" lol. Bread and butter sounds wonderful. Thanks Max!
Max Miller, you are amazing! Excellent pronunciation for a first-timer, obviously you have a knack for languages. Since you have your icelandic butter and rúgbrauð, try boiling white fish and potatoes, mash them together with butter and eat the whole thing with rúgbrauð. .
Thank you! Definitely a tricky language. The bread and butter were finished off a couple weeks ago 😁
Man i haven't had some fish potato and butter since we emigrated from Iceland over a decade ago and now I'm feeling so homesick 😂
@@TastingHistory 🥰 And did you have any Þrumur? I have been addicted to salted butter my whole life, so I completely understand. Have you ever tried the one from Bretagne, with the salt flakes in it. My mother being half bretonne, it was the only butter on the table 😋
@@TheMcgreary It is such a staple, it´s comfort food. My all time favorite is to actually eat it with onion butter and rutabagas along the potatoes and rúgbrauð.
@@TastingHistory You must try 'plokkfiskur' / 'plukkfisk', it's essentially just cod, potatoes, onions and butter. When you serve, crack some black pepper on top. It's almost like a fish/potato porridge. In Iceland we enjoy it buttered rúgbrauð on the side. Oh no, now I'm hungry!
Growing up in New England region it is very common to see Boston brown bread that is steamed in a can. The recipe is very similar. There is the addition of cornmeal and the substitution of molasses and sour or buttermilk. There is also a version that includes raisins.
Shout out to Jose for the captions. Honestly the best captions of any RUclips channel I've seen. Great job! Thank you so much, Jose.
My pleasure 😁
Man i love Tasting History so much,one of the best channels on RUclips
Thank you 😁
@@TastingHistory i do not regret subscribing to you!
How right you are! It's such a happy channel :)
I live about 45 minutes away from anything worthwhile and this is what I listen to driving from point a to point b😁
I like how these sagas make buying fish seem like a legendary quest
if it takes seven horses to carry it all, I'd argue it qualifies as a quest
Dude you are very well educated and respectful of icelandic traditions.. also very brave.. Thank you 🙏
My father once brought some harðfisk with him on an airplane (before restrictions were as harsh as they are now), He got asked by a flight attendants to please put it away because some of the other passengers became sick because of the smell.
I do recommend trying the svið and sviðasulta, it may look gross but it tastes pretty good, especially the tung.
He's just showing the typical US angst regarding organ meat and blood, they all seem to think it'll hurt them
Oh gosh what a horrid snack to take on a plane lol! I probably would have gotta nauseous too haha 😅
50 points to Max for pronouncing those names!
As a Norwegian it was very interesting to see that some of the dishes served at Thorablot are similar to old dishes here in Norway. We call that particular cuisine "Husmannskost", roughly translated to tenant farmers food. And even though it originally was food for the poor, it now is served in fine restaurants and has had a renaissance here in Norway as well.
Hardfiskur we call "tørrfisk" = dry fish, and was (and still is) a large export from Norway in the Middle Ages.
The sheeps head - we call it "Smalahove", is still a popular autumn dish in some regions, especially to serve to tourists ;)
Brennivin, or akevit, is also an important liquor here, and is traditionally served with our (much milder) version of the hákarl, "rakfisk" around Christmas time, or mid-winter.
Smalahove is more of a south-western (you southerners probably just say "western") Norwegian dish; here in the north, most of our traditional "dinner" dishes are fish-based. Akevitt (which current wisdom - unlike that of a few decades ago - says should _not_ be freezing) is a very common complement to lutefisk, served alongside beer/ale. I prefer white wine with my lutefisk, however, since I like neither beer nor brandy.
The German term is Hausmannskost meaning traditional cuisine, the kind of food that people made at home a hundred years ago. Lots of meat and dumplings...
@@c.w.8200 Yes, that's what's usually served in restaurants advertising with Hausmannskost but to the average people of the generation of our grandparents when they were young this was more of a Sunday meal, the rest of the week it was leftovers, stews and other simpler dishes with less prep time. Like the rest of the dumplings, sliced and fried with some eggs, which is delicious in itself. :-)
I was served a boiled sheep's heard in Libya, when I was there as a journalist in 2011.
