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the sheeps head is called "Svið" and is eaten because there wasn't much food iceland so you had to use what ever you had, so the vikings use all the sheep even the blood (Slátur) and we have carried out this tradicion ever since. i pretty much eat every thing except Svið, not because its disgusting but because of my family made me eat to much of it when i was smaller
You find when you start going into a lot of cuisine, especially those involving meat, this mindset has been the foundation of a lot of things. Nose-to-tale eating has been a tradition of a lot of places, and things like haggis, faggots (kind-of an English version of haggis, considering both are based on offal), black pudding and blood sausage, and this sheep's head are lingering remnants of that sort of waste-not-want-not tradition.
I was in Iceland 2 years ago and ate sheeps head in that same place the were in, and it was amazingly good!! I even ate the eye and tongue, which the waiter said was his favorite parts. Was not dissapointed. When I come back I'm definitely having it again.
I think the Sheep's Head dish sounds pretty awesome. And in Chinese Astrology I'm a Sheep, so I'm a little touchy about this dish, but I think it would be quite tasty, interesting as well! And thank you to fabulous Icelandic writer, Arnaldur Indridason, for getting me interested in Iceland. Ciao!
I believe it's a good thing to try out these recipes in far out places like Iceland. I mean this was their diet for hundreds of years and you get a feel for the place. So well done.
It's like when my sister thought she was eating fried chicken from off my plate, and I said to stop eating my squid. She was so disturbed she forced herself to vomit. I don't understand people getting grossed out by food that tastes good. I've figured out that there are 2 kinds of people. There are people who will eat anything that tastes good, and there are people who only eat what is familiar to them. And it's true of every nation.
Something about tourists eating my nations traditional food... gets me all giddy and, i guess.. patriotic. Kudos for doing it the right way and not exactly being all coy about it. Champs!
Heads typically have some of the most tender meat on the animal. Tongue and cheek are revered in Mexican cooking for making the tastiest and most tender tacos and enchiladas
Her reaction after eating the sheep head is priceless lol Thumbs up for you two for trying unfamiliar good. Kudos. The cheek meat and tongue from that lamb head cut into cubes, fried in a pan with some black pepper powder, crushed red pepper, salt would be so yummy.... And more approachable for newbies. Great show
I can say that "Sauehaue" or "sheep head" is very common on the west coast of Norway as well. The true challenge is the eye, you don't eat the pupil itself, you remove it and eat everything around it. Most of the meat is in the cheeks, and if it is cooked right it taste delicious, but if you do it wrong, it will taste kinda rotten or raw-ish in some cases (Yeah, not kidding, a place in Norway served it, and they failed misserably, and every customer as far as I know hated it). It is actually a huge family event, every time my dad slaugthers some sheep, we all take the weekend off to eat back home. And really made me not question any food, no matter what it looks like before eating it. And hot tip, the tounge of a sheep is really good, same with deer tounge, you can boil it with the skin on with seasoning, and after a few hours, you can peel the skin and have it on slices of bread. So if you get the chance and are on the west coast, try to see if you can get a hold of it.
Wow, you handled that shark better than i do, and i'm icelandic! eugh, it's so damn bad. Svið(sheeps head) is actually pretty good once you get past the fact that you're eating a head. I like the hot dogs, but rarely eat them, because you know... they're hot dogs. The meat soup is a staple food here, it warms you on cold days and just gets better and better when you keep reheating it days later. We have this yearly thing were the sheep are gathered from the mountains to get sorted into their respective farms and it's a great gathering called "réttir" and after the gathering we like to invite a bunch of people to our house and eat the soup together. There is also this thing called "Þorrablót" where old people mostly, gather and eat all the old traditional foods, like haggis, shark, hard fish and sviðasulta (which is pretty much gelatinous cubes of sheep heads meat."
next time you go to Iceland you need to go to an Icelandic bakery !! they make this amazing thing called snúður which is basically a huuuuuge cinnamon swirl with either pink, chocolate or caramel icing on top !! caramel is by far my favourite :~) Iceland also makes amAzing ice cream !! ice cream shops are open until midnight usually and you can get soooo many different toppings / dips ! the ice cream itself is what's so amazing though- you can get this old recipe of ice cream which uses milk instead of cream and it's suuuuuper cold and so smooth and tastes so so good !!! I find it difficult to finish regular soft serve ice cream because it's too creamy, but the milk ice cream is just perfect. please go again to Iceland and try it out !
Sheep's head is also a dish in Central Asian countries, all ending in -stan. Although I believe they rather boil it and the meat is supposed to come off easily of the bone.
I grew up eating hardfiskur and I love it. I'm Canadian of Icelandic descent. I always thought I might be using too much butter but I see you had a good dollop of it with the dried fish. The only difference is I use my butter cold out of the fridge and I hear eating it with Icelandic butter is the best way to eat it.
We have the sheep’s head this way in some parts of Norway too, where we call it Smalahove. Not common in Oslo, but found in some places on the west coast. The best part is the meat tissue that sits around the eyes. It’s refreshing to see people who show no fear of what’s at the other end of the fork. :)
Cheeks are the most tender meat in any animal that has them. In birds, the most tender part is the lower back. In both cases, I'm excluding offal. But I do like offal. I just figure if head bothers you, there's no way I'm getting you to try organs.
Icelandic "pylsur" actually contain three meats: pork, lamb, and beef. In order or amount in them, it is pork, then lamb (shoulder meat mostly), and then beef. Only the lamb is all Iceandic, the other two are Icelandic and/or Danish. The filler is mostly potato meal. (Worked once in the SS factory in Reykjavik making pylsur)
Wish people would know that most traditional food arent bound to only Iceland, but rather Scandinavia! We also eat Sheeps head up here on Faroe Islands, and they might also eat that up in Norway (Cant say for fact though) We also got the dried fish, together with Butter aswell, although primarily i eat dried fish alone without butter but thats just me There are a few things different when coming to food, some they eat when we dont and vice versa! For an example, we eat Pilot Whale meat and from my knowledge, on Iceland they dont! We eat fermented sheep and fermented fish! We also got both the dishes above and cook them, both as normal food thats been in the oven or making a tradition soup out of it! Up here cooked fermented sheep is called "Ræstkjøtt" and for fish its "Ræstan fisk" Then we got soup of both ræstkjøtt and ræstfisk! Also eat puffins and fulmars! People from Iceland can probably name traditional food they eat on Iceland aswell!
An Icelander here, I really like the hot dogs, soup and dried fish. If anybody is coming to Iceland for a cultural immersion, I'd recommend giving those a shot. Our cocoa soup is pretty cool too (with rusks and whipped cream). The sheep's head and the shark are just plain nasty to me, this is something we ate centuries ago out of poverty, can't we enjoy proper food now?
Sheep head is a delicacy in Islamic cuisine. It's usually served to guests. It's known by different names in different Islamic countries like sira in India Pakistan, kalle poche