How Icelandic Fermented Shark Is Made | Regional Eats

Look on the list of the world's most misunderstood foods and it probably contains

fermented

shark

, but here in West Iceland it's a

regional

delicacy. It's Greenland

shark

that's been laboriously

fermented

, dried and cured and

made

by a family in this area for hundreds of years. We're here to find out what Greenland shark tastes like. It's the most toxic circle in the world. Fresh meat. You'll get very sick later. a little bit more you could probably go blind and then that's like that so what exactly does it take to make it safe to eat? We met with Gujan Hildebranson.

He runs his family shark curing business here. Empianeren. I've been eating this shark since before I got my teeth. I've been doing a healing process probably since I was. 10. This is my whole life, it's just shark, shark, shark, we don't catch them ourselves anymore. Now we buy them on these big fishing boats. We caught the shark accidentally, but my family was used to cats and hunters. Gurjen cures around 60 sharks a day. year from the catch to the bucket the whole process takes six months the meat is first fermented in cold rooms like this, then I will open it and you will put your head inside, okay, you will inhale and then I will explain the smell, you feel good, yes , yeah, I'm ready, check it out, I'm ready, okay, stop poking your head, yeah, here we go, it's um, I dye my hair and it's literally like bleach, it's hair, it's hair bleach, right , Yeah? like hair like hair dye oh wow so oh sorry sorry it's very strong it's very strong because it's the closer you know what it is it's hair bleach and stilton we're working with similar bacteria like when you make cheese So that's why Let's see this, oh, you can see the liquid, yes, yes, but you can also, it's like it doesn't smell as intense as when we came in, no, so this can stay here for a while longer, so here we have the most thin Yeah, and we make these handles on the skin to grab them and lift them and hang them, so these are the thinner pieces and underneath here we have the fillet, this is how those pieces are much thicker and it has white meat, no. it has a layer of fat, it has white meat and it is very important to have the skin because the meat is so loose that if it does not have skin then it is just an enemy, basically stretch the thinner pieces after the process the meat turns red or brown. and we call that claire hawker, yes, and the meat is chewier and saltier and then we have the steak that stays white, the steak we call skir hauckart, which is named after dairy products, yes, we love the skin, do you?

What is the liquid that comes out? then water like there's a lot of water in the meat, the Greenland jacket has a lot more water than other fish or other sharks so it's ammonia, what does that do in the scientific process? Because it's poisonous when it's fresh, yes, Greenland. The shark is the most toxic shark in the world and the Greenland shark is a deep, cold water shark, so the Icelanders started fishing it for the liver and used the oil from the liver, so for the first 200 years They caught them, They had to throw away the mirror, they couldn't use it, so it was a big waste of meat and in Iceland and isolated areas this was a big waste, so 400 years ago they probably accidentally discovered the process for using meat, did they? what would happen?

If I took a bite out of that now, what would happen to me? No, it's like it's so far along in fermentation that you'd be fine, but before fresh meat, something small, you'd get really sick, yeah, so a little bit more, you probably could. go blind and then that's after that okay cool I'm not going to take a bite so this part of the process is the most important part to taste it or this basically does everything that makes meat non-toxic it preserves after this you can eat it, it is not toxic but the testing process is just to get a better texture on the meat because it is very white and moist.

Yes, it is very important that these boxes have these spaces for the liquid. The can can leak and oxygen can also get in because the meat needs to breathe, chemical changes are occurring that make the meat toxic. At first people didn't know that this was a chemical process, it was an accident. Now, this is a chemical process and there are many interesting things that we are, yes, still discovering. Yes, it is also different after where the shark was, when what robbery and at what temperature it was caught. The difference after what chemicals are. high or low, so in these boxes the meat loses about 30 percent, so it loses a lot of weight here and then in the drying process, it loses like fifty to seventy percent, so the total use of meat it's about eight percent, what happens to the ammonia when it drains, I mean, it's okay to be trapped, I mean, you're like I have boots and you have little sandals and stuff, the ammonia is the liquid, here okay, we could drink it, I won't make it a shark. will give 30 to 40 pieces of steak, the meat ferments for six to nine weeks in wooden boxes, then hangs outside for six months to dry completely so we know if it's done, we check the texture and they are all like good, are the the texture is okay, we don't want it too hard or too much and then we have this one here, this one is not stiff enough so it needs more time, but these here are ready here you see the skin, use it oh wow, it's like, You know, these people have really terrible walls, like from the 1970s, yes, it's like sandpaper, yes, this is very rough, this was used in Iceland, this was used as sandpaper and these dots, yeah You look closely, you see the spots on the skin.