@@c.w.8200
The literal meaning of the Norwegian word is “tenant farmer food”
Max is every bit as entertaining and informative as David Rosengarten ("Taste") and Alton Brown ("Good Eats"), two of my favorite hosts/shows from the better days of the Food/cooking channel CableTV days... The best part is, no one has done history+food in the same way as Max... What a gold mine for him, I hope!
Yes. Max is probably the most entertaining and informative cooking program host currently in the business. I used to enjoy the food Network until it became the Food Competition Network.
Don't get me wrong a cook-off can make for a fun and entertaining program but by necessity there is no time to teach either the history of a dish nor the cooking techniques involved in its creation.
I much prefer an educational sort of program like Max is doing here. If this had been on the Food Network back in the day this would have been the top rated program.
@@vernmorris8898 yes! What you said; yes! You're in my brain, lol
I say, "Max, if you can make a million dollars doing this, keep doing it."
I never get tired of the “Hardtack” punchline. The look on your face is great.
Your sense of comic timing is on point.
Is the bread anything like brown bread in a can?
What is missing from your list of foods from Þorrablót is Hangikjöt with uppstúf. This is the quintessential Icelandic traditional food that is missing from all the Icelandic food lists because it is not "weird" or shocking. It is smoked lamb that is usually boiled and served either hot or cold in slices, traditionally with potatoes in béchamel sauce and green peas, or in thin slices on bread such as flatkaka or rúgbrauð or laufabrauð. I recommend that you try that for a good taste of Iceland.
Thanks, Max! You made a very bad day bright. I haven't laughed so much in a long time. The expression on your face when you opened the pack of dried fish was priceless. It's one of my favorite snacks. Having lived in Norway for most of my adult life, I've tried most of the things on your menu. I've drawn the line at sheep's head. When it comes to the Brennivin, the word is used as a catch-all term for strong alcohol. It consists of two parts, Vin, which means wine, and Brenn, which means burn. in other words: a wine that burns on the way down your throat.
Sounds like the Dutch "brandewijn" (brandy), which used to be a distilled wine, which was 40% alcohol.
Burn on the way down is accurate, as I've drunk plenty of Brännvin here in Sweden. I'm surprised Norway, Sweden and Iceland doesn't have closer ties, in modern times. They're still so similar.
Sheep heads are actually a childhood favourite of mine. Lightly roast the outside with an open flame (or a torch) cut in half, scoop the brain out and throw in a big pot and add an unhealthy amount of salt. My great grandfather used to have a saying "þú getur aldrei of saltað svið" or translated you can never over salt sheep's heads.
@@orribirgisson421 I admire you for that. It's one of the few things I don't have the guts to try. But who knows, I might find the courage one day... 🙂
Here in Denmark we call it brændevin. It means the same, but "brænde" (burn) actually refers to the process of distilling. "Hjemmebrændt" means homemade alcohol.
I made this bread for Midsommar here in Sweden last week, and it was a huge hit with everyone! Really simple to make, and absolutely delicious. Thanks for the recipe!
Fantastic!! Being an Icelandic Folklorist I would say you did pretty well on almost all fronts (history, baking and tasting). What is missing is the 20th century history as the modern Þorrablót was revived in the 1960s and the story about it is pretty fantastic :) Your naled the pronunciation, but I recommend eating some more Harðfiskur, it will grow on you I promise, if not give it to cats... They will go ballistic for it :D
My father was from Iceland, and we would go there very often when i was a child. I loooved eating the dried fish and black bread with butter. but nothing tops an Icelandic Hotdog!
Amen to that!!! I always look forward to Pylsur when I visit! Unbeatable.
So true. Been to Reykjavik once during Christmas for a week. We got ourself a hot dog like every day.
"This was put together as a Fear Factor test." Meanwhile my Latvian family often has many version of these foods in our fridge at any given time LOL
:O What are the foods like?
