
Fermented Shark, Anyone? - Thevet
https://www.1843magazine.com/dispatches/the-daily/fermented-shark-anyone
======
nkristoffersen
I spent December 23rd with Icelanders. I tried the shark cubes but main event
was Skata. Suuuuper potent rotten skate. Easily the worst thing I've ever put
in my mouth. It smells so bad you can't prepare it inside. They boil it
outside and bring it in to eat. I thought I would need to throw away my jacket
the next day as it smelled so bad I would gag.

[http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/fermented-skate-a-
delicac...](http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/fermented-skate-a-delicacy-no-
other-it-has-been-described-eating-rotten-fish)

~~~
haffi112
A common side-dish with the skate is hnoðmör (they are often mixed together).
It is composed of sheep fat (mör) which has fermented/rotted until it is even
a bit hairy (with green hairs). Then it is kneaded back together and sold. You
can see an example of it here:

[https://youtu.be/gZGxdSI09Lo?t=20m52s](https://youtu.be/gZGxdSI09Lo?t=20m52s)

In principle it is not so different from blue cheese, except the source of the
fat is different... and typically people prefer cheese.

------
IceDane
I'm Icelandic, and my last memory of eating shark was when I was a kid and was
visiting my friend. I puked and never tasted it again.

I don't mind keeping traditions around. These foods, however, only existed
because we didn't have any better way to preserve them. We do now, and I
neither see any reason nor feel any urge to eat rotten food. This sentiment is
shared by most icelandic people I know. Very few people(that I know) consider
these things to be a delicacy. It's mostly the older generations.

~~~
eru
And the tourists! I had some when I was visiting. I didn't like it, but I'm
glad I tried.

------
bitwize
Damien Hirst calls it _The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of
Someone Living_.

Icelanders call it supper.

------
lubujackson
I've actually had hákarl and whale in Iceland. They are both horrible.

Mind you, I've eaten all types of foods from 3 star Michelin restaurants to
kangaroo meat on a stick, but those two really stuck out to me as terrible.

First, I had no intention of eating the fermented shark. My wife wanted to try
it and we found a person at a deli attached to this big weird flea market that
was SO HAPPY to give tourists a free sample. It was as terrible as described
and smells STRONGLY of urine. You can pretend like this writer that it is a
"very strong cheese" or whatever, but it really just gross. To give context,
the aftertaste was so bad that we went back to our rental car and I chewed and
swallowed the paper wrapper from a piece of gum to try and get rid of it. The
taste was just straight bad.

The whale, to me, was much worse. The only way I can describe it is to say it
tastes like crying. As soon as I took a bite I felt like I had made a terrible
mistake. My wife spit hers out (she ate the hákarl no problem).

We had the whale at a fancy restaurant. This writer compared it to tuna which
I strongly disagree with. It sort of had the texture of tuna, but it didn't
taste like fish at all. They paired it with raw onions and some vinaigrette
because it was a strong flavor. I guess it felt mostly like I was eating
human? or alien? It was just instantly weird, and I wasn't really too
conflicted about eating whale before tasting it but was immediately regretful
after trying it.

That being said, this article makes the food culture of Iceland sound insane.
There is a ton of delicious shit there, especially the lamb (not hearts, just
frigging lamb). Wayyy better than any lamb I've ever had. It was served like a
nice steak and had great flavor. And everywhere we went they had the best damn
lobster soup. Get the lobster soup, it's awesome.

And you would think they would have no vegetables, but we were there in March
and they had great fresh salads everywhere. Why? Because they have a ton of
greenhouses warmed from the free geothermal energy.

I highly recommend checking out Iceland, just a 5 hour flight from Seattle or
the East Coast.

~~~
kenhwang
Funny, I thought the whale just tasted like citrus-y beef. Maybe there's a
huge variation in how its prepared (and maybe which whale species). I had
whale as sashimi, roasted, and steak and they all tasted very similar to the
cow equivalent. The Australian in the group said it tasted similar to
kangaroo.

Hákarl smells much worse than it tastes. I thought it tasted similar to a
strange fishy tofu with the texture similar to cheese plus eraser. Definitely
took a while to get the taste out of the mouth, but it wasn't immediately gag
inducing.

Definitely echo the sentiment of the lamb being delicious. Every time I had
lamb it slid off the bone and had a nice balanced gamey-brine. Winter veggies
seemed to be limited to tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, potatoes, carrots,
and arugula. The restaurants all said they get fresh shipments every morning
from the greenhouses.

~~~
orn
Yes, they often put lemon on it before or while cooking, a good whale is
similar to beef.

~~~
viraptor
My description was actually: the most juicy beef I ever tasted. Definitely
better than most good steaks IMO.

~~~
Larrikin
I found the opposite to be true. It tasted like beef, not bad but far and away
the worst beef I've ever had. We tried it as a group in Japan and it only was
something approaching delicious when it was extremely thin cut and raw. If it
were significantly less expensive than actual beef, I could see it being a
viable substitute, but I just never see there being any reason for me to pay
for it myself again.

~~~
viraptor
There's more than one kind of whale meat. Just like Wagyu will have a
different taste, I expect Iceland and Japan to have different whales. My
experience was from Iceland. I'd really like to try the Japanese whale meat
but at the same time don't like the idea of eating unsustainable stuff.

------
madengr
Kiviak sounds worse; birds stuffed in a seal carcass to ferment:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiviak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiviak)

------
jsonne
During my brief time working for an Icelandic company they flew me over and we
had a party the final day together. I had asked about the shark and they
obliged but they told me it's essentially for tourists at this point.
Regardless it was pretty awful and I'm quite an adventurous eater.

------
donjoe
In case someone got the chance to try both: Is a fermented shark's taste
somehow comparable to the Swedish 'Surströmming' (fermented herring)?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haw_YDC_zo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haw_YDC_zo)

------
faitswulff
Anyone who likes hákarl should try hongeo (홍어) in Korea. Such horrendous
foods!

~~~
donpark
Well, it's an acquired taste and pretty expensive. Goes well with alcohol and
will clear your sinuses. Definitely memorable.

------
digi_owl
The SATW take on this dish:

[https://satwcomic.com/icelandic-cookbook](https://satwcomic.com/icelandic-
cookbook)

------
dirtbox
For me worse than shark was ordering lamb and being served an entire sheep's
head.

~~~
digi_owl
Ah yes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svi%C3%B0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svi%C3%B0)

~~~
pwaai
oh FUCK...I mean I literally thought nobody could top Japan when it came to
eating live meat...

NSFL - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPp-
ZDdNdrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPp-ZDdNdrQ)

frog is for "mens health" apparently...

~~~
skrebbel
You can slaughter a lamb painlessly and still serve its head. It's nothing
more than making more visible what's been going on behind the scenes every
time you eat meat. Yes, you're eating a dead animal. It was raised and
murdered just so you could eat it.

But to me that video with the frog being skinned alive is just needless sadism
and nothing else.

~~~
pwaai
I'm sure the lamb also died painfully

unless they stabbed it in the throat and left it to bleed /s

------
danieltillett
These national "delicacies" tell us how terrible it must have been to be an
Icelander in the past.

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forgotmypw
>Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.

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ninguem2
Is this a new programming language? From the title alone, it's hard to tell
here on HN sometimes.

