The aromatic scent of boiled lutfisk and woodsmoke every Christmas eve when my grand-parents still lived on the farm.Oh and the lefse, stacks of it on the counter

Love the lefse, rolled up, warm, with butter.
Sorry, no good memories of the lutefisk.
Does bring back warm memories of the departed family members, though

Lutefisk, boiling potatoes (to be riced), potato lefse, frozen green peas steaming, raw cranberry sauce w/ oranges and apples mixed in, melted butter......those are the smells of home, Christmas, Mom, Dad; warm and welcoming, all are only memories now. I still enjoy lutefisk and whatever else I can achieve from that list. 'Course there is only one correct way to serve lutefisk; lots of ways to get it wrong - probably why it has a bad rep.

I read the description on Wikepedia, and it sounds like you have to take something edible, soak it lye until it is toxic and caustic and then try your hardest to make it almost edible again, and if you succeed in making it edible, you have failed in making it lutefisk. It was a funny read.

Something I want to sample some time. Granted. I may not care two hoots for it when I do.
It seems if one ate it growing up, you like it, "Mom's cooking".

Grandmother and GreatGrandmother lived together until Nana passed. Swedish/ Norwegian ancestry.....lutefisk boiling on the stove every Xmas eve when we would visit.

Being younger I was never adventurous enough to try it...and the look on my Fathers face was priceless when we walked through the door and smelled it.

This time of year always makes me think of boiled cod.

Threatened my daughter that I'd put a pot on just for the scent...she asks why would anyone associate fish with Xmas...

Now crumbkaka (sp?)........that's a holiday treat....

Making lefsa on a cook stove is a little tricky!
First boil the potatoes on the cookstove


then rice them


Then mix by hand


Roll out



then try not to burn in on the cookstove top!!

Love those lefsa making shots!

Lefsa and lutefisk is stuff that is hard to imagine Christmas being without.

Great pics. Do you have to be Nordic to cook up that stuff?

I recognize a lefse turner when I see one.

Thanks rod44! Grandma used to make the potatkak (lefse) on the cookstove all the time. Grampa would lift the stove lid to spit his snoose out and she'd be kickin butt
I just made a batch of lefse here in the cast fry pan.Not as good as Grandma's... I always threaten to go get the lutefisk and boil it up.We kept up that tradition for years as us kids couldn't imagine Christmas without it. My Dad wouldn't eat it and he grew up in a full blood Norske household!!

Lutefisk = boiled cardboard in my book or at least that is how I felt as a kid!!! Perhaps some tartar sauce or something else might have made it a little more palatable but my Grandfather (very Norwegian, raised in Abercrombie, N.D.) ate it the traditional way every year at Christmas and so did we (a taste or two just to say I was Scandanavian too!) Now the lefse was a whole different matter... we clamored to get at that when my Grandmother made it. Rolled up with a little butter or sugar and cinnamon, now that was good!!!!

Fortunately, my Sister and Uncle learned how to make lefse before my Grandmother passed away and we still get to enjoy it at the holidays... brings back wonderful memories! Sorry Grandpa, the lutefisk just makes for great stories now.

My Grandmother also used to make Norwegian cookies called "fuddimon" or something like that. They were deep fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Probably not very healthy, but they also tasted pretty good.

The latest one that I don't care for too much is Danish cabbage... red cabbage cooked with vinegar or something. My wife's lineage brings that one to the table every year... not quite as bad as lutefisk but I'll rank it #2!!! (I happen to love boiled cabbage with a little butter and pepper.

May the dear relatives RIP this Holiday Season! I am truly grateful for their sacrifices in life and being able to enjoy them and hear their stories. I wish they were still around if nothing else for the examples they set in the lives they lived. They would be disheartened at what is going on in our country today I suspect.

Merry Chistmas/Happy Holidays to all!!!

lefse I love...luefisk you can have my share of

You do not want to get your sterling silverware near the lutefisk, it will turn it black.

Memories of reports of the great granddad sitting over a plate full of lutefisk saying in heavy accent how wonderful it was, all the while continually shaky more and more salt upon it. Really miss grandma's, it was truly delicious. Many folks would never believe it, but it was really good. Have had it range terribly in the opposite direction too, the worst of it was some slimy atrocity I purchased and prepared. She'd also put together this concoction she'd call fruit soup with a big mix of things in a cold crock. And a home made fruitcake that was truly delicious also. Sure miss those earlier days. There is no tradition now for our foods but I am preparing a sort of deer backstrap bone-in roast about a foot long with high hopes... Merry Christmas all.

