"There's a lot of terrible smells in there."

July 1, 2015 9:40 AM

"What the fuck is this and where is it from and how do I never have it again?" (SLBuzzfeed)

Americans taste surströmming (Swedish fermented herring) for the first time.

Previously: MetaFilter answers the question "What is your local strange food?"

posted by Johnny Wallflower (88 comments total)

I love herring and I love fermented food but the combination plus the texture is making me gag from the GIFs alone.
posted by griphus at 9:43 AM on July 1, 2015

The definitive surströmming eating experience is still these tough guys from Texas. (Warning: lots of swearing throughout, and lots of retching once opened.)

If you want to skip their faffing about before getting down to it, the meat of the experience starts here. (I'll repeat myself, if you don't like retching noises, don't click the link.)
posted by benito.strauss at 9:52 AM on July 1, 2015 [12 favorites]

Conversely, I have a story about a friend who hosted a family of Swedes. The kids tried Kraft mac-and-cheese, the atomic yellow kind, for the first time.

They cried.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:55 AM on July 1, 2015 [16 favorites]

FROM HAPPINESS
posted by poffin boffin at 9:57 AM on July 1, 2015 [52 favorites]

Giant Bomb Tries Surströmming
posted by kmz at 9:59 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Clueless people being clueless. This is how you eat it. (yes, it's basically just a spiced up fish tortilla.)
posted by effbot at 10:05 AM on July 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

Icelandic food laughs at your fermented herring. It laughs from its mountain.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:05 AM on July 1, 2015 [15 favorites]

its mountain of rotting shark and sheep's heads?
posted by poffin boffin at 10:07 AM on July 1, 2015 [26 favorites]

Ctrl-F'd the previous thread for "Old Bay" and found nothing, which is startling, as a native of the state where dismembering invertebrates crusted with mouth-numbing spices is a mandatory summer pastime.

(not that I dislike it! once your lips stop tingling and you get the hang of cracking the claws, it's a lot of fun. there should be more foods that are served with mallets, really.)
posted by nonasuch at 10:08 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

It is foods such as these which led to everyone going a-viking, I am sure.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:08 AM on July 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

While Giant Bomb knows how to open a can of surströmming, Giant Bomb's can of surströmming got far too warm and the lactic acid has destroyed the proteins.

Basically Giant Bomb is eating something worse than surströmming. Giant Bomb is eating spoiled surströmming.

Which is still only half as bad as Hákarl. Iceland is NUTS.
posted by eriko at 10:08 AM on July 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

The brennivin makes everything okay though.

by okay i mean nothing can ever harm you again because you have died
posted by poffin boffin at 10:11 AM on July 1, 2015 [12 favorites]

Serve them right for eating it straight out of the can when it's supposed to go with bread, onions, and potatoes.

Everything is better with potatoes.
posted by peripathetic at 10:13 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here is a Swedish family enjoying surströmming in the traditional Swedish way, which is to say with enjoyment and without drama, outside the house in the traditional Swedish countryside. You'll note from the fact the stuff looks like ordinary fish that, as Eriko says, it can spoil in the can.

I haven't eaten it. I intend to, but with Swedes in Sweden.
posted by Devonian at 10:15 AM on July 1, 2015 [11 favorites]

Needs the "nope" tag.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 10:15 AM on July 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

My God it does look pretty normal in Devonian's link. The guys eating the kind of grey shampoo with baby aliens version have been pranked by canning technology.
posted by colie at 10:19 AM on July 1, 2015 [11 favorites]

Here yt is a Swedish family enjoying surströmming in the traditional Swedish way, which is to say with enjoyment and without drama

Hmmm. Several things strike me in that video. One is that "without drama" is true to a point, but that it's still worth noting that even if you like the stuff, you still carry the can out into the garden some distance even from your open-air deck to open it. So reacting to the smell of the can being opened seems reasonable enough.

The second is that this can of surstromming has nice, whole fishies in it. All the cans being opened in the various "let's laugh at the weird food foreigners eat!" videos have a kind of soup of fish guts in them. That suggests that those who say they're opening cans of spoiled surstromming are right. What's the point in that? It's like forcing someone to eat rotten ham and going on about the weird stuff Americans eat.
posted by yoink at 10:22 AM on July 1, 2015

Here is a Swedish family enjoying surströmming in the traditional Swedish way, which is to say with enjoyment and without drama, outside the house in the traditional Swedish countryside.

