Dont know what the difference is ,but my father in law was a 100% polack from Chicago. He had to have pickeled herring on January 1st every year. Is that the same kind of thing?
Tex,
Not similar at all.
Scandinavians also get into the pickled herring but lutefisk is cod fish fillets cured in lye [some claim Drano].
When I was a kid in Northern MN, the grocery stores had dried lutefisk fillets in a basket like French bread loaves. Lutefisk today
usually comes in frozen chunks and the little bit I've found in AK has skin and bones included at a very high price.
Grandma would break off chunks into boiling water for a very brief time [maybe three minutes]. If your lutefisk came out like
fish jello, it's overcooked. Boiling the the lutefisk can result in an odor much like boiling crab. A few drops of vinegar in the pot will
stifle that odor. The result should be chunks of white fish flesh that flakes easily. Some folks like butter on theirs [me] while others
prefer a white cream sauce.
The other traditional holiday food was lefse which is best described as a potato tortilla made from mashed potatoes.
