I made my first Lapskaus today. Which is a biggie as Jarle’s Mum makes a Lapskaus to die for. In fact I may not even tell Jarle it’s lapskaus till after he has eaten it so he does not expect it to be like his mother’s.
Jarle has been sick and is just getting his appetite back so I thought a dish that evokes childhood might be in order. That and the meat was on sale yesterday. Hard to get away from my Scottish genes.
The recipe I read a while back was on one of the Sons of Norway sites but I could not find that today for some reason.
So I found this lapskaus recipe that promises good lapskaus in 40 mins. The recipe is in Norwegian so here is my translation of it (please note my Norwegian is limited and mistakes are likely, but this is what I read it as and its cooking now. I’ll let you know at the end of the article how it turned out, as its cooking as I write.)
Lapskaus Recipe Translation
| Amount | Ingredient |
|---|---|
| about 600 grams | stewing beef, eg shoulder, chuck steak |
| 2 tablespoons | butter |
| 20 ml | water or stock |
| 1 | beef stock cube |
| 6 | potatoes |
| 3 | carrots |
| 1 thick slice | swede |
| 1 | parsley root (I am guessing this is like parsnip) |
| about 40 ml | water |
| 1 teaspoon | salt |
| half teaspoon | fresh ground pepper |
- Cut beef into 1.5cm cubes
- Melt butter in a large pot
- Brown meat in small batches
- Return meat to pot and add water/stock
- Wash the vegetables and peel potatoes
- Cut vegetables into 1 cm cubes and add to the pot
- Cook over a medium heat till all vegetables are cooked. Stir as little as possible so the vegetables don’t mush, but don’t let it stick on the bottom.
- Add salt and pepper to taste
The stew may be cooked without browning and often precooked meat is used. Serve with a coarse wholemeal bread or flatbread and cranberries.
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I am not sure why the recipe has two entries for water. What I did was just add water to the pot till it was 3/4 up the pot knowing this would almost cover the vegetables. As it turned out it 3/4 covered the vegetables so was a good big pot full of vegetables. The recipe does not call for the stew to be thickened but I did all a little cornflour to water and added it in.
For the beef stock cube I used one ice-cube of home-made chicken stock and one beef fondu. Beef fondu is something I just dicovered in Norway, it’s a is kind of a concentrated beef stock in a gel form.
Also I cheated on the vegetable front, I bought a bag of frozen lapskaus vegetables which had them all already diced. I did add more leek to the mix as the pack came with leek and I am guessing no swede or parsley root. Also we had quarter of a leek left in the fridge.
Flat Bread:
Flat bread is a uniquely Norwegian food (to me). Its hard to describe, as there is no New Zealand equivalent. But its not like a bread, more like a steam roller cracker, which has been rolled out to almost A4 size. You break a bit of one off and eat it with butter. It’s a traditional accompanyment to lapskaus. Its also very good to have dry if your feeling queasy.
Flatbrød ingrediants are, rye meal, white wheat meal, water, oatmeal, wheat bran and salt.
By the way for all those cooks out there , there’s a cool site with the equivalent ingrediant names in various languages ie: english, finnish, swedish, norwegian, danish, icelandic and russian. The top of the page lets you choose what group of foods your intersted in then you can sort alphabetically by any of the languages. It’s well worth a look.
Well all I am waiting for now is dinner time. The lapskaus smells good, but I’ll come back and update the post after we have eaten it.
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Okay the verdict after the Lapskaus has been tasted and consumed.
It was good and tasty, I am very satisfied with the result. Though Jarle says for a real lapskaus it would have more potatoes but he still says it still tastes good. So next time I think I will do the vegetables myself and see how that goes. For now though I am a happy camper having made an edible attemt at my first lapskaus. Actually next time I am going to ask Jarle’s Mum for tips…