I have always equated lutefisk with fish flavored jello. However, we had some last year at the Eagles Club and the old Norwegian ladies there sure knew how to cook it. Even had a second piece. Also love Romagrout. A cream and flour pudding. Heart attack in a bowl. Also Krumkacka. A lite pastery rolled out and twisted on a stick thing and then deep fried. Wish we still had the grandmas back!

By the way, that's my niece with the rolling on Rod44 post.
Lefsa, as said before is best warm, rolled up up with cinnamon sugar and butter. You know if you had enough butter if it oozes out of the ends of the rolled lefsa and drips off your elbows.
Lutefisk - whole new ballgame. Edible only with cups of melted and only on Christmas eve. As a grade schooler in a small Wisconsin village, the local grocery stores displayed the sticks of dried Lutefisk along the sides of their stores. My mother always said they tasted better if the local stray dogs peed on them first.
Rommegrot (spelled with a double dot above the 2nd 'o'). A cream pudding that will melt your heart. And, my wife is an artisan when it comes to creating this dish. Life is good.
V

I stayed with a Norwegian family while Mom worked. Nick liked strong cheese and lutefiske. As a six year old I kept up with him helping for helping and Nick treated me like a son. I have not eaten any for years now but remember it fondly when Clara his wife spent the many hours necessary to get it ready. She made a fish cream soup of the leftovers which my wife's cullia myokka (a Finnish fish stew/soup) fills my heart and mind as well as stomach. We don't eat it much because she makes a two gallon pot and there are just the two of us at home now to eat it.

I remember rumagrot and fruitsup as well. A layered date cake called vinertarta and this poop smelling cheese called gammaloste.
My great Grampa homesteded in the Sargent county ND in the 1890's I expect the Norske relatives down there still keep much of the scandanavian traditions alive

Lutefisk! My wife and I both grew up eating and our kids love it as much as us. My Dad passed away last year he would have been 94 today. Every year on his birthday he would have friends, family over for oyster stew, so we are keeping the tradition going. just finished a gallon and a half of oysters with four gallons of milk and cream and four lbs of butter! dang it was great and a great day. We make lefsa a few times each winter. We feel it good to teach the kids what our parents taught us just to keep it going. Its been fun reading what others remember about there pasts.

darrylf - Oyster stew, WOW. That is the Lunde standard for Christmas Eve.
I should have previewed my earlier post. Forgot to add rolling (pin) and cups of (butter). Was under the influence of a large straight-up Beefeaters M.artini (bone-dry)

Lunde - when is it she makes the prunes on noodles?

Best washed down with Buckley's Mixture.

A few years ago I had a post office box in Sumas, WA and the husband of one of the women who worked there was of Norwegian descent. On the back of her car was a bumper sticker that read: LEGALIZE LUTEFISK.

I had a girlfriend of Swedish descent when I was in university. She said that her dad used to make lutefisk (or it might have been surstr�mming; about equally vile to those of us not of Scandihoovian descent.) As I recall, her mum wouldn't allow him to make it in the house; he had to get in the car and drive out to the cabin! I bet there is a barren, infertile patch somewhere around Williams Lake, B.C. to this day.

Stuart

It might seem every ethnic group has a food that the mainstream finds repulsive.
It would be a dull world indeed if we all liked the same things.

My mom has been making lutefisk every Christmas Eve since I can remember.
She bakes(steams?) her's and it is very good, nice texture and flavor. Looking forward to it!

Noodles and prunes on Good Friday.

Viannatarte

Prune filling between cake layers.

Ya gotta love it.

Medicman--fish stew in Finn is Kulla Moyakka--there are no C's in Finnish. You can still get it at the Hoito Resturant on Bay Street in Thunder Bay. They make thiers with whitefish the old timey way. In Season they will also have Lippia Kulla (Lutefisk).

Lutefisk was just a way to preserve white Cod - soaked in a weak lye solution and then dried. It is packed dry in cardboard barrels. The fish has to be re-hydrated and the water changed many many times before it is steamend to cook it. If done properly it should be almost tasteless.

I like what Garrison Keillor says about it, which pretty well sums-up my own view:

Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it's cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty, but the statistics aren�t on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world's largest chunk of phlegm.

