There are so many mistakes made with surströmming, I hardly know where to start.
Although it comes in a can, it should be stored cold. If you open it and it looks something like mushed up tuna, as I have seen in some Youtube challenge videos, something has gone terribly wrong. Don't eat it!
Unless you have a can of filets, you should gut and clean out your strömming. Keep the roe if you get a lady fish, the rest of the innards you don't want. I have never seen a properly gutted strömming on Youtube. And of course you get the bones out. Unlike pickled herring, where the acidity softens the bones, the spine of a surströmming is not pleasant to eat.
Eating it indoors is fine. You don't need a bucket of water to open it in. A napkin to protect against spray due to the pressure is fine. Pros just tilt the can slightly and open it without even a napkin. The smell is admittedly potent but it's not a chemical weapon. All the crazy stories about how the smell is impossible to get rid of are told by people who don't eat it themselves, in my experience.
The taste is obviously quite strong. A little bit goes a long way together with plenty of bread and potatoes. It is also very salty, so you will probably want to drink something.
And most importantly, expectations matter. Presentation matter. The reactions of people around you matter. If you have brought a can of the most disgusting food in the world, a bucket to barf in and your mates are giggling and ready to record your reaction, you will most likely not enjoy surströmming.
However, if you come to a set table, where the strömming is presented as actual food, you can feel how the other guests are enjoying themselves and you are also there to do the same, you are much more likely to actually do so.
I have been present several times when people have had surströmming for the first time. Some people liked it, some people didn't. Most make a comment about the smell. But they have all tasted it without hesitation. Not a single one gagged the slightest. None of them were in it for the thrill or the challenge. They were just guest there to enjoy a dinner with friends.
I ate it here in Denmark with a friend from Luleå, in far northern Sweden.
1) He bought fillets, because that was easier to find in Malmö, but said the real northerners wouldn't approve. Hence he hadn't tried the fillets before, but said the taste was the same, and it saved the annoying gutting. So buy the fillets.
2) We went outdoors; it makes for a nicer party without worrying about someone spilling the brine. Open the can, then rinse the fillets in water. I'd eat it in a house, I'm not sure I'd eat it in an apartment outside Sweden.
3) Have prepared all the rest: flatbread (tunnbröd), crushed small new potatoes (almond potatoes if you're in Sweden), finely diced red onion, chopped fresh dill, chopped fresh chives. Crème fraîch is optional, but a good idea for first-timers to mask the taste a little.
5) Serve bread + potatoes + a little fish (3cm cut up and spread around) + optional cream + dill + chives.
I've done this three times now, with the Swede and later alone. I/we haven't forced anyone to try it, and almost everyone has eaten at least one whole open sandwich. Several came back next year, which — as you say — helps normalize it.
I think it tastes like an extremely strong hard cheese. Once a year is enough, however.
I don't think any of my neighbors ever tried, at least not since I moved to an apartment. That move did coincide with me moving to Stockholm though, and it seems this atrocious tradition has less foothold here then back home in Dalarna(and I would guess, northern sweden too). I have had reason to complain about neighbors eating it while living in a villa, but it seemed unfair to complain so I used incense instead :)
I love his voice and his accent. I've never tried it myself but I would be willing to if I could buy some. Eating it straight out of the can seems like eating horse radish straight from the jar. Of course it is going to taste awful.
> And most importantly, expectations matter. Presentation matter. The reactions of people around you matter. If you have brought a can of the most disgusting food in the world, a bucket to barf in and your mates are giggling and ready to record your reaction, you will most likely not enjoy surströmming.
Overexaggertion is an Internet currency. Everyone probably has a personal experience with this. For example, someone on reddit exaggerating the severity of weather patterns in the town you grew up in (you know it ain't that bad), tastiness of Nutella, painfulness of stepping on Lego bricks etc. I personally found the Youtube videos of people overreacting (playing up to camera) to benign food I grew eating laughable and eye-roll worthy.
Is this the same as lűtfisk? I was once administered this at my then girlfriend's parents' place at Christmas. They'd bought me some ham as a backup for when they'd stopped laughing at my expression!
I love Sweden and the Swedes, though, and watching adults do the raketen around a pole at mid-summer is wonderful.
Exactly. I have eaten it several times and doing it right, that's nothing like you see on these infamous videos (most of them are grossly exaggerated anyway to get more views). Eating rare steak or raw sushi is probabbly more extreme if you take food poisoning into account.
I've tried it (at the Herräng dance camp as it happens, an experience in itself).
I'd describe the texture as being a little sponge-like compared to, say, tinned tuna. The flavour is strong and slightly acid. The smell was pungent but not particularly awful.
