{"id":210,"date":"2012-01-29T20:22:44","date_gmt":"2012-01-29T20:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/?p=210"},"modified":"2012-05-07T00:42:03","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T00:42:03","slug":"cooking-and-seasoning-info","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2012\/01\/29\/cooking-and-seasoning-info\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking and Seasoning Info"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m from America, so I don&#8217;t know everything about how they cook in the rest of Europe (or anything about the rest of the world). My observations will be based off that.<\/p>\n<p>First, here is a list of seasoning terms (if you want any more, just let me know). However, half the time you&#8217;ll only find seasoning bottles in English or Scandinavian. Often the Scandinavian looks similar enough to to the Icelandic that you can guess, though:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/seasoningsicelandic.png\" aria-label=\"Seasoningsicelandic\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: 400px\"  alt=\"\" \/ src=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/seasoningsicelandic.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/f33a3b18.jpg\" aria-label=\"F33a3b18\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: 400px\"  alt=\"\" \/ src=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/f33a3b18.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In Iceland in restaurants, I&#8217;ve only ever seen white pepper or a mix of white and black pepper (never black pepper alone). It looks brownish, like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/103_3690.jpg\" aria-label=\"103 3690\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: 400px\"  alt=\"\" \/ src=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/103_3690.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Baking ingredients are also often in Scandinavian. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever seen yeast packages in Icelandic (I&#8217;ve never seen caked\/block yeast here, only dry\/powdered yeast). This yeast package has Danish and Greenlandic on it &#8211; this is the only packaging I&#8217;ve ever seen with Greenlandic, too.<br \/>\nYeast &#8211; ger<br \/>\nCaked yeast &#8211; pressuger &#8220;pressed yeast&#8221;<br \/>\nDry yeast &#8211; \u00feurrger &#8220;dry yeast&#8221;, perluger &#8220;pearl yeast&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/P1160587.jpg\" aria-label=\"P1160587\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: 400px\"  alt=\"\" \/ src=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/P1160587.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Meats are quite, quite different from in America. Even if it says the same thing (&#8220;pepperoni&#8221; is the biggest example) it can taste completely different, or cook differently. Also there aren&#8217;t usually pictures of what type of meat it is on the packaging.<\/p>\n<p>Bacon &#8211; beikon (far less fatty than in America &#8211; with Icelandic bacon you have to actually add butter to the pan when cooking or they&#8217;ll stick to it and burn)<br \/>\nDouble-smoked lamb &#8211; Hangikj\u00f6t (this doesn&#8217;t actually specifically mean lamb, but 90% of the time it does. This is a dish Icelanders are very proud of, and frankly even if you don&#8217;t like lamb you should try it because it tastes quite different from regular lamb)<br \/>\nKj\u00faklingur &#8211; chicken<br \/>\nHumar &#8211; lobster (you can buy lobster soup stock for quite cheaply in some places)<br \/>\nHvalur &#8211; whale (usually minke whale &#8211; whale can also be found quite cheaply sometimes, especially if it&#8217;s minced\/ground whale)<br \/>\nHakk &#8211; minced meat (nautahakk &#8211; bull mincemeat, sv\u00ednahakk &#8211; pork mincemeat, blanda\u00f0 hakk &#8211; mix of pork and beef mincemeat)<br \/>\nHross &#8211; horse meat<br \/>\nKj\u00f6t &#8211; meat<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/IMG_0630.jpg\" aria-label=\"IMG 0630\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: 400px\"  alt=\"\" \/ src=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/IMG_0630.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a side-note, and this is only what I&#8217;ve noticed and heard so I can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s perfectly true, most Icelanders just put salt and pepper on their fish and fry it on a pan with butter. Apparently this is because for a very long time those were the only two seasonings you could even get in Iceland (later on paprika was introduced, and now you see a ton of recipes using paprika because when it first came to Iceland everyone was crazy about using this new thing). Some people might also make &#8220;whitesauce&#8221; which is a simple sauce out of milk and flour, but since I&#8217;ve only heard of that being referred to as something like &#8220;the English style of cooking fish&#8221; I can&#8217;t say if most Icelanders do that or not.