Swedish food culture consists mostly of everyday fare, “husmanskost” in Swedish. Here are some of the most beloved dishes in the oblong country: meatballs from IKEA, sausage from Falun, risalamalta during Christmas and crisp bread for breakfast.
Meatballs are known all over the world. It’s the first food you think of when someone mentions Swedish food. You can eat it with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. When making the Swedish meatballs you take minced meat, half pork and half beef, and you mix it with breadcrumbs, milk, pepper, salt and grated onion. You roll the meat into little balls, let them swell for awhile, and then you fry them in a pan. Whenever you’re up for Swedish meatballs just find yourself an IKEA-store somewhere around the world and you can eat Swedish meatballs!
A famous meat product in Sweden is the Falusausage. There are many different recipes onhow to cook your Falusausage but it’s commonly fried and served with mashed potatoes. The sausage name is protected and has to contain 40 % beef and pork. The meat is first salted and then smoked. It was the Germans that introduced the sausage recipe when they were mining around Falun in the 17th century. Around 1890 the Swedes had a sausage they called Falusausage. On the 1st July the inhabitants in Falun celebrate the Falusausageday. You can’t really find Falusausage outside of Sweden however one can find sausages that taste exactly the same way but has different names. In Austria the Extrawurst is similar to falusausage! Still haven’t got enough of Falusausage? There’s a website were you can find over 100 recipes on how to cook your falusausage and even a recipe on how to make it on your on! www.falukorv.net
"Risalamalta" is almost like rice pudding or porridge. Usually it’s eaten during Christmas, but people also eat it all year round. To cook Risalamalta you boil water, rice, salt, sugar and butter and let it simmer for a while. After it has simmered you add milk and cinnamon, stir it properly and let it simmer for a while again. The Risalamalta should then cool down by putting the pot in cold water. When it is cold you whip the cream in and then the vanilla sugar and it’s done! Some people put almonds in it and call it Risál’amande and some often put little bits of orange in the Risalamalta to give it a little twist.
Crisp bread is hard bread made out of rye, yeast, salt and water. It’s usually eaten with Kalles kaviar or with cheese on it. The bread is made out of whole meal rye, making it a well balanced meal and a diet containing plenty of roughage. It’s very healthy bread and it’s good for your stomach. The rye seed is rich on minerals, fiber, protein, carbohydrate, vitamins and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Crisp bread could be a solution on solving the problem with overweight in the Western World. Wholemeal products make the sensation of saturation longer and give you less calories. Rye has been grown in Sweden since the Middle Ages and was the dominating crop for a long time. During the cold and barren winters the Swedes needed bread that could stand storage and they needed cereals that could bee preserved for a longer time. They baked dry and hard cakes that were shaped round and they called them “spisbröd”. The bread got a hole in the middle so it could be hung on sticks in the roof above the stove.
One of the Swedish kings, Gustaf Vasa, was sometimes called the Rye King. The reason for the nickname is that he demanded the taxes from the people to be paid in rye. Rye was a very valuable product in that time. Wasa which is the biggest producer of crisp bread used Gustaf Vasa on their package before. Now they only have a royal crown to give it a royal look. Wasas sales are about 160 million euros. Besides Sweden their biggest market is the other Nordic countries, Germany, Poland, Holland, France and the USA. In one year people all over the world in 40 countries buy 60 000 tons crisp bread. Sweden is the biggest consumer and every Swede consumes 4 kilos of crisp bread every year.
Kirsten Vepsäläinen
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