On the whole I think people exaggerate; it's no more revolting than a strong cheese might be, and the "rotting herring" description you sometimes hear is about as indicative as "rotted milk" would be for cheeses.
On the other hand we had it outside and they do say it's much worse indoors. It was noticeable that the moment the tin was opened it attracted flies though!
Our host opened the noticeably swelling tin without a bucket of water, but he was an old hand at it.
I love fermented things on the whole, seriously (including e.g. pickled herring) but despite being outside and having the can opened underwater at a progressive dinner party, the smell was god-awful and the little bits that got on our clothes and skin were following us all through the other places we went. Just couldn't seem to get it off. As a lover of strong cheeses as well I have simply never had anything remotely comparable. We ate with cream and crackers and dill and washed down with aquavit which was necessary to attempt to get the taste out of the mouth.
I wholeheartedly agree with this wikipedia quote:
>German food critic and author Wolfgang Fassbender wrote that "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before".
For the record I did have a friend who thought it tasted pleasanter than it smelled, so clearly as with everything people have experience.
But the joke we were told was "In Sweden this is how you let your neighbors know you are having a party before telephones" -- because the smell will travel through the whole neighborhood.
The hosts of this party had also left the can in the basement for a year+ as intended. Perhaps that heightens the effect.
> In 1981, a German landlord evicted a tenant without notice after the tenant spread surströmming brine in the apartment building's stairwell. When the landlord was taken to court, the court ruled that the termination was justified when the landlord's party demonstrated their case by opening a can inside the courtroom. The court concluded that it "had convinced itself that the disgusting smell of the fish brine far exceeded the degree that fellow-tenants in the building could be expected to tolerate".
A friends of my parents visited us when we lived in West Africa in the 80s. They brought with them surströmming and without telling asked my parentd to invite som other norrlänningar (northerners, from the north of Sweden).
We had a houseboy and our friend told him, “come here I will show you something special”. Well, they went outside and he opened the surströmming tin. In a split second all the insects of Africa showed up (exaggerated). The houseboy said: “sorry mister, sorry mister, the food is spoiled”. He told the houseboy, “follow me now you will se something more”.
They took the surströmming inside and showed the dinner guests who cheered and was very happy. The eyes of the houseboy became big as a saucers.
He tried to give the houseboy money if he eat some surströmming, even a whole months pay, but he refused.
I also think the "disgusting" aspect is way overrated. It's basically fermented fish. The smell is very concentrated because it's been canned. A good video on how to eat it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGRyr8yIo9w
> The smell is very concentrated because it's been canned.
And this is why it's recommended that you open the can underwater. Most of the videos of people reacting badly to it are because someone just opened the can in the middle of a room. Don't do that.
> On the whole I think people exaggerate; it's no more revolting than a strong cheese might be
A part of that is probably that people who do it "challenge-style" aren't exactly preparing it well. They're eating it straight out of the can (usually while gagging), not with the usual pairings.
1. the smell varies from can to can (age etc). That’s why people have very different experiences when opening one.
2. The smell is not like the flavor. It tastes like salty anchovies with a bit more punch.
3. Other than a few hardcore fans, people generally don’t eat the fish alonelike you would e.g with pickled herring (the other Swedish herring staple). You have it (sometimes quite little, depending on how much you like it) on a huge piece of hard bread together with lots of other things like potatoes. The exact combination of things on the sandwich is the cause of family feuds. It’s like anchovies on a pizza vs eating a can of anchovies...
4. If you meet a Swede they will most likely have tried it, but probably don’t like it. It’s only commonly eaten in the northern half of the country, while most people live in the south.
Both kinds exist, but I think the hard version is more common in the north, meaning the combination soft+surströmming would be less common (If it’s not criminal, it should be :)
You're right, I'm from what people usually call the North of Sweden, and while we have plenty of soft tunnbröd eating it with surströmming is just wrong. Surströmming goes with tuttul(local hard tunnbröd variant) sourcream, potatoes, dill, and chopped red onions. I don't enjoy it though, mostly because my tummy didn't agree with it, and I was farting that less than lovely smell of freshly opened can, almost constantly for a week! I'm not likely to eat it again, even though my family does at least a couple of times a year
It’s not surprising that the cashier in Malmö didn’t have any suggestions: surströmming is from the other end of the country, and all the southerners I’ve spoken to about it have got that “those crazy norrlännings” expression on their faces.
When I lived in a dorm in Uppsala there was a girl there, an exchange student from China, and she purchased surströmming for cooking, thinking it was regular fish. So she opens up the can and, boom, smell. Still thinking it is fish (”Sweden is a strange place, maybe they don’t get the fresh stuff here?”), she proceeds to rinse it it under the faucet and then makes a chinese dish with surströmming as the fish ingredient.