Even there, you get the fellow opening the can doing so very far away from the house, and there seems to be a ratio of about 10 grams of sides to 1 gram of fermented fish. And the second person serving herself takes one fish from the can, contemplates a second, and then nopes out on it.

"Enjoying" seems like the wrong word, is what I'm saying.
posted by kewb at 10:23 AM on July 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yeah, Devonian's link is how you're supposed to do it. That's a *lot* of onion going on.

Much like lutefisk, once you cover a tiny bit of fish in potato, onion, sauce and bread, there's not much fish left there anymore.

But yes, you do take it to the edge of the yard to open, and I believe it's traditional etiquette to warn your closest neighbors in case they end up being downwind.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:24 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Every culture has stuff like this, of course; foods where the weight of tradition keeps something around more than any strong culinary preference on most peoples' part. I mean, traditional American food includes things like Cheez Whiz, pickled pigs' feet, and a wide variety of ghastly casseroles. Food has a lot of cultural roles; one of them is reinforcing shared identity.
posted by kewb at 10:27 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'd been told a story about surströmming and an eviction proceeding and a lawsuit by some Danish colleagues, and I didn't quite believe it. But this post made me go look it up. Link to Wikipedia because I don't read German (the original source is linked there for those who do).

Wonder if the surströmming in question there was nice, whole fishies... or not?
posted by nat at 10:27 AM on July 1, 2015

So, yeah, but no. If it rots while still in the can, if I have to warn my downwind neighbors before eating, it's already in no-fucking-way territory.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:30 AM on July 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

If it rots while still in the can, if I have to warn my downwind neighbors before eating, it's already in no-fucking-way territory.

You must like your neighbors more than I do.
posted by maxsparber at 10:33 AM on July 1, 2015 [7 favorites]

I was under the impression that, properly prepared, it was similar to the durian situation where the smell was initially terrible but the taste was inoffensive. Is that not actually the case after all? Or is it one of those things where "inoffensive" is highly subjective?
posted by poffin boffin at 10:36 AM on July 1, 2015

I was offered fermented clams once. It's an Oceanic thing on the more remote islands. It was one of the few smells that made me wretch.

Not every culture has this! They all have foods that outsiders might find gross, but few have foods that induce vomiting from the smell alone.
posted by kanewai at 10:38 AM on July 1, 2015

I'd been told a story about surströmming and an eviction

"... after the tenant spread surströmming brine in the apartment building's staircase".

Yeah, the brine smells. Fermented stuff tends to do that. That's why you open it outdoors, possibly under water, because you don't want to get that on yourself. The thing you actually end up eating is a fish tortilla (see my link above for pictures).

If you want to eat it correctly but still troll your foreign visitors, you surprise them with Beska Droppar (a besk, best known in the US through Jeppson's Malört).
posted by effbot at 10:39 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here's a comment from someone who has eaten it:

The flavor was not fishy either, it was very ammoniated like a cheese that has been allowed to ripen too long. One of my fellow tasters commented that if there was such a thing as fish cheese, it would taste like surströmming.
posted by maxsparber at 10:40 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

~Dreaming of surströmming and natto pie.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:40 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

And - I actually like durian. These fermented fish dishes are in a whole different league.
posted by kanewai at 10:41 AM on July 1, 2015

I have never seen anyone actually warning their neighbors, but I guess it can happen in some places in Sweden where surströmming is not common. And you do get used to the smell after a while, and the taste is mostly salty (so they say, I don't eat the stuff myself, I just go to the surströmming-parties for the snaps, singing of drinking-songs and things like that). See for example Jamie Oliver trying it.

But the brine is quite nasty, and was very popular as ammunition in the annual food-fight for new students at my university... Getting hit in the face with surströmming-brine is not... fun.
posted by rpn at 10:43 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Aah Malört, ye earwax tasting bitter camping friend. Between besk/Malört, surströmming, and lutefisk there is so much to discover...

in Minnesota
posted by djseafood at 10:46 AM on July 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

This is how I like my herring.
posted by Pendragon at 10:48 AM on July 1, 2015

I pride myself on being willing nowadays¹ to try any foodstuff once². And I would be willing to give surströmming³ a go⁴ in its proper presentation (fish tacos FTW⁵).