Sheep's head and pickle ram testicles? Shudder. I'm not making fun of it, just makes some of the more bizarre Eastern European food my mother made taste like 5 star restaurant food.
@@srvntlilly sheeps head is really only scary in the looks department. The flavour is wonderful, I need mashed potatoes with mine to complete the dish.
@@StormCrownSr Do you eat the pickled ram testicles, too? 😖
The anglos are certainly squeamish for a people that love eating intestines so much.
NOW I understand a "honey in the lion" literary reference from a Hannibal Lecter book! Thanks Max!
another great episode in the books! this bread looks interesting and yummy!
also, love how we're still keeping the hard tack jokes going. they will never get old...much like hard tack.
Just pulled mine out of the oven. Hearty, sticks to your ribs, and delicious! One slice filled me up completely. And I do mean completely!
My husband has now "discovered" your channel. Which I was made aware of one evening while slaving over a manuscript from HELL, when Husbeing said "Hey, you should see this guy... he's making Viking Mead! Oh! and there's one on Posca and Lard!" and I said "Max Miller? The guy you watched me watch make Pumpion Pie? Yeah he's cool. Watch the one about Conditum...."
I'm from Norway and I really liked how you pronounced the Icelandic words. That was impressive :-)
I’ve seen the hartfiskur pounded with a mallet and then rehydrated and baked. Actually turns back into flakey yummy fish! I wouldn’t eat it hard like that!
Kinda like bacalhao?
ruclips.net/video/QdzAt6e1l-c/видео.html
yeah I was like 'dude if it's eaten with butter they prolly Bake it a little to let the butter seep in and rehydrate it a little
That would be incredible I bet
I know some people who eats stock fish (tørrfisk) as dry snacks. It’s not uncommon in some parts of Norway.
It sounds like you’re referring to stockfish which is indeed dried, however it is not the same produce. Stockfish is generally very tough and dry and needs preparation like you mention. Hardfish can be bought crispy, brittle, almost soft, quite tough or even as bite sized snack pieces and it’s simply served like in the video, no preparation or cooking needed. Your comment made me ponder if one would be able to rehydrate hardfish in a similar manner to stockfish, but I doubt it.
Rågbröd is such an incredible common bread up here in the Nordics, I never would've thought it would make for a new experience to anyone. Great fun to watch someone react to and experience for the first time something that you've always taken for granted.
That hard tack episode is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it?
I just love when you do nordic recipes since we're all connected through our history and culture. I grew up on rye bread and it's still my favourite type of bread. I would say Finns and Danes have the best rye bread, but I haven't tried Icelandic yet and you seem to like it a lot so I'll definitely try it when I go there
It taste like cake.
I was surprised to see that we didn't get a Chinese new year dedicated video, then I remembered that we had one last year. Time really flies these days, thanks for making Tuesdays fun!
The lunar year is young!
"We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow..." This song always pops into my head anytime someone talks about anything Scandinavian. I'd definitely give this bread a try.
You sound like an Immigrant. 😏
That song is about Iceland and Iceland isn't apart of scandinavia
@@tobbi11 geographically, anyway.
@@Mare_Man it's in no way part of Scandinavia, that is Sweden Norway and Denmark
@@tobbi11 Right, but it is *culturally* Scandinavian, not geographically. It's a Nordic country geographically. You're being pedantic to a degree where you look a bit silly. The song is really just about viking raiders and conquerors in England, not particularly about Iceland despite the mention of hot springs - that's more of a poetic license thing.
Rye bread is a staple food in all of the Nordics not just Iceland. It's especially popular in Denmark and Finland and is usually eaten for lunch with basically whatever you want on top of it but at least in Denmark liver paté is the most common topping. Usually seeds are also added to make it more tasty. In Denmark it's also used for smørrebrød which is like a really complex open sandwich and is a fairly common lunch food for events like business meetings or family gatherings. It's generally popular because it's very filling, healthy and easy to make, while also not sitting very heavily in the stomach.
Rye bread is a traditional staple all over northern Europe, including the Netherlands, Germany and Poland.
It’s amazing how volcanic activity in one location can have such an impact on the rest of the world. Very dangerous.
