@RusA #9858646
A lot of fermented foods smell a lot worse than they taste. I keep a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce on hand, and when you open it up, it smells just like what it is: the liquid drained off fermented anchovies. Besides some kinds of Asian foods, I use it in Western food when the recipe calls for anchovies, like in my favorite pasta puttanesca, or in the dressing for Caesar salad. It doesn't taste anything like as bad as it smells, with a somewhat fishy, salty, and savory flavor that I rather like.
I've never seen surströmming on sale around here, but they might sell it in parts of the country with a large Scandinavian population like Minnesota. For sure, they sell lutefisk there, which is fish that's been soaked in lye, a strong alkaline chemical that the rest of us use to clean our drains. The lye denatures the proteins and gives the fish a gelatinous texture, and a smell and taste that some people like, and others can't stay in the same room with. As humorist Garrison Keillor said, to get the lye out of the fish, "they rinse it and rinse it and rinse it, but if you ask me, they don't rinse it quite enough."
0
@RusA #9858646
A lot of fermented foods smell a lot worse than they taste. I keep a bottle of Vietnamese fish sauce on hand, and when you open it up, it smells just like what it is: the liquid drained off fermented anchovies.
I've never seen surströmming on sale around here, but they might sell it in parts of the country with a large Scandinavian population like Minnesota. For sure, they sell lutefisk there, which is fish that's been soaked in lye, a strong alkaline chemical that the rest of us use to clean our drains.