1) I am making up for my picky-eater childhood.
2) "You shouldn't grab me, Johnny. My mother grabbed me once... ONCE!" - Danny Vermin.
3) My high school German classes make me twitch every time I don't capitalize nouns with an umlaut in the middle.
4) With the disclaimer that I may not have complete command over bodily/retching reactions were it not prepared properly downwind/underwater/hazmatted.
5) Annnnnd now I'm starving.

posted by Celsius1414 at 10:50 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Unfortunately, in Rhode Island we have to import our Malört from the midwest, which generally means finding a friend who happens to be traveling to Chicago, trying to explain Malört to them, and begging them to bring some back. I wish there was somewhere local that sold it.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:52 AM on July 1, 2015

My understanding is that while Malört is available exclusively in Chicago (perhaps all of IL?) it is made in Florida.
posted by djseafood at 10:54 AM on July 1, 2015

Malort is good, though. Just very bitter.
posted by entropone at 10:56 AM on July 1, 2015

Ahh, Malört.

Actual text message conversation with my little brother.

Him: "Hey, next time you're down here (STL) can you bring me a bottle of Malört?"
Me: "Sure, next time I drive, I don't usually check luggage, can't carry it on."
Him: "Thanks! Have you ever had it?"
Me: "Tastes like pencil shavings and despair."
Him: "With a two hour finish of grapefruit rinds. That's the stuff!"
posted by eriko at 10:57 AM on July 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

Goes off to Google "Malort." Discovers that "Malort"=Swedish for "wormwood." Huh. So why didn't Malort come under the same (silly) ban that hit Absinthe for all those years?
posted by yoink at 11:01 AM on July 1, 2015

I had no idea social democracy carried such a high price.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:05 AM on July 1, 2015 [9 favorites]

The sounds of a neighbor vomiting into their toilet were the perfect accompaniment to looking at those gifs.

My apartment has thin walls.
posted by egypturnash at 11:07 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

My wife and I had a Ragnarök party a few years ago, Viking get-up and all, and I spent about fifty bucks procuring a tin of this stuff from Sweden. I dressed as Odin, and her as Freja, and we both had a nice big piece, and challenged everyone else at the party to join us to be named an honorary Valkyrie or Einherjar. Only two people joined us.

Of course, one of those got it stuck in her braces. There were tears. Many, many tears.
posted by Njotr at 11:10 AM on July 1, 2015 [6 favorites]

Norway has gamalost. Anything I might try to say to try to convey how terrible gamalost is would be like describing a mountain range with an artful arrangement of pebbles.
posted by gurple at 11:14 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

It’s not really commonly eaten in Sweden, being more of a northern thing. I don’t think a single one of my younger Swedish relatives have ever tasted it. My parents loved the stuff and would import it to Denmark whenever possible, and when I was living at home, we had the arrangement that I would be alerted a couple of weeks in advance so I could be elsewhere during the Surströmmingskalas. And the day after, too, as the smell... lingers. Opening a can indoors (or if you must, not under water) is a rookie mistake.

Still, when I became an adult, I of course had to taste it to make up my own judgement, and I can say this: It does not taste as bad as it smells, but it smells not very well at all. Once was enough.
posted by bouvin at 11:17 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I ate Hákarl in Iceland a couple of years ago, and so did the entire group I was with, which was all older Americans. It smells basically like a bottle of ammonia, but the taste is pretty cheese-like (funky cheese for sure, but still). Not a single person I was with had any problem getting it down, no retching, no vomiting. I'd say it was toned down for tourists but I had it throughout the trip and it was the same everywhere. If the herring is similar (and the description above makes it seem so) then I don't get the extreme reactions. I wouldn't call it pleasant by any means, but it's not that big a deal.
posted by Huck500 at 11:21 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

The guys eating the kind of grey shampoo with baby aliens version have been pranked by canning technology a cynical click-bait internet site.
posted by aught at 11:27 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

US herring video is 'an insult to Sweden'
posted by Panjandrum at 11:28 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I assume you wash it down with Akvavit?
posted by Chuffy at 11:30 AM on July 1, 2015

I have a French friend whom I introduced to sloppy joes. She gagged after the first bite; a texture thing, I think. The same friend loved loved LOVED curried herrings from IKEA, though, which I'm sad to say have now been discontinued (they were pretty yummy). When I visited her in France, she was proud to serve me supposedly really good foie gras, which I struggled with.

