North America · Volume 28, The Marine-Mammal Coast and the Caribou Interior
Akutuq
Alaska, United States
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 3 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Akutuq
Sarah Skin's method, North Slope Borough, about 2 to 3 hours of hand-stirring after melting the fat; berry-forward version, Serving the North Slope (1990), about 2 hours to chill.
Ingredients
Sarah Skin's caribou-fat method
- 3 to 4 lb caribou fat
- 1 pot full boiled, ground caribou meat (a full pot)
- up to 1 cup seal oil (optional)
Berry-forward version (Serving the North Slope, 1990)
- 1 quart caribou fat, ground fine
- 2 to 4 cups berries: salmonberries, blueberries, lowbush cranberries
Method
Sarah Skin's caribou-fat method
- Boil and melt the caribou fat in under 2 hours, then pour into a large bowl.
- Add the boiled, ground caribou meat a cup at a time while hand-stirring continuously in a circular motion for 2 to 3 hours total.
- Add up to 1 cup seal oil optionally between additions, listening for a "bubble effect" that signals correct aeration.
Berry-forward version
- Mix the caribou fat, ground fine, at room temperature with the berries.
- Chill roughly 2 hours.
Notes
Yup'ik akutaq more often adds sourdock greens or flaked fish liver than sticking to berries alone, and crowberries are the classic Western Alaska base berry.
What a modern chef changes
Suet and frozen berries, whipped cold in a stand mixer
Method
- Caribou fat and seal oil are both unsourceable in Britain: use rendered beef suet or venison fat in place of caribou fat, both genuinely available from a good UK butcher, and skip seal oil rather than fake it.
- Whip the fat in a chilled stand-mixer bowl, not by hand, holding the traditional method's own logic in mind: the original whips air into the fat using the cook's own body heat and frozen berries as the chilling agent.
- Chill the bowl and berries hard, and add the berries frozen, in small additions, exactly as the traditional method does, rather than folding softened fruit through afterwards.
- Crowberries can be foraged on Scottish moorland in season; where they cannot be found, use frozen wild blueberries and a spoon of Scandinavian cloudberry jam stirred through at the end for the tart, floral note cloudberries would otherwise give.