Interested in Icelandic cuisine?
 

In 2004 we traveled to Iceland for our first time. It was so great. We fell in love to this country. So we traveled to Iceland again and again. But it was not only the landscape, the volcanoes, the geysers, the waterfalls and so on, what we were fascinated of. We also learned to know Icelandic cookery.

Now we are collecting Icelandic recipes. We are going to show them in our blog "Yummy Iceland". Does anyone of you have recipes for his favorite Icelandic dishes? We are happy about any proposals.

Of course you are invited to read and to try out the recipes we already collected:
http://leckeres-island.blogspot.de (in German),
http://yummy-iceland.blogspot.com (in English, but just starting)

Have a look at our Advent calendar, too:
http://yummy-iceland.lima-city.de/advent

Best regards,
Markus

We love Iceland also, but cannot find much of anything good to say about the food there. Except for perhaps the gravlax, which is excellent, but which can be excellent in many places in the world. The best food we've ever eaten in Iceland was at a Turkish restaurant in Reykjavik.

I'll be interested to follow your blog to see if we missed out on good Icelandic cooking, though. We've tried pretty much everything, in small cafés and fancy restaurants and everything in between, and just don't "get" it.

Icelandic food is enough to drive you to drink - if you can find somewhere to buy it and a small fortune to hand.

I've also visited Iceland and found the food to be, well, meh. Even the famous hot dogs downs on the docks were dull, the breads were to be forgotten, though the gull eggs were okish.

I assume you registered to drive traffic to your blog . . . but <i>Icelandic</i> Cuisine ????

Okaaaay ;)

The "famous" hot dogs are downright disgusting. We tried them at 3 different places on 2 trips and tossed them all in the trash.

The reindeer bacon wasn't inedible, but I'm willing to bet, living where I live and having done a good bit of research on prehistoric cooking, that Magdalenian Man did a better job than Icelanders with that particular cut of meat.

I've eaten very well on my few trips to Iceland.

For those who seem to think Icelandic food begins and ends with hot dogs and fermented shark, here's a link to the kind of food you can get if you broaden your horizons a bit and know where to look;

http://imgur.com/a/pkC1H

Photos aren't mine, but I've eaten similar on my visits.

I'll be keeping an eye on your blog yummi!

On the photos, I see parmesan, rucola, polenta, ratatouille, eggplant - obviously all native Icelandic dishes. Our friends from Italy and France should travel to Iceland for some culinary surprises.

Yep, that was the place that sold the dull hotdog. Still the idea of an exciting hotdog seems almost impossible to get to.

I tried various lamb stews (normally would be called mutton in most countries) in a number of mom & pop restaurants. Sat behind an Icelandic family happily sharing with some American family members (lets say it was not a success), while Icelanders selling whale is just off the menu for most civilised people, I can understand why you would eat whale if your land was a waste land (ie 1700 Iceland) but in 2015?

"Perhaps a little baby child with a hint of dill Mseur?"

We also tried a couple of veggie restaurants on the main drag, which, you could tell was more a concept than something anyone actually enjoyed (think London 1960 and a lot of lentils).

Great initiative!

I'm particularly fan of Slátur, this kind of black pudding made using sheep blood, sheep fat, onions, thyme and cayenne pepper. Eaten with rice pudding is delicious!

Sadly most of the food we had in Iceland was mediocre at best; some was awful and only a little was really good. The staples - lamb and oxtail stews, chicken dishes, were OK - but there was a distinct lack of fresh vegetables and salads, despite the much vaunted use of thermal heating from the natural phenomena. Lest anyone say that as tourists we were looking in the wrong places, we came across a local berating someone in a supermarket about the state of the veg, and the potatoes on sale in particular.

We did come across some great cakes, terrific coffee, and some good roast dishes, and the food at the high end Hotel Glymur was excellent, if pricy, but by then we really didn't care, having only just escaped from the hell of a summer "hut" which we had run away from and which I have described elsewhere, and won't bore you with again.

Fernando - I would happily have tried something like that black pudding but sadly didn't find it on offer anywhere.