This stuff doesn't seem that different conceptually from fish sauce, which is (diluted) in tons of really good Thai food and smells absolutely horrid straight out of the bottle.
posted by tempestuoso at 11:31 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

You can wash concrete down with Akvavit
posted by griphus at 11:32 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's like forcing someone to eat rotten ham and going on about the weird stuff Americans eat.

Uhhh. If you've had to scrape the mold off before cooking .. oh God the saltiness
posted by k5.user at 11:34 AM on July 1, 2015

It's like forcing someone to eat rotten ham and going on about the weird stuff Americans eat.
This reminds of a story a few years ago when people thought I was weird because I said I could eat uncooked smoked bacon. A few years later I realized "bacon" around here is about .2 inches of fat and 2 inches of meat, and some minor marbling, and in the US it's mostly fat.
Well, I also would barf at the idea of eating a tub of lard.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:50 AM on July 1, 2015

You don't eat a tub of lard. You get some fatback, cure it in salt, cut it into thin slices like a coldcut and eat it on some bread (real, thick, hearty bread, not spongy supermarket crap) with butter.
posted by griphus at 11:53 AM on July 1, 2015 [5 favorites]

The definitive surströmming eating experience is still these tough guys from Texas.

Gotta have respect for that one dude that isn't sure whether he's black or Puerto Rican. Clearly hates the stuff, almost blows chunks, but that dude has mastered himself with reason and will like a true philosopher king.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:53 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I do note from panjamdrum's link that the expert who complains that the original video is of people eating spoiled food in the wrong way works for the Surströmming Academy. Which is on an island.

There are many, many islands in Sweden, and I'm sure that the fact that this one is a long way from much really, safely offshore in the Baltic, has got everything to do with the fact that it used to be a major herring port and nothing to do with the notion that if you are going to have a Surströmming Academy you're going to take your location cues from the nuclear power industry or secret weapons test ground design. And for much the same reasons.
posted by Devonian at 11:59 AM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

You get some fatback, cure it in salt, cut it into thin slices like a coldcut and eat it on some bread (real, thick, hearty bread, not spongy supermarket crap) with butter

Every time you sigh about your high cholesterol I think back to all the times you have expressed your undying affection for salo.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:11 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

and i turn to look right into the camera with a judgmental eyebrow face
posted by poffin boffin at 12:11 PM on July 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Swedish guy I knew at university managed to lose a tin down the back of a radiator. When it finally blew, the room was uninhabitable until professionally cleaned. The worst part was that it wasn't even his room.
posted by topynate at 12:13 PM on July 1, 2015 [7 favorites]

You don't eat a tub of lard. You get some fatback, cure it in salt, cut it into thin slices like a coldcut and eat it on some bread (real, thick, hearty bread, not spongy supermarket crap) with butter.

I think I've felt my arteries constrict a bit just from reading.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:19 PM on July 1, 2015

Which is still only half as bad as Hákarl. Iceland is NUTS.

Speaking of... Giant Bomb Travelogue: Iceland

- Brennivin at 3:50
- Fermented Shark at 11:10
- Chekhov's sheep's head introduced at 12:15
- Chekhov's sheep's head eaten at 16:15, with help from a passing stranger
posted by kmz at 12:22 PM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

High(low)lights include Thousand Year Old Egg

I'm Chinese and century eggs have honestly always just seemed passe... almost not worth mentioning as an "unusual" food, but of course that's because I grew up eating it all the time. I don't soak them in water but I'll rinse them after peeling because there's always bits of shell stuck on. Century eggs with tofu is just the goddamn best, and super easy to make too.
posted by kmz at 12:39 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Noooo, salted duck eggs > century eggs.
posted by peripathetic at 12:51 PM on July 1, 2015

Salted duck eggs are great too! But they're for eating a little bit at a time with congee, not gulping down big mouthfuls with tofu.

And there's also tea eggs, which are delicious.

Really, you just can't go wrong with eggs.
posted by kmz at 1:01 PM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Can you buy surströmming in Chicago? I'm completely serious.
posted by pullayup at 1:09 PM on July 1, 2015

Just the idea of pickled fish makes me wretch. Last week I watched the "Travelling Like a Local Around Lake Biwa" episode of Train Cruise on NHK World. At some point the presenter winds up in a cafe on the shores of the lake and the proprietor says, "Oh, you've come all this way. You can't leave without trying funazushi." The guy was a much better sport than I would have been.

