Lutefisk is one of the oldest traditional dishes in Norway—and one of the most divisive. The process begins with stockfish: unsalted whitefish hung from wooden racks, or hjell, to dry in the winter winds along Norway’s foreshore (or in temperature-controlled rooms). The dried fish is soaked in cold water for about a week, then soaked in lye for two to three days, which “makes the fish swell and gives it its characteristic gelatinous consistency.” After a thorough rinse and another long soak in fresh water—up to 10 days—the fish is heavily salted and finally boiled or baked. Traditionally served with potatoes, green beans, pea stew, bacon bits, and melted butter, lutefisk (Old Norse for “lye fish”) is often described, without ceremony, as fish Jell-O.
Photo by Andrew Stark
It should be noted that lye, which is a strong alkali that can cause permanent damage if ingested and can be picked up at your local ACE Hardware, is typically used to make soap.
Lutefisk dinners, or lutefisklag, have been popular around Christmastime in Norway since the 1500s. In Minnesota, they’re often hosted by Lutheran churches, and tickets sell out quickly. Russ Edhlund, leader of St. Paul’s Immanuel Lutheran Church lutefisk dinner held each November, explains that the first seating begins at 4:30 pm. “By the end of the evening, we have served about 600 guests,” he says. In other words, despite lutefisk smelling how one online reviewer characterized as “a dead fish wrapped in a sweaty sock left to ferment in a teenage boy’s bedroom,” it’s a wildly popular dish.
It should also be noted that I’d personally never even seen lutefisk. Andrew Zimmern, on his hit show Bizarre Foods, describes it as “the king of Scandinavian delicacies” that “began as a dried piece of fish [that] is now just a jelly-like blob of fish.” He goes on to attest that “lutefisk is more popular here in Minnesota than it is back in the old country.” And, while attending a lutefisklag up in Cyrus, during which one of his elderly dinner companions, I’m afraid, mentions, “See that? There’s plenty of butter on it so it slides down,” the unflaggingly polite Zimmern takes a bite, hesitates, and says, “It’s definitely an acquired taste.”
Photo by Andrew Stark
I’m something of a picky eater, and I’m highly sensitive to appearance, texture, and especially smell. So before I attend my first-ever lutefisklag, I decide to visit Olsen Fish Co., “one of the leading Lutefisk producers in the world,” which has called Minneapolis home since 1910.
“We use lingcod [sourced from Norway],” says Chris Dorff, president of Olsen. “And it’s all caught on what they call a longline—so, a line will go out with, like, 10,000 hooks on it, and every hook’s baited. It’s all certified sustainable. But I’ll tell you what: that container, if there’s 40,000 pounds of dried fish in there, and it’s sealed up for like five weeks, and you open the doors when it gets here, it’s pretty strong.”
“I’m a really picky texture eater,” Dorff continues. “So, when I eat lutefisk, I’ll grab a piece of lefse and put some potatoes in there, I’ll put some lutefisk in there, a little salt and butter, wrap it up, and eat it that way. I have three daughters, and they’re all adults. And they will not touch lutefisk.” He adds: “So much of your lutefisk experience depends on the preparation. Most of these churches, they’ve got a system down. We make sure they get fresh lutefisk, but a lot of the credit goes to the people cooking it. If you overcook it, it just turns to mush. But it should be something that you can flake with a fork.”
Olsen Fish Co. specializes in wholesale lutefisk and pickled herring, and the air inside the plant smarts with both. They also carry a number of Scandinavian essentials—hand-rolled lefse bread, imported wild lingonberries, salted cod, and more.
When I make the drive up to Cambridge Lutheran with my family, it’s the smell that hits first. I don’t even know what to compare it to: a bouquet of pungent, aggressive, astringent, sour, buttery—a soupçon of dank laundry. The guy next to me in line describes it as “full force.” The line itself snakes around the corner and down the hall, and the place is absolutely packed. When I finally reach the dining hall, I pass through like a stolen dog, tentative and freaked out.
I’m holding my 11-month-old son, who will not be partaking in the lye fish, and a man in rubber gloves and a hairnet carrying a steaming tub of potatoes cranes and says, “The little guy like lutefisk?”
I smile. “Of course.”
He chuckles and says, “I don’t,” before hurrying back into the kitchen.
I peer into a vat of lutefisk, which looks like something sloughed out of a shower drain.
“They should make lutefisk pizza,” I tell my wife after finding her in line.
“On a lefse crust,” she says.
I make a face.
But here’s the thing: I am the only one making a face. Everybody else is having a great time, raising their eyebrows approvingly after each bite. There’s a woman wearing a “Yeah Lutefisk!” T-shirt. The din of conversation and cutlery rises and falls like a revved engine, and there’s a girl serenading those in line with a violin.
But still: the smell. If lutefisk looks “like something a cow with pneumonia might cough up,” as author Ben Percy put it, then it also smells like that. The mouthfeel is a different kettle of fish, as it were, which, to me, lies somewhere between urinal cake and those white tomatoes from Subway. It’s like a deranged science project dreamed up on a dare for the Minnesota State Fair that somehow took off and permeated the culture. And people love it.
Because cooking is an act of love, and so, too, is eating. Participating in this ancient tradition connects us to something larger than ourselves while also reinforcing our identity. Lutefisk, for all its flak, acts as a conceptual bridge to the events and narratives of the past. After all, as one Redditor put it more eloquently and succinctly than I possibly could, this is “Scandinavian soul food.”