All this Scandihoovian haute cuisine is beginning to put me off my impending Christmas dinner.

Merry Christmas/God jul och gott nytt �r, alla!

Stuart

No good memories of lutefisk but I grew up on lefse. Great stuff! Sandbakkels are also nice this time of year.

Eric

The lutefisk we enjoyed last night was very good.

Of course I am blessed with a mother who knows how to prepare it(and where to buy it).

Guessing it was a 3-4lb fillet, delicious, all gone. My wife likes it, sister won't eat it, mom does it for tradition, that and my dad and uncle Butch and I all had seconds. Lutefisk and Swedish meatballs.

I draw the line at pickled herring roll mops. Those actually taste like food.

When I escaped the Swedish enclave in which I grew up, one of the things that I did not miss was lutefisk. After living away from it amongst the Bohemies for a number of years, I came across some in a grocery in Cedar Rapids. Overcome by waves of nostalgia and displaying a complete lack of sense, I brought some home and proceded to cook it. My wife and son had all sorts of things to say about not being able to wear any of the clothes currently in the house out in public. When the preparation was completed, they refused to even try a bite. After taking a bite myself, the totality of the dish was transferred to the snow-covered back yard. When the snow melted in the spring, it was found in exactly the same state and amount as when it first took up residence there.

5sdad,

That whole story could have come straight out of the PBS feature on Garrison Keillor we just watched!

Now that they have the elevator at Hoito I go more often. My first trip was when I was six and they had the long tables and serving bowls. Just like a family meal at Grandmas except Finnish spoken not Hungarian. Please excuse the spelling. My wife is Finnish and she has given up on me. I will be in Thunder Bay tomorrow and that will be dinner aka lunch by those not familiar with a mid day meal.

They have an elevator at the Hoito?
Shows how long its been since I was there. Like you Randy--I'm not Finn. Was married for many years to a Finnjin but she has been gone now many years.
Lot of Native People on this side of Lake Nipigon spoke Finn before they learned English.

ah yes, like fiberglass insulation soaked in fish oil. good times, good times

I saw some once...and ran the other way. I dont even like 'good' fish...Im sure Lutefisk is not good....

Not without gagging!!!!

How many of you that turn up your nose at lutefisk eat salt cod?

Salt cod? Did I hear someone say salt cod?
When is it being served?
What is your recipe for it?

1. Codfish
2. Salt
3. Put them together.
4. Eat
5. Drink lotsa water.

I dont really have a recipe. I pour boiling water over it so it is covered. When that cools down a bit I pour off the water and repeat. It is usually four times before the cod is done and the salt mostly gone. The fish is firm and quite flavourful. It is also good in fish chowder.

A poem by my departed uncle.

"Lutefisk, lutefisk, how fragrant thy aroma.
Lutefisk, lutefisk, you put me in a coma."

R.O. Berg 1946-2002

Great thread. I remember seeing Lutefisk at the smorgasboards in the basement of our Lutheran church as a child. I don't remember ever eating it. I guess if I had eaten it I would remember, wouldn't I? At Christmas, my Mom would put out huge platters of Lefse, krumkake, sandbakkels and rosettes. We'd also have a big pot of rumagrot.

Does anyone else remeber having blod klub? Yet another Norwegian food based on a dare. Three ingredients: blood, flour and side pork. Mixed together and formed into balls and boiled. We would slice it thick and fry in butter. Unlike Lutefisk, it was fantastic. My old friends still talk about my Mom making it.

Great stove Rod. Tell me about it.

Washed down with a little Akavit.

You make me think of what I have read as "Lutheran Church basement coffee". Coffee with an egg, or eggs mixed with the grounds.

Moosedog,our family called it klub aswell but to the other relatives (inlaws) it was kumla,kumpa and raspbal.We used salt pork in ours.Served with either melted butter or bacon drippings and fried onions

As I read all of the different foods listed the taste and smells come back to me and the warmth and love of my family and youth.
Thank you all for bringing these memories back.

Being the grandson of 2 first generation and 1 second generation Norwegian immigrants anytime we got together there was a lot of Lefse, Kumla, Shustabaca(sp?) and at Christmas time we made Krumkaka, sandbackles, rosettes, and a few others I don't remember the names of.

I thought that stuff was finally outlawed!