Cf. “Fun with Fermentation: Funa-Zushi”—All Things Considered, 27 May 2006.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:15 PM on July 1, 2015

I have a French friend whom I introduced to sloppy joes. She gagged after the first bite; a texture thing, I think.

More of a recipe thing, possibly. I have a dear friend from St. Louis who once offered to make Sloppy Joe's for a group of about eight of us (all Americans), but her recipe started with "a cup of sugar" and ended with the rest of us being very, very polite about the experience.
posted by psoas at 1:18 PM on July 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

I currently have 3 quart jars of homemade kimchee fermenting on the top of my fridge. After the 1st day, I felt it was courtesy to perform the daily venting of the jars outside. The gas evokes fever dreams of a cabbage buffet at an old folks' home.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:04 PM on July 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

You can wash concrete down with Akvavit

Way back in the day, my best friend and I would go down the local liquor store on Friday and buy a bottle of something neither of us had tried. One night, we bought a bottle of Akvavit.

Good lord.

It's got nothing on Cynar, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:44 PM on July 1, 2015

I learned exactly one thing from stocking shelves when I was a kid - you NEVER eat anything that comes from a bulging can. That's straight up botulism and you will die.

Also, the dudes from Texas video is the funniest thing I've seen in a very long time.
posted by photoslob at 2:49 PM on July 1, 2015

I don't know much about anything but my understanding of canned puke-fish is you have a relatively small amount of it with loads of chopped onions, loads of potatoes, wrapped up in a tortilla thing, and completed with a tall shot of icy-cold vodka or schnapps or whatever. It's like those TV people who eat a spoonful of Vegemite and then shudder and make a face about it: that isn't how you eat it, of course it's going to be horrible. Everyone in the world is dumb except me.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:08 PM on July 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also was it not a terrible idea for them to eat this inside? Isn't that smell going to permeate everything forever now?
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:12 PM on July 1, 2015

aftermath of a cabbage buffet at an old folks' home with all the windows sealed and the heating turned up max mm
posted by colie at 3:15 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Relevant comic
posted by ilama at 3:30 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

A friend from Chicago brought a bottle of Jetson's Jeppson's Malort to Ann Arbor a while back. I tried it and I just don't get what all the fuss is about. Yes, it has a long aftertaste, but I've had plenty of worse drinks. Anise-flavored liqueurs in general, for example. That said, isn't a feature of your sense of smell its ability to tell you when something ostensibly edible has gone off? I'm inclined to trust its instincts, especially when it comes to meat.
posted by axiom at 3:30 PM on July 1, 2015

Just the idea of pickled fish makes me wretch.

Surströmming ("sour herring") is fermented herring. Pickled herring is something else, and is among the best foods ever invented by man.

(Pickled herring is "inlagd sill" in Swedish, "sill" and "strömming" being two names for the same fish, Clupea harengus. The latter is herring from the more brackish parts of the Baltic Sea, north and east of Kalmar Strait, as regulated by a royal edict from the 16th century.)
posted by effbot at 3:39 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Swedish guy I knew at university managed to lose a tin down the back of a radiator. When it finally blew, the room was uninhabitable until professionally cleaned. The worst part was that it wasn't even his room.

Reminds me of this guy who found a tin he'd forgotten about 25 years later under the roof, and had to call in Swedish experts.
posted by effbot at 4:02 PM on July 1, 2015

RobotVoodooPower: "Conversely, I have a story about a friend who hosted a family of Swedes. The kids tried Kraft mac-and-cheese, the atomic yellow kind, for the first time.."

1988, we hosted a Swedish exchange student. She would always smell EVERYTHING before she ate it. She brought caviar (blech --- it was actually a pink kind of paste, which really made my expectation of fruity flavor that much worse).

But Peanut Butter. She had never seen it and loved it. I was like "how can you not know peanut butter!?" I didn't realize how American it was. And while there was, of course, global trade, it's clear that somehow this had not made its way to Sweden yet (at least in mass market). Nowadays, I have a feeling it is, just like everything is everywhere.