They grow in one direction, do you see that yes, yes, yes, and then these points grow downward with your body, so when you swim, you get this kind of thin layer of air around you, it's always air around you, so making it easier for you to swim and to get faster and it also works like it gives you a little more insulation in the cold ocean, so the meatiest fish I've ever seen, yeah, here we have a piece of the fillet and when you dry it, you get this dry crust around it. but you see here when I open it that it still has this beautiful white color inside and here the meat is ready to eat so nothing is ever added to this meat and in the process it is not cooked, it is not cooked. smoking like it's nothing, it's just a natural process from start to finish and then if I see how well it cuts and then you take this, thank you, it looks like ham, yeah, and then I'll take one too with cheese skull. okay, hmm, I was going to say that it's not really like that, it's just that the aftertaste is taking effect now, yes, and now you feel it, it's coming, it's rising to your nose, then it's doing what we wanted to do, we wanted to give ourselves like a like a kick, it's supposed to be strong, I can taste the smell of ammonia now, at first it was like chewing a piece of ham, yeah, and then like you know the texture in your mouth and then the aftertaste and then it's in reality like itching my thing my tongue itching the back of my tongue do you ever get over it?

It's just like eating bread to you now all you feel is probably ten times more than I am what I am what I am I feel sorry for myself, I miss it, but I know the good shark from the bad, two sharks that get here together , they go through the process together after the process, they taste similar but not the same, it's the amount of not even ammonia. maybe in them or sauce or other chemicals that are different that's why they don't taste the same, yes you can taste the smell of it, but it's kind of like a rich stilton cheese that hits the back of your tongue and is only the size of your tongue, you don't, I don't think that's ever going to go away, you might want a little more, I'll take a little more, yeah, a little more, I mean, I think I'm my Tongue just got used to this now I'm a converted shark um it's surprising how much is in the smell yeah it's just yeah so would you recommend eating it before smelling it?

Just go down there, yeah, yeah, it tastes so much better than that. It smells good, I'll have another one too, it's okay, no, it's a texture, it's like it went almost like a kind of gelatinous texture in my mouth, I think it's because I've crushed it and it worked magic so much in my mouth that the second one too It was a little bigger, yes, yes, the second one was the kicker, yes, the shark has an international reputation, how do you feel about that? It's good, this is not for everyone, you know, people go in two parts, even Icelanders.

Whether you like it or not, but I recommend everyone to at least try it today. It's eaten as a snack for special occasions, but it used to be eaten with a meal as something extra and it's so healthy you can make it. By eating too much, the shark was often eaten with a food that was borderline good or bad or probably bad because it helps digestion, so there is a chemical company in Iceland that analyzes the food and, according to them, the shark. It is the healthiest food

made

in Iceland. Just, you know, when you take a really strong dose of alcohol and you feel something like burning, yeah, that's what I'm feeling right now, it's a pretty common thing, I guess. so yeah, it's like feeling my heart and my soul, now it's strong and we, we want it strong, we want it even stronger.

Gurjan made me try some fermented shark cubes dipped in Icelandic brandy. How much is too much to put here? Nowadays this is called brahmin, which would be translated in English as burning wine and this used to be called uh in Iceland, smart and dirty or that would be black death, so you leave it there for like 20 seconds, something like that, we just like it. marinating the shark now changes it a little bit to maybe a little bit like a licorice flavor yeah, that's really licorice yeah, that's exactly how it tastes that's really nice this is your, I mean, this is not your personal supply bottle, what's also good is take a piece of the jar and a piece of rye bread, the Icelandic rye bread and then of course you meet the shark by itself, you just love the shark so much, this is the fishing boat of sharks from my grandfather who used to catch sharks and other fish.

On site the name of the boat is Silten and it is chartered in English and its first registration is 1860. My grandfather bought this boat in 1929 when he was 19 years old and then he had been working on this boat at least since he was 14 years old. a proper family business yeah yeah so like the shark has been involved with my family for 600 years I guess wow and how they used to fish for it back then so they used hooks this year. This is from my grandfather's fishing equipment. It is very old and the chain had it. At least three meters and they usually used seal meat or seal blubber as bait for the hook and this was maybe 100 meters deep and they could sense when the shark was testing the bait so they started teasing it until the shark swallowed it. the bait, I mean, it's a big boat, how big is a shark, this boat is about eight meters and the Greenland shark is usually between three meters and maybe five meters long, this jaw, here you go, this It's maybe five five.

One meter long shark, wow that's huge yeah and this one is made so I'll get I guess four or four meters and these I mean would harm humans so the green one is where it lives so deep which is not in our waters to swim in. and this is his lower jaw and you see here, he's always growing a new set of teeth and the teeth grow and he changes his teeth every three weeks they just flip over and the old bedrooms just fall out, so he got somewhere, I don't know, four thousand teeth throughout his life moved or more and this is his skin which is very interesting, since you can caress the skin one way but it is more difficult to caress the other oh yes, there is a little more resistance . with that's exactly like sandpaper so this is like my whole life it's just shark shark shirt sorry guys get ready really.