The Nordics and the Baltic · Volume 23, The North Atlantic under the Danish Crown
Hangikjöt
Iceland
Illustration
- Time
- 40 minutes
- Researched
- 5 sources cited
Birch and dried sheep dung both have real, currently practised claimants as hangikjöt's traditional smoking fuel, and Icelandic sources on this point simply disagree with each other, one major producer smoking specifically with birch, other households and producers just as insistently smoking with dung. Both are presented as genuinely, currently contested. Dung's own claim is directly explained by history rather than preference: Iceland's Norse settlers exhausted the island's birch and willow within a few generations, and turned to their sheep's own dried dung as a renewable fuel out of necessity.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. 40 minutes a kilo, then cooled in the broth, ideally overnight.
Ingredients
The hangikjöt
- about 1.5 kg rolled hangikjöt
- to cover cold water
The uppstúfur
- 50 g butter
- 50 g wheat flour
- 800 ml milk
- to taste sugar, salt, pepper and nutmeg
- 600 g potatoes, boiled and peeled
The rauðkál
- ½ red cabbage, thinly sliced
- 200 ml red wine vinegar
- 200 ml red wine
- 200 ml sugar
- 1 bay leaf
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp butter
To serve
- to serve green beans and laufabrauð
Method
The hangikjöt
- Put the meat in a pot and cover it with cold water.
- Bring it to the boil and simmer 40 minutes a kilo.
- Let it cool in its broth, ideally overnight, making it the day before. Slice to serve.
The uppstúfur
- Melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Add the milk a little at a time, whisking all the while.
- Simmer 20 minutes on a low heat, stirring often. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg and sugar, and add the potatoes.
The rauðkál
- Put the cabbage with everything else in a pan and simmer 1 hour on a low heat.
Notes
The recipe is Íslenskt lambakjöt's, the Icelandic lamb producers'. The Home Economics Advisory Centre brings the meat up very slowly from cold, up to an hour, then boils it 20 to 30 minutes; Albert Eiríksson turns the heat off as soon as it boils and lets it cool slowly in the covered pot. All three start cold and cool it in the broth.
What a modern chef changes
A genuine home cold smoke, honestly limited to the fuel a UK kitchen can actually use
Rung 3.
Method
- Cold-smoke a brined leg of lamb over UK-available birch chips on a Big Green Egg fitted with a cold smoke generator, held at or below 30°C, for 3 to 4 hours, the closest honest UK equivalent to the birch-smoked half of this genuine regional split.
- State plainly, rather than pretending otherwise, that the dung-smoked style has no responsible UK home equivalent, and treat the birch version given here as one legitimate half of a real Icelandic argument, not the whole of it.
- Poach gently rather than at a rolling boil, holding the water at a bare simmer throughout, for a leg that stays properly moist rather than tightening under too vigorous a boil.