How Icelandic Fermented Shark Is Made | Regional Eats

[Music] look up the list of the most misunderstood foods in the world and fermented shark is probably on it but here in the west of iceland it is a regional delicacy it's greenland shark that's been laboriously fermented dried and cured and it's been done by one family in this area for hundreds of years we're here to find out what it tastes like [Music] the greenland shark is the most toxic circle in the world fresh meat you will get very sick then a little bit more you could probably go blind and then that's after that so what exactly does it take to make it safe to eat we met with gujan hildebranson he's running his family business of shark curing here empianeren i've been eating this shark since before i got teeth i've been doing a curing process probably since i was 10. this is just all my life it's just shark shark shark we don't catch them ourselves not anymore now we buy them from these big trolling boats we catch the shark accidentally but my family used to cats and hunters gurjen cures about 60 sharks a year from fishing to cube the whole process takes six months the meat is first fermented in cold storage rooms like this one next i'm gonna open it up and you're gonna put your head in it okay you're gonna inhale and then you're gonna explain the smell you feel okay yeah yeah i'm ready check it out i'm ready okay stop stick my head in yeah here we go it's um i 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 my sorry sorry it is very strong it's really strong because it's the closer you know what it is it's hair bleach and stilton we are working with similar bacterias like when you're when you're doing cheese so that's why let's check this out oh you can see the oozing yeah yeah but you can also this is like it does not smell as intense as when we walked in no so this can stay here for some while longer so here we have the thinner pieces yeah and we make these handles in the skin for grabbing them lifting them up hanging them up so these are the the thinner pieces and under here we have the fillet so this is how that that much much thicker pieces and he has white meat he does not have a fat layer he has white meat and it's very important to have the skin on because the meat is so loose itself that if it's no skin then it's just enemy just basically stretch the thinner pieces after the process the meat becomes sort of red or brown and we call that claire hawker yeah and the meat is it's more it's more chewy and salty and then we have the fillet that stays white the fillet we call skir hauckart named after the the milk products yeah we love skin what is the liquid that's coming off then water like there is a lot of water in the meat the greenland jacket has much more water in them than other fishes or other sharks so it's uh ammonia what is that doing in the scientific process of it because it's poisonous when it's fresh yeah the greenland shark is the most toxic shark in the world and the greenland shark is a deep ocean cold ocean shark so icelanders they first started fishing them for the liver and they used the oil from a liver so for the first 200 years when they were fishing them they had to throw the mirror away they couldn't use it so it was big waste of meat and in iceland and isolated areas this was uh it was a big waste so 400 years ago probably accidentally they discovered the process to use the meat what would happen if i took a bite of that now what would happen to me like no it's like it's that far far in the fermentation that you would be fine right but before fresh meat something small you would get very sick yeah then a little bit more you could probably go blind and then that's after that okay great great i will not be taking a bite of that so this this part of the process is this the most important part to get the taste of it or this this this basically does everything it makes the meat not toxic it's preserve it after this you can eat it it's not toxic but the trying process is just to get a better texture in the meat because it's just so white and moisty yeah it's very important that these boxes they have these gaps on them so the liquid can can leak from it and also for oxygen to to get in because the meat needs to need to breathe there are chemical changes that are happening that are making the meat on toxic first people didn't know this was a chemical process it was an accident now this is a chemical process and we are there are a lot of um interesting things that we are yeah even still discovering yeah it's also different after where the shark has been when what theft and what temperature he was caught the difference after what what chemicals are high or low and so in these boxes the meat loses about around 30 percent so it loses a lot of weight here and then in the drying process it loses like fifty seventy percent so total use of meat is around eight percent what happens to the ammonia when it drains i mean it's okay to be stuck i mean you've got like i've got boots on and you've got little sandals and stuff the ammonia is the liquid here is that's fine we could drink it i won't one shark will give from 30 to 40 pieces of fillet the meat ferments for six to nine weeks in the wooden boxes then is hung outside for six months to fully dry out to know if it's ready we check the texture and these are all like good they are the the texture is fine we don't want it too hard and not too much and then we have this one here this one is not uh stiff enough so he needs more time but these here are ready here you see the skin use it oh wow it's like a you know when these people have really terrible like 1970s walls [Laughter] yeah it's like sandpaper yeah this is really rough this was used for in iceland this was used for sandpaper and these points if you look look closely you see the points in the skin they they grow in one direction do you see that yeah yeah yeah and so these points they they grow down with his body so when he swims he gets this sort of thin layer of air around him it's always air around him so it's easier for him to swim and to get faster and it also works like a gives him a little bit more insulation in cold ocean so the meatiest fish i've ever seen yeah here we have a piece of the fillet and in the drying the piece he