Seriously. Just like Krakatoa.
Imagine the ecological impact if/when the super volcano at Yellowstone National Park pops it's top 🌋
@@marissa46934 well all you guys in the US/CAN/Mexico will be toast, and the rest of us will probably suffer some terrible conditions. Here’s hoping it sleeps for many more years lol
Look up the "Year without summer" sometime. Let's just say Laki was still one of the smaller ones.
@@marissa46934 as it turns out, we no longer need to worry about it. It has been determined that the magma core has moved itself under the Rocky Mountains, making an eruption very nearly impossible.
We took a family trip there 3 years ago, and just the other day, I was reminiscing about this bread. Every morning my Dad and I would have a slab or 2 of this with a thick shmear of butter, and it was fabulous. Just grabbed it from the grocery store so I couldn't remember if it had a brand name. All the food was phenomenal there! So fresh and rich. Except the fermented shark, that stuff was heinous.
Thank you so much for sharing this recipe, I am so happy!
I visited Iceland in 2012 and to this day it might be one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen.
What's gorgeous about it? That doesn't come off in the pictures I've seen. It just looks like rocks occasionally interrupted by grass.
Been living in iceland for 12 years, I love this guy sm for exploring it's culture, it's absolutely bonkers
I love this episode as a Swedish native, since I recognize a lot of the dishes as the Nordic/Scandinavian "Husmanskost" and things we eat and drink at Easter, Midsummer and Crayfish celebrations. Thank you for a lovely and informative episode!
crayfish fiesta sounds soooo goood.. wish it was a common food here :/
There are not natives in Sweden, everyone came from Africa so... what you said makes no sense whatsoever
When I tell my friends back in the US about this, I tell them that the closest thing "back home" is Boston Brown Bread! This is deliscious with Plokk Fiskur, or a potato/root vegetable and mashed fish stew sort of meal!
When I was studying to be a pastry chef (In Denmark), one of my teachers was Icelandic, and taught us to make Icelandic Rugbrød (as it is spelled in danish), and it was delicious and very sweet, after being baked for 24 hours… Danish rugbrød is more bitter, has a lot of whole kernels and has much more of the sour dough that we make it with… 😊
Haha and we learnt how to make Danish rågbröd in Sweden when I was studying to become a pastry chef here. Funny how that works!
@@thespankmyfrank did you like it then? 😊 to me swedish bread is very sweet, I love Äntligen though 😄
Danish rugbrød can be made with, or without whole kernels. The Icelantic version looks a bit like what we here in Denmark call Honningkage.
I suggest you save your money and go to Iceland: it's worth it! I went there in 2008, and want to go back. Given that they ( the Icelandic folk) eat a range of foods not eaten elsewhere You could turn the trip into a Tasting History Special!
It’s very high on my list. It looks so beautiful.
Oh Carolyn, what a great idea! Have a travel/ancient food journey all around the world
@@TastingHistory Iceland Air have good rates to Europe and you can take a 3 day break in Iceland for free in case you are thinking of going anywhere else in Europe. It is how most Swedes visit Iceland, on the way to NYC. :) Brennivin/brannvin btw is generic term all over Scandinavia that simply means booze, mostly of a native sort. It used to be low quality, a bit like moonshine, but is gaining in both quality and popularity.
"On The Road With Tasting History." I'd watch it!
So glad he explained the 'from the strong came sweet' thing. My friends and I noticed it ages ago and had no idea what the hell it was about.
Your Icelandic pronunciation is very good! I can tell you did your research and know your IPA. I appreciate the extra mile you go through in producing these fantastic quality videos! Keep it up
Max did credit the people he used to help with pronunciation in a pinned comment. He's one of a small handful of RUclipsrs I've seen do this, but it really should be a standard. One of the reasons he's an amazing content creator is that he goes to great lengths to try to get language, history, and culture as correct as he can in spite of not experiencing those things himself. I definitely send up my appreciation with yours.
Your accents with these different languages is always impressive to me. Good job!
By the 2/3 rye and 1/3 wheat it sounds really similar the Lithuanian bread which I really like. Only that has caraway seeds inside too.
