Hakarl, An Acquired Rotten Taste

GUEST POST: Chanie Hyde, aka “The Hungry Ginger”, shares with us her experience of trying hakarl, an Icelandic national dish of cured and fermented Greenland shark meat. Yum.

Hakarl is a national dish of Iceland, consisting of Greenland shark meat, that has been buried, rotten and fermented.

Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once stated that Hakarl is the the single worst thing he’s ever tasted. That’s saying something, coming from a man who purposefully eats a lot of strange and unusual dishes.

The Icelandic people are very good at sustaining themselves through the harshest of climatic changed by preserving and utilising the entire beast. Hakarl is part of that ilk.

The Viking Icelandic tradition to preserve and eat the Greenland and sleeper sharks has been around for more than a millennia, and is still eaten all year long today. Usually accompanied by a shot of brennivin or “black death” to wash away the taste.

The reason for the fermentation process?…