Is this one of those things where people are pretty much dying and have to eat *something* so when they survive, they eat it for reminiscence and to show how hardcore they are, then it gets passed down to show the other tribes "DO NOT FUCK WITH US FOR WE EAT STORSTURMMUNG (or whatever it's called)"
posted by symbioid at 5:51 PM on July 1, 2015

We also had a Swedish exchange student the first half of 1988 (we'd been in school together all year but her host family got transferred for work and she wanted to stay, and I was already booked to go to Sweden that August so we figured it was a head start), and she was hilarious about peanut butter. "It's still disgusting, but I keep eating it! I will never, ever eat it with jam though."

I took a jar with me when I went, and my mom sent me another in February. Nobody in my host family would eat more than a bite, not even my completely hollow-legged teenage host brother who routinely ate a pre-dinner of half a pound of macaroni in a quarter cup of ketchup.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:08 PM on July 1, 2015

If you want a bit of a take on American food, there's a great Youtube channel I found that's based in Ireland, where they do stuff like this - and it's usually "Irish People Try American [blank]". I do admit to having a tiny Irish-stuff fetish, but you can't tell me that somoene describing Tootsie Rolls as "a dark activity to help you while away the hours until death" isn't awesome.

(My tablet is not letting me copy the youtube link; look for the "Facts" channel on Youtube.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:14 PM on July 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

She brought caviar (blech --- it was actually a pink kind of paste, which really made my expectation of fruity flavor that much worse).

Swedish kaviar is a smoked roe spread, not to be confused with fancy sturgeon caviar. Goes well with eggs, preferably on knäckebröd. Can be found at any Ikea.

(As for peanut butter, the idea of eating things that are designed to stick to the inside of your mouth is indeed a bit odd. And jam goes on toast, not peanuts.)
posted by effbot at 6:27 PM on July 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

I demolish entire jars of pickled herring on my own when I feel like it. I've yet to try fermented herring, but I'm game. I can stomach a lot of things.

My friends are in Iceland right now, their second day. I sent them that Giant Bomb video above and I'm gonna see if they try anything presented there. What else should they eat in Iceland?
posted by gucci mane at 9:15 PM on July 1, 2015

Yeah, pickled herring is fantastic It's a staple of any half-decent salad bar around here.

If you're at a bar, drinking beers, some pickled herring is a nice accent. Functionally like peanuts or popcorn.

I've not yet encountered this surstrommming, but I'd take a hearty bite if the beers were good and the host took the first bite off my plate (a good rule for any situation of unknown culinary good-faith)
posted by yesster at 10:21 PM on July 1, 2015

No mention of surströmming is complete without the incredible Surströmmingpolka. It has it's own song!
posted by twirlypen at 10:31 PM on July 1, 2015

Like fishing on a boat and going to a baseball game, a surströmming party is mainly an excuse for drinking outdoors during the day. In this case, drinking aquavit.

Also, after the third or fourth shot of aquavit, it starts to taste better.
posted by Umami Dearest at 8:29 AM on July 2, 2015

That's because your taste buds have started to die.
posted by maxsparber at 8:40 AM on July 2, 2015

The one and only time I got 4+ shots into akvavit it is true I forgot the taste quite quickly but then ended up in the hospital where Lars von Trier shot Riget/Kingdon.

Not as a patient, though; my friend/host lived across the street from it and thought I needed to both get some air and also be terrified.
posted by griphus at 8:43 AM on July 2, 2015

When I was 20 my aunt and uncle threw a party and we ended up drinking akvavit, since my uncle is my mom's brother and their father came over from Sweden, so we keep it pretty close to the heart especially ever since he passed. I easily did more than 4 pulls of this stuff. It was encased in a block of ice. I don't see the big deal with the taste.
posted by gucci mane at 10:12 AM on July 2, 2015

it's not so much that it has a terrible taste, it's more like drinking it is a scary alarming maybe deadly thing that is happening to your mouth that you don't really have the power to prevent. like a lightning strike.

also when it's iced you don't really get the full effect of the caraway. at room temperature it's like being punched in the face with a seeded rye.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:26 AM on July 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

Everyone here makes it sound like "akvavit" is a single thing. Sweden's systembolaget offers around 250 different varieties, ranging from really mild ones to the wormwood-flavoured besk mentioned earlier. Then there's the Danish and Norwegian ones that aren't already in that list. And making your own is trivial; lots of people do.

at room temperature

Don't do that :-)
posted by effbot at 10:53 AM on July 2, 2015 [3 favorites]