And if it is as foolproof than it seems I should take a try to make it, becose I really miss that rye-caraway bread that nowhere can be bought out of Northeastern Europe.
hey, you might want to try and make Baccalà Mantecato. it's stockfish, soaked and then beaten up with milk for a very long time until it's super creamy. super popular in Venice
I was thinking along the same lines. If we could just come up with a little (real) history about it...
“Nearly foolproof”
You underestimate my power. I don’t know how or why, but bread never turns out right when I’m the one making it.
I’m never able to get a good crust
🤣 I believe in you
@@TastingHistory "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." Good old Doug Adams.
Don’t give up!! I just couldn’t cook rice properly for years. It didn’t matter what recipe/method I tried it didn’t work. It just felt like I was cursed to never be able to cook my favourite carb, but In the end I was able to figure out what was going wrong, and now I know all the tricks on how to fix it when does go wrong!
Pickled herring and eggs an onion on rúgbrauð is a danish tradition, called smørrebrød. Their rye bread is very different, it is lighter, has a bunch of seeds in and isn't nearly as sweet😊
In iceland rúgbrauð is usually eaten with butter, or maybe butter and cheese, and it's usually eaten as a side with poached/boiled fish
A friend of mine brought some of this back from Iceland and it's DELICIOUS.
I was in Iceland last week and I went to a bakery where they used the hot sand cooking method. It was lovely.
Also have Hardfiskur here but it's more like in "snack size" so if you pound it till its soft(er) and rip it into small pieces it is way more enjoyable to eat.
But yeah its pretty smelly but tastes really nice i think. Also it was probbably used like any other dried fish in soups or rehydrated before eating.
Cool that i have something here that you tried aswell :)
My dad bought some of the dried fish in a store when we visited Iceland. The tour guide also mentioned rehydration after my dad failed at eating it in its jerky form 😛
Norwegian dried cod was exported all over europe in the middle ages. Sometimes nicknamed the "White Gold".
Its part of portugese cuisine for example.
There is a dish called Bacalhau a Bras made with norwegian dried cod. Its pretty good. Its like a fish and potato hash.
Edit: there is a delicious Nordic recipe with cod, diced or mashed potatoes, horseradish, melted salted butter mixed with a boiled egg scrambled to pieces on top. Often served with peas.
The horseradish is really what makes it taste kind of exotic. And melted butter and potatoes are always good together.
It can have Dill on it too. Nordics somehow like Dill. Its not a common spice in most places.
in portugal they have their own saws in the supermarkeds for cutting the dried fish. and dill is a must with every seafood, and lemon juice
Just for reference, those "cardboard" milk containers that you were concerned about using are actually heated to high temperatures during the packaging process already- it's not quite identical to canning things in glass jars, but it's reasonably close. So, it _likely_ is safe to do this with them _everywhere_ that is safe to drink things from them in the first place.
PROTIP: I've found that you can also use sugar-beet syrup or molasses and it turns out just as well. Even honey or fig syrup might work, though they'll affect the taste.
oh shit i bet it would be amazing with honey
Thank you! I'm not sure I want to invest in golden syrup for this-or, rather, I want to make it right away and I don't want to wait to order golden syrup!-and was wondering what a good sub might be. Was thinking Karo syrup but molasses sounds like the ticket. It's so good in rye bread anyway.
@@nicks.4276 I was able to find the golden syrup at World Market, so if you have one near you it might be worth a check.
I am always impressed by your pronunciations ! Not everyone can do such a feat. Great episode !!!
Korea has a similar fish dish that’s dried out in the cold wind, and incorporated into a soup called 북어국! (Bukeoguk) I used to eat it as a snack during road trips and it’s commonly left on graves for deceased family members to consume alongside soju.
Soju=Korean Whiskey? Wine?
@@anotherkickintheball it's made from primarily rice. It has a neutral flavour like vodka with less harsh alcohol taste and a little sweeter
Can confirm, bukeo is delicious especially when slightly roasted. Mmmmmm.