<\/p>\n<p>If you live near the harbour in Reykjav\u00edk, there at least you can fish without a fishing license, so you can catch your own fish. Below is an example of that!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/P1160589.jpg\" aria-label=\"P1160589\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: 400px\"  alt=\"\" \/ src=\"http:\/\/i958.photobucket.com\/albums\/ae69\/JuicyPuffin\/Living%20in%20Iceland\/P1160589.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>(This fish was caught and cooked by my Polish flatmate and it was super delicious, but I have no idea how he did it because he couldn&#8217;t speak English OR Icelandic &#8211; somehow he filled the whole kitchen with smoke as he did so though, so if anyone reading this knows how this is done let me know!)<\/p>\n<p>A funny exercise that I used to do all the time with Icelandic words is to <a href=\"http:\/\/digicoll.library.wisc.edu\/IcelOnline\/Search.TEId.html\">look up what each part of the word means in the dictionary<\/a>. Sometimes they make a lot of sense and sometimes they&#8217;re ridiculous&#8230; and sometimes you find really great similar words (like this: l\u00fa\u00f0a &#8211; halibut, l\u00fa\u00f0i &#8211; jerk). As most Icelandic words are actually compound words, this can build your vocabulary nicely.<\/p>\n<p>Fish types that the Icelandic fishing companies have a yearly quota for:<br \/>\n\u00deorskur &#8211; cod (common in stores &#8211; the fish Iceland is most known for, look up &#8220;the Cod Wars&#8221; with Britain if you&#8217;d like)<br \/>\n\u00ddsa &#8211; haddock (common in stores &#8211; said to be the type of fish Icelanders eat the most)<br \/>\nSteinb\u00edtur &#8211; catfish (common in stores &#8211; if you&#8217;ve never had this, it&#8217;s a lot more chewy compared to cod and haddock)<br \/>\nUfsi &#8211; Saithe, Coalfish<br \/>\nKarfi &#8211; red sea-perch, redfish<br \/>\nLanga &#8211; Ling<br \/>\nKeila &#8211; Torsk, Cusk, Moonfish, Brosmius (NOT the &#8220;Atlantic cod&#8221; as Googling &#8220;torsk&#8221; would lead you to believe)<br \/>\nSk\u00f6tuselur &#8211; Anglerfish, Sea-devil<br \/>\nFlatfiskur &#8211; flatfish<br \/>\nGr\u00e1l\u00fa\u00f0a &#8211; Greenland Halibut (a flatfish)<br \/>\nSkarkoli- European plaice (a flatfish)<br \/>\n\u00deykkval\u00fara &#8211; Lemon Sole (a flatfish)<br \/>\nLangl\u00fara &#8211; Witch (a fish), Righteye Flounder, Torbay sole (a flatfish)<br \/>\nSandkoli &#8211; Common Dab (a flatfish)<br \/>\nSkr\u00e1pfl\u00fara &#8211; American plaice (a flatfish)<br \/>\nR\u00e6kja &#8211; shrimp (singular &#8211; r\u00e6kjur plural. Common in stores.)<br \/>\n\u00dathafsr\u00e6kja &#8211; shrimp from &#8220;\u00fathafssv\u00e6\u00f0i &#8211; the pelagic zone&#8221;, the area in a sea or lake that&#8217;s not near either the shore or the bottom)<\/p>\n<p>There are lots and lots of recipe sites, and recipe blogs, in Icelandic. Do a simple Google search of &#8220;uppskr\u00edft &#8211; recipe&#8221; and you&#8217;ll find some easily. I can do a post later on how to read recipes because for some reason there&#8217;s usually words that aren&#8217;t in the dictionary in them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"192\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2012\/01\/seasoningsicelandic-350x192.png\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2012\/01\/seasoningsicelandic-350x192.png 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2012\/01\/seasoningsicelandic-768x421.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2012\/01\/seasoningsicelandic.png 799w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>I&#8217;m from America, so I don&#8217;t know everything about how they cook in the rest of Europe (or anything about the rest of the world). My observations will be based off that. First, here is a list of seasoning terms (if you want any more, just let me know). However, half the time you&#8217;ll only&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2012\/01\/29\/cooking-and-seasoning-info\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":5025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[90791],"tags":[70,91386,91391],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-icelandic-culture","tag-food","tag-icelandic-lessons","tag-living-in-iceland-info"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}