Most people do not know any Icelandic dishes. And if, then it's mainly about these "hardcore" specilties like Hákarl, fermented Greenland shark. Even tourists who have been in Iceland often try only fast food, which is, admittedly, also typical for Iceland. But that's not all!

And that was the reason for us to present Icelandic cuisine in a weblog. There are so man wonderful dishes: delicious fish soups, lamb in various ways, cinnamon buns, carrot cake, kleinur (twisted donuts), rye bread, etc. In Iceland you get skyr, the Icelandic low-fat curd cheese, which can be used for several other dishes. And during Christmas season you can find a big variety of Christmas cookies.

Icelandic cuisine is much more various and delicious than you expect. Try it out!

In Iceland you get skyr, the Icelandic low-fat curd cheese, which can be used for several other dishes. >>

in the UK you can also get Skyr - most big supermarkets stock it now, in plain and a few other flavours.

Ah the latest fashionable yoghurt of the over paid....

Look, they take female cows, make them pregnant and then kill the birth and drink the milk. Even vampires don't do this....

Still I like yoghurt but just another bascillus.

Douglas Adams would be amazed.

<<Try it out!>>

What we're trying to tell you is...we have tried it out. And it sucks.

One can post all the pretty pictures one can find of "Icelandic cuisine" doctored up with foreign, imported ingredients like Parmesan cheese, eggplant, and polenta, but that doesn't make it Icelandic cuisine.

Skyr? Big deal - it's an overpriced item everywhere in the world. Christmas cookies? Nothing special about that - every country has delicious ones. Lamb? The lamb we've eaten in Iceland was mutton - tough and gamey - not likable to most people's tastebuds. Fish soups? Had them too, and not a one that could begin to compare with a soupe aux poisson from the Atlantic coast of France or bouillabaisse.

Sorry, but I really don't think you're going to win a lot of converts here.

we ate Skyr in Iceland and thought that it was one of the best things about their cuisine. [not saying much, I know]. I only buy it when it's on offer so it's not that expensive and it makes a change from yoghurt.

St C - did you come across the smoked mutton? not a combination made in heaven, IMO.

We tried to get our host in one of the summer huts we stayed in to explain where locals get their food from as we hadn't found anywhere selling things you'd want to buy but all he wanted to do was get us to read the bible with him - perhaps religion was his antidote to the dreadful food!

Too funny, annhig.

It's a strange country to be sure, and one we love to pass through between Europe and the States, but certainly not for the food.

Yes, we tried the smoked mutton, at the urging of a waiter at some fancy restaurant on the docks in Reykjavik. I was really glad I'd ordered plenty of wine because that didn't wash down easily.

Skyr is fine - I love all such milk-based products. But all I hve to do here in France is go to the yogurt/cheese ailes (and yes there are several) or to any fresh market and get myriad products that are tastier and just as healthy.

I do have a jar of some wild berry jam we bought in Iceland that is quite tasty.

I can't add much value to this thread, having never stopped in Iceland, but I have flown Icelandic Airways a number of times from Seattle to CDG and back. I made the bad mistake of ordering a meal, not once, but twice. The food on Icelandic on both occasions made regular airline food seem like it had been prepared by Joel Robuchon. It might not gag a maggot, but it was simply inedible. If that resembles what the people of Iceland eat, I will never stop over in that country!

nukesafe--I agree, the food on Iceland Air is BAD! Trust me, the food in Iceland itself is much, much better:)

We had good meals in Iceland just over a month ago. We also managed to find plenty of salads and potatoes, so were happy about having some veggies.

While it certainly wouldn't be a place I would go specifically for food, I thought Icelandic cuisine and the food served in Iceland was ok on the whole, much better than I expected. We had some decent meals even in the countryside of lamb, beef, and fish, with simple salads and bread. And I did have a great meal at a high end restaurant in Reykjavik that fell into a new Nordic food prep/cuisine style.

Granted I went this year, and it sounds as though the food and restaurant experience has improved dramatically in the last decade or so. And I would never travel to Iceland just to eat. But I at least found the food mostly tolerable, and certainly worth putting up with for the landscapes and outdoor activities on offer.