gets this dried crust around it but you see here when i slice it open that he still has this beautiful white color at the inside and here the meat is just ready to eat so there is never nothing added to this meat and uh in the process there is no cooking there is no smoking like nothing at all just it's just natural process from the beginning till the end and then if i you see how smoothly it cuts and then you take this here thank you it looks like ham yeah and then i'll have one also cheese skull skull okay hmm i was going to say it actually doesn't it's the aftertaste is kicking in now yeah and now you feel it it's coming it's coming up in your nose then it's doing what we wanted to do we wanted to give us like a like a kick it's supposed to be strong i can taste the uh the ammonia kind of smell now um at first it was just like chewing a piece of ham yeah and then like you know the texture of it in your mouth and then the aftertaste and then it's actually like stinging my thing my tongue stinging the back of my tongue do you ever do you ever get over that you just it's it's like eating bread to you now everything you feel is probably uh ten times more than i'm what i'm what i feel for me i kind of i sort of miss it but i i know good shark from a bad one two sharks who arrive here together they go through the process together after the process they taste similar but not the same it is the not even amount of ammonia maybe in them or sauce or other chemicals that are that are different so that's why they uh don't taste the same yeah you can taste taste the smell of it but it's um that really kind of like rich stilton cheese like hits the back of your tongue and it's just the size of your tongue you don't i don't think that's ever going to go away maybe you want some more i'll have a little bit more yeah a little bit more i mean i think i'm my tongue's just used to this now i'm a shark convert um it's amazing though how much of it is in the smell yeah it's just yeah so would you recommend eat it before smelling it just go down there yeah yeah yeah it tastes much better than it smells okay i'll have another one also all right no it's a texture it's like um gone into almost like a gelatinous kind of um texture in my mouth i think it's because i've just like mashed and magicated it so much in my mouth the second one was also a little bit bigger yeah yeah the second one was the kicker yeah the shark does have a reputation internationally how how do you feel about that it's good this is not for everybody you know uh people go in two parts even icelanders either you like it or you don't but i recommend everybody at least to give it a try today this is eating like a snack for special occasions but before this was eaten like with a meal like for something extra and this is so healthy that you can't eat too much it's often the shark was eaten like with a food that was like on the limit of being good or bad or probably bad because he helps the digestion so there's a chemical chemical company in iceland who analyzes food and according to them the shark is the healthiest food that is made in iceland i i just uh you know like when you have a really strong shot of alcohol and you get that kind of like burning yeah that's what i'm getting at the moment is that quite a common thing i guess so yeah it's just like kind of feeling my heart and my soul now it is strong and we that we we want it strong want it even stronger gurjan made me try some fermented shark cubes dipped in icelandic schnapps how much is too much to put in here today this is called brahmin which would be translated in english like a burning wine and this used to be called uh in iceland smart dirty or which would be black death so you let it stay there for maybe 20 seconds something like that just we like we are marinating the shark now it changes a little bit to like a maybe a little 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 isn't your personal supply bottle what's also good is to have a piece of the jar and piece of the rye bread the icelandic rye bread and then of course you know the shark on its own you just love the shark so much this is my grandfather shark fishing boat he used to catch sharks and other other fishes in the spot the boat's name is silten and which is hiring in english and his first register 1860. my grandfather bought this boat 1929 when he was 19 years old and then he had been working on this boat at least since he was 14. it's a proper family business yeah yeah so like shark has been involved with my family for 600 years i guess wow and how did they used to catch it then so they used hooks this year this is from my grandfather's fishing set this is very old and the chain had to be at least three meters and they used usually a seal meat or a seal fat for a bait for the for the hook and this was maybe 100 meters down and they could feel when the shark was testing the bait so they start to tease him until the shark swallows the bait i mean it's a big boat how big is a shark this this boat is around eight meters and the greenland shark is usually he's from three meters till maybe five meters long this jaw here here you go this is from maybe five five meter long shark wow that's massive yeah and this one is done from what i will get i would guess four or four meters and these i mean would these hurt humans so so the green is where he lives so deep that he's he's not in our swimming water and this is his lower jaw and you see here they're always growing a new set of teeth and the teeth they grow up and he changes his teeth uh around every three weeks they just flip over and the old dorms they just fall off so he's got somewhere around i don't know four thousand set of teeth over his lifetime move or more and this is his skin that is very interesting like you can stroke the skin one way but it's harder to stroke at the other oh yeah there's some more resistance with that it's like sandpaper exactly so this is just uh like all my life it's just shark shark shirt sorry guys like really prepare yourselves

Channel: Food Insider

Views: 5,835,514

Keywords: INSIDER, FOOD INSIDER, food, shark, sharks, fermented, ferment, iceland, icelandic, meat, toxic, yummy, how, it's made

Id: QnjtnzyTNoQ

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020