I think most northern coastal regions have something similar, in Norway they hang the cod in racks on the beaches in the fall to let it dry over the winter. that was their main export commodity before they found oil and started to farm salmon.
When I was stationed in Korea I really enjoyed kimbap and dried squid. And, of course, had a soju experience.
I noticed "The Other Side of History" in the Wondrium ad. Highly recommend it. And finally a recipe I can make with items I already have! (Except the golden syrup, but I bet the British grocery store has it.)
Seconding The Other Side of History. Excellent lectures.
We have Lyle's Golden Syrup in our local MD & VA grocery stores .
I've found the golden syrup at World Market.
@Lurker Smurf - Shop Rite in Warwick, New York sells Lyle's Golden Syrup in their organic section, but the two Shop Rite stores near me do not >_
The Other Side of History is *amazing*
that type of brown bread (although maybe not cooked in volcanic hotsprings) is very common in all of Scandinavia, and so is brännvin (swedish). It's not only flavoured with caraway seeds, but all sorts of herbs, specifically old medicinal ones, as this kind of liquor (like in most places) was used as medicine in the olden days. One of my favourites is the one with wormwood.
Aw, Laki! My precious baby. I am literally doing my degree in geology because of Icelandic volcanos, and I am aiming to do my master in Iceland. Apparently others see volcanos and go "oh that's cool" and then leave it at that, I go "I want to be a geologist", and then I proceed to become one. Because chill is boring. But any video about Icelandic volcanos is going to be better than other videos. This one was not an exception. (Yay Laki!)
That's a pretty great way to choose a career - find something you want to nerd the heck out on, and find a way to get paid to do it 👍
I’ve eaten hákarl in Iceland! It’s very soft, and at first it’s just like white fish, but a second later it hits you with a wave of ammonia, which is definitely an acquired taste. Most places have Icelandic portions, and portions for foreigners, which is typically a couple cm3 on skewers, since most won’t have more than a bite lol
Icelandic butter is also just SO good. I actually had quite a lot of good food when I visited (some of the best lamb and Arctic char I’ve ever had) but was particularly blown away by some of the bread and butter I ate, as simple as that is.
As an icelandic person I was afraid of watching this video. The way people say icelandic words often kills me, thankfully you said it well enough that it didn't make me want to turn the video off. Good job. The history of the volcano is also really fun, I knew about it but- good for more people to know.
það er alltaf gamann að horfa á útlendinga slátra tungumálinu
It’s definitely one of the more difficult languages I’ve tried. Especially the word Snæfellsnes
@@gudnisnaer8171 Já, það getur verið fyndið eða erfitt. Bara eftir skapi. Sérstaklega þegar það er borið framm nær sænsku eða norsku. Hann gerir það samt vel. Í einu video sem ég horfði á frá öðrum sagði einn berserk gangur eins og "berserker gang" "like a street gang?" Mjúki ameríski framburðurinn er ekki nógu góður fyrir sögurnar.
@@TastingHistory also fun fact I'm sure you heard but brennivín means "burning wine"
@@k8g8s8
Or, to use the common modern English term, "brandy".
I tried hákarl several years back - one of my DnD friends brought a little tin back from her vacation in Iceland. We instituted a rule that anyone who rolled a 1 during our game had to eat a piece - but they had to go out to the balcony to do it so they wouldn't stink up the apartment. 😂
I had it in Iceland. A couple locals told me about it and said I should try it. When they were explaining it to me they were explaining that the shark is poisonous normally and had to be cured. "We call it 'purified' shark. It is wonderful, but it is hard to get accustomed to the taste." So I tried it-- I have almost no sense of smell so the smell wouldn't deter me. I was enjoying it at first but then there was a slow creeping feeling of "Something isn't right..." Afterwards it occurred to me that they might have been saying "putrefied" and not "purified". lol
They were stressing the word "purified" a lot as if I wasn't understanding. lol
Great video and fantastic pronunciation of the icelandic names. I also admire your history resource on the topic. Regards from Hafnarfjordur, Iceland!
I really love the episodes on "poor people food", they tell you so much about how the majority of people really lived!