Foodie Tuesday's Recipes
Updated: Mar 12, 2021
Welcome to the Recipe Blog where history and memories hit our pallet! We have started our journey with some traditional favorites and completely unique to Danish culture and carried over with our Danish Canadian immigrants. The food is a treasure for family's, that is passed down from generation to generation. It is the one tradition that seems hold some of the fondest memories and the fastest way to achieve nostalgia.
What is traditional Danish food?
Traditional Danish food is based on what was historically available nearby or could be farmed during Denmark's short summers. Cabbage and root vegetables like beets were an important part of the diet, along with rye bread, fish, and pork. Open-faced sandwiches, known as smørrebrød, are among the best-known examples of traditional Danish cuisine. These small half-pieces of rye bread are topped with fried fish, pickled fish, eggs, potatoes, or cold meat, and sometimes horseradish and onion. They are eaten at lunchtime, either as part of a packed lunch or in a company canteen. Larger traditional meals are often based on fish or pork, sometimes ground, and fried as meatballs. The "national dish of Denmark" is stegt flæsk - pieces of pork, fried until crisp, and then served with boiled potatoes and parsley sauce.
The Danish National Dish ”Stegt Flæsk med persillesovs” - or Fried Pork Belly with parsley sauce - is a genuine old rural dish that is orientated from the rustic Danish country kitchen from around the middle of the 1700s. Frying pork belly slices has been known since the Stone Age about 3-400 B.C. - and just as long - as peasants and hunters living in the Stone Age - have had pigs as their livestock. In the beginning of the 1800s the rural country kitchen added potatoes and white sauce and parsley to the fried pork belly slices - and the dish became one of the Danes most favourite and popular meals - and since a real classic dish - which also is quite inexpensive and affordable even for the poorest households. When the recipe hit the city kitchens and restaurants - it became a real classic and traditional dish - and was also counted as a part of the exquisite Danish cuisine that chefs prepared and cooked in different variations. The ”Stegt Flæsk med persillesovs” is a must to eat once a week dish - and especially during the cold winter season - even though the juicy porky dish can be eaten all year round. In the summertime the Danes have a regular outdoor feast grilling or barbecuing their pork belly slices. The ”Stegt Flæsk med persillesovs” dish is Denmark’s national dish.
The caramelized potatoes is an old dish dating back to 1785, but back then it only was for the wealthy people, because sugar and butter was expensive.
How to be Danish, lesson: Pålægschokolade (sandwich chocolate thins).
If you’ve ever been to Denmark you may have wondered about the lack of chocolate spread. We don’t really do that. Instead, Danes butter their bread and add little super thin slices of chocolate on top.
Monday-Friday: on dark rye bread.
Weekend: Yipeee, white bread.
We call it Pålægschokolade – or sandwich chocolate.
You can get it in dark and milk chocolate varieties.
Most Danes were sent to school with a slices of rye bread with toppings – and the sweet treat was always rye bread with a slice of Pålægschokolade.
Pålægschokolade
(Thin pieces of chocolate)
This delicious chocolate treat was originally introduced to the Danish market in 1963 by Galle and Jessen.
This chocolate is known to be topped on bread such as rugbrød and or white bread like how chocolate spread is used in many countries.
It is available in both dark and milk chocolate with milk being the most common.
Other ways you can serve this dish is and a sweet charcuterie board that would consist of dried fruits and nuts with some crackers and meats and cheeses with of course your chocolate
Another great way of serving it is simply just in its own as a nice, sweet treat that can go with breakfast lunch or dinner this great Danish staple literally goes with everything and the Danes love.
If you did not know Galle and Jessen is a Danish chocolate and confessionary brand founded in 1872 and now owned by Toms International. But they where the ones who created Pålægschokolade this popular and traditional Danish staple.
Some websites I have found where you can buy this if you have not already tried it and would like to try it.
Hjemve.dk -will ship pretty much anywhere in the world
Danish food shop -will ship anywhere they are based in the UK, but the products are shipped right from Denmark and the website is in English.
https://danishglobal.com/products/galle-jessen-palaegschokolade-mork-2pk
Will ship internally and has great other Danish products.