Kveðjur til uppáhalds trúðanna minna! Troða fótbolta upp í rassinn á mér.
I’ll wait for a moment and let you run that through Google Translate, then nod and say, “Ah, yes. I have read this newsletter and should have seen something like that coming.”
Obviously, that was my version of an Icelandic greeting, since we’re currently continuing on our journey with hákarl, Iceland’s famous fermented shark dish. Earlier this week, Davida and I just did a straight taste test of it to see if it was as gnarly as everyone says it is.
The answer was both yes and no; the ferocious smell of hákarl is one of the greatest forces of nature I have ever witnessed. But the taste is somewhat tamer than its raucous odor. Davida still maintains it’s fairly fishy while I mostly just fixate on the Limburger-like sweaty sock aftertaste. It’s shark: the other, other, other white meat.
We not-so-surprisingly had some leftover. Because it’s got a moldy, semi-blue cheesy vibe to it, my immediate knee-jerk reaction was to make a dressing out of it, to dip Buffalo wings in. These are two of the strongest-smelling foods in the world, might as well marry them together! Who doesn’t love a stinky wedding?
Before I go on, I’d like to note that today’s newsletter would normally just be for paid subscribers, but because hákarl is such a unique ingredient, I thought it would be selfish of me not to share my continued journey with the whole world. Not everyone gets the privilege to try it, and since I’ve gotten so much joy out of this unique experience, I didn’t want to keep this part from any of you. (Don’t forget to thank Elizabeth for thinking of us during her travels by bringing it back to Chicago.)
So please consider signing up for a paid subscription to Food is Stupid, because there really aren’t many greater joys in my life than sharing these things with my favorite clowns (you), and this is how the magic happens.
Blue cheese dressing is very easy to make from scratch.
In fact, I wrote a pretty basic recipe for it for my day job, at The Takeout, if you’d like to make your own someday. Why Buffalo wings are so good with blue cheese dressing really makes no sense to me, because when you think about it, who decided those two flavors are supposed to go together? It’s kind of fucked up, if you ask me, but thank God someone did it once, because I can’t get enough of that combination.
I am not sure how, but the remaining slab of hákarl felt like it’d gotten even smellier than when I first opened it.
If you’ll notice the photo, I again made the fatal mistake of holding it with my bare fingers, which subsequently smelled like bootyhole doused in cat pee.
After trimming off the leathery brown rind, I finely minced the hákarl using my sick knife skills.
Davida was in mid-sentence, trying to tell me something, when she entered the kitchen. She stopped and said, “Ooh.” I’m guessing the scent wiped anything from her immediate consciousness.
After examining the hákarl on the cutting board and taking a big whiff, she turned and said, “That reminds me, I have to empty the litterbox tonight.”
I transferred the hákarl to a small bowl and squirted some mayonnaise into it.
Notice in the photo I decided to use a plastic spoon, because I was trying my best to minimize any contact of decent kitchenware with the fermented shark.
Then I poured a touch of buttermilk into the mixture.
Mayo, buttermilk, and fermented shark that smells like urine. That’s the real culinary Holy Trinity. I added a dash of black pepper, granulated garlic, and onion powder to the dressing base, transferred it into a deli container I was willing to sacrifice, then let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.
Normally I make my own Buffalo wings, which is easy (again, see The Takeout), but for the sake of convenience, I purchased a bag of frozen ones.
What’s the opposite of a shoutout? Because I would like to do that to this bag of Tyson Any’tizers, which said fuck you to my wallet. This bag, which is 1.37 pounds, was 15 stupid dollars at our grocery store. There goes our cats’ college fund.
The next day, I transferred the hákarl dressing to a little dipping cup, and microwaved exactly one Buffalo wing.
Then I covered myself in war paint, went into the alley, and lit the deli container the dressing was in on fire. It was the only way.
I sniffed the dressing and noticed that the pungency had diminished somewhat. Instead of smelling like an explosion at the chemical factory, it mostly just smelled like spoiled fish. I guess I’m not selling this very well. What I’m saying is that it smelled bad, but not real bad.
I plunged the singular overpriced Any’tizer (hey Tyson, fuck that apostrophe too) into the hákarl dressing, and jammed that flabby flapper right into my face.
I’d already mentally prepared my will (everything is going to Mr. Bee, sorry Davida), but after a few bites, I realized this combination wasn’t terrible. Maybe it’s because Buffalo sauce is a pretty strong flavor, but the hákarl wasn’t coming through as brutally as I thought it might. It still tasted like Limburger to me, which raised a mild state of alarm in my mouth, but thankfully I’m basically Rasputin now and cannot be killed by food.
I handed over the partially eaten chicken wing to Davida, because this is how you eat food in a committed relationship, who also tried some. She said, “I can still taste the fishiness.” Then I asked her later if she’d try it again.
“It was okay. I wouldn’t seek it out. I think dipping meat into other meat is too much.” I didn’t originally consider it that way, but I can’t argue with that statement.
My theory is that the buttermilk tamed the hákarl. Buttermilk is acidic, and I’m guessing the fermented shark is somewhat alkaline (the ammonia is a dead giveaway), so I’m thinking the liquid neutralized some of the supernaturally powerful smell. Plus the seasoning with a little bit of garlic, onion, and black pepper probably distracted my poor taste buds somewhat.
We’ll raise a little shot glass of Brennivín to hákarl, and now that we’ve married Buffalo wings to fermented shark and tried it, I say we’re easy candidates for dual citizenship. I’m obviously an expert on Icelandic food, so we should be a shoo-in.
Okay, everyone, that concludes our hákarl studies. What’s messed up is we still have an entire unopened package of it sitting in the fridge. If one of you upsets me, I’m going to sneak into your home, hide it behind a bookshelf, and allow you to believe that something died in the wall.
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And I already pitched you earlier, so I won’t bug you too much about it now, but don’t forget to sign up for a paid subscription. This post is the kind of thing subscribers usually get, but you guys got a freebie today. You’ll get three years worth of archives, unlocked, so mash this button and think about it, would you?
Finally, a shoutout to reader @neurozach, who made his own version of the Minty Mindy by using Reese’s peanut butter cups instead, and turned it into an Elvis-style burger, which is fucking genius.
As always, I love you all, and I’ll hop into your inboxes next week. Have an awesome weekend and go catch some fall colors.
I'm thinking of a horrifically-chemical-on-paper food bonanza, featuring a seafood posole to pair your ammonia shark with some lovely lye corn... posharkle? I don't know much about things that would scare the shit out of most normies if they knew what really went into making it, at least on the chemical-bath end of things, but I know of this one and I also know it's delicious and would try your take on it in a heartbeat.
One thought for the remaining fermented pee shark: fondue.