Surströmming is great - in small amount together with fresh potatoes and melted butter, on thin crispy bread.
Almost anything is great in a small amount with fresh potatoes and melted butter on thin crispy bread. Why not just use regular pickled herring? Or something similar that doesn't taste and smell bad?
The taste really is special. It's the most savory, salty, fishy food I have ever had. It's something like anchovies with parmesan and tuna cranked up to eleven.
Pickled herring is not really the same kind of taste at all.
A relative attended a school in in London during the 60s, living in a dormitory. One of the students didn’t wash his socks. So my relative and his friend opened a tin of surströmming and placed it in this guys trash bin.
The guy with the smelly socks friends entered the dormitory and smelled the surströmming thinking it was his socks. So they throwed them away.
Well now my relative and his friend had to swiftly remove the tin with surströmming, so they placed it outside in a tree.
Then the school directors 2 poodle dogs came along and found the surströmming ton and eat it up.
The directors wife was a piano teacher and had a lesson with a student when the dogs entered the piano room. The directors wife shouted something like “O my dear dogs, where have you been..” and having no clue what it was. Well, she gave this dogs a good bath.
As a Phd student me and a couple of office mates did this at work one day. The fish, the white crispy bread (whatever it's called in English?), potatoes etc. for a proper "klämma" sandwich. Once you get over the smell, it's quite good actually.
Oh, the smell. We did chase everybody else out of the coffee room when I opened it (using the bucket trick, yes). A bit later the lab engineer called me:
- I got some complaint about the toilet drain malfunctioning, and that you might have something to do with it?
- Uh oh...
Sometime later one of my co-conspirators moved on to do a post-doc in another country, where he eventually repeated our stunt. Except he forgot the bucket thing, and sprayed the foul smelling bile on some poor bystander.
I have to eat surströmming once a year, preferably close surströmmingspremiären, which is the 3d Thursday in August.
Living in Stockholm, you call friends and relatives who like surströmming and set a date and time.
If you have neighbours from other cultures, it is adviced to set up a notice in the entrance. Otherwise they maybe will call for a plumber.
Everything that is present during a meal with surströmming will probably catch the smell. Therefore it is advised to not have your finest suit on. And the best way is to eat outdoors.
Eating outdoors could bring along insects to the table. To mitigate this you could pour some of the brine in a coup or two and set them some meters from the table and the insects gravitate to them instead.
I once made a client bring a can from a visit to Sweden. Luckily it did not explode on board - I keep thinking what would have happened if the airline presented him a bill worth several millions with a nice letter stating that they tried every option to get rid of the smelly leftovers without any success... ;-)
We had a very funny evening (including some Aquavit) and built a good friendship on top of it. Surstromming actually does not taste foul, only strong.
Clive and friends did some sampling of surströmming recently, as on https://youtu.be/4vjT_fFUFLs starting at 4:15 if you want the experience of 3 folks not previously exposed to it but appropriately prepped.
The rest of the channel tends more towards the disassembly of electronic devices and analysis of their construction.
Although it comes in a can, it should be stored cold. If you open it and it looks something like mushed up tuna, as I have seen in some Youtube challenge videos, something has gone terribly wrong. Don't eat it!
Unless you have a can of filets, you should gut and clean out your strömming. Keep the roe if you get a lady fish, the rest of the innards you don't want. I have never seen a properly gutted strömming on Youtube. And of course you get the bones out. Unlike pickled herring, where the acidity softens the bones, the spine of a surströmming is not pleasant to eat.
Eating it indoors is fine. You don't need a bucket of water to open it in. A napkin to protect against spray due to the pressure is fine. Pros just tilt the can slightly and open it without even a napkin. The smell is admittedly potent but it's not a chemical weapon. All the crazy stories about how the smell is impossible to get rid of are told by people who don't eat it themselves, in my experience.
The taste is obviously quite strong. A little bit goes a long way together with plenty of bread and potatoes. It is also very salty, so you will probably want to drink something.
And most importantly, expectations matter. Presentation matter. The reactions of people around you matter. If you have brought a can of the most disgusting food in the world, a bucket to barf in and your mates are giggling and ready to record your reaction, you will most likely not enjoy surströmming.
However, if you come to a set table, where the strömming is presented as actual food, you can feel how the other guests are enjoying themselves and you are also there to do the same, you are much more likely to actually do so.
I have been present several times when people have had surströmming for the first time. Some people liked it, some people didn't. Most make a comment about the smell. But they have all tasted it without hesitation. Not a single one gagged the slightest. None of them were in it for the thrill or the challenge. They were just guest there to enjoy a dinner with friends.