Grizzly Bill
We live in an area in Wisconsin with a lot of Amish. This is one of the brands of cookstoves that they use. This is a "Kitchen Queen". It is the smaller of the two sizes. You can also get them with warming ovens and water jackets for hot water. We didn't get the water jacket as we get our hot water out of the tap. Tricky to bake with. Getting the right amount of wood and draft. We don't cook on it much but it heats the whole house for us in the winter.



Site where you can buy them

http://www.discountstoves.net/Kitchen_Queen_380_p/kitchenqueen.htm

I remember blood klub. When I was a little kids my grandma would send my uptown to the butcher shop for blood. They would send it home with me in a little cardboard box with a wire handle. Funny how little things from the past stick in your mind. I'm 68 now.

Thanks Rod. I recall my great grandma cooking on a wood stove.

I am finally getting the tears wiped away enough to type. This thread is hilarious!

I have never "experienced" lutefisk, and, by the sound of it, not likely ever will. My wife runs out of the room when I open a can of smoked oysters! I guess what turns one person on doesn't necessarily work for another....

I remember a friend and his wife discussing lutefisk. I don't think she would have allowed him in the house if he would have brought any home. He claimed he liked it.

To the tune of "O Tannenbaum"

"O Lutefisk, O Lutefisk, how fragrant is your aroma,
O Lutefisk, O Lutefisk, you put me in a coma.
You smell so strong, you look like glue
You taste yust like an overshoe;
But Lutefisk, come Saturday, I tink I'll eat you anyway.

O Lutefisk, O Lutefisk, I put you by the doorway;
I vanted you to ripen like dey do in Norway,
A dog came by and sprinkled you; I hit him with my army shoe,
O Lutefisk, now I suppose ... I'll eat you as I hold my nose.

O Lutefisk, O Lutefisk, how well I do remember
On Christmas Eve, how we'd receive our big treat of December,
It vasn't turkey or fried ham; it vasn't even pickled spam;
My mudder knew dere vas no risk in serving buttered Lutefisk.

O Lutefisk, O Lutefisk, now everyone discovers
Dot Lutefisk and lefse make Norvegians better lovers,
Now all da vorld can have a ball; you're better than dat Geritol,
O Lutefisk, Vid Brennevin, You make me feel like Errol Flynn.

Holy crow... an Ode to Lutefisk. Now I've seen everything.

I had always thought it was my uncle's original, but maybe he heard the "Ode" somewhere. I will ask next time I visit the cemetery.

A local store specializing in Scandanavian goods had Lutefisk. I asked them about it once and the worker to whom I inquired, cringed. She said "are you going to buy it? I said I might, I just wanted to see/smell to know. She didn't want to got othe basement to get it if I didn't have plans to buy some. we had a good laugh and I saved her the trouble, based on the look on her face.

If there's a list of the 10 most disgusting things that people consider food, lutefisk would surely rank way up there, along with those grubs and caterpillars that are commonly eaten raw in Africa, and let's not forget limburger cheese.

I have a rule: "If it smells like sh-t, don't eat it."

Funny thread. I've just re-read the whole thing. Not to do with lutefisk, but I remember my old Dad bringing home some blue cheese and trying to get Mom and my sister and I to eat some. It stunk so bad that we made him keep it in a jar in the fridge.

Indeed there are lots of lutefisk jokes, but I can only think of one right now.

"Well, we tried the lutefisk trick and the raccoons went away, but now we've got a family of Norwegians living under our house!"

John

HOLY SHIP!!
And people are always ragging on us Scots' about haggis ??!!
Lutefisk does NOT sound yummy at all!!
Cat

No lutefisk at our house, but we just finished up the Easter ham, and now we have a beautiful big hambone, with lots of meat clinging to it. Time for Swedish pea soup! We'll have it for supper on Thursday night (pea soup on Thursday is an old tradition in Sweden). Along with it, we'll have some homemade rye bread from the Lutheran ladies bake sale. Then for dessert, it will be some nice, strong Gevalia coffee, and pepparkokar. Some of the old folks used to have a "potor", sucking coffee through a special hard, rectangular sugar lump.

Did any of you old Svensks or Norsks have duppa gruta on Christmas eve? One of my aunts, after cooking all morning would take the juices from the korv, tongue, roast beef, roast pork, pigs feet, and any other meat she had cooked for evening meal, and we would dip the homemade rye bread in the broth that was created for lunch. Heavenly!