🇳🇴 How to Make Smalahove

Craving Smalahove? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Smalahove at home, in about 3 hr, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

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• 1 salted and dried smalahove (half a sheep's head), from a Norwegian butcher
• boiling water
• Serve with: mashed swede (kålrabistappe)
• boiled almond potatoes
• akevitt, traditionally

👩‍🍳 Method

1. This is not a dish you make from scratch. The head is singed, skinned, split, salted and dried at the butcher's, and that curing takes weeks — buy it prepared, in the run-up to Christmas, which is the only time it is sold.
2. Soak the head in cold water overnight to draw out the salt, changing the water once.
3. Steam it — not boil — over simmering water for 2½ to 3 hours, until the meat gives easily at the cheek. Boiling washes the flavour into the water and leaves the meat flat.
4. Serve it whole on the plate, facing the eater. You work from the front: the ear first, then the eye, then the cheek, which is the best of it and the reason the dish survives.
5. Mashed swede and potatoes alongside, and take your time. Western Norway eats this at Christmas and has done for centuries — it comes from a place where nothing from an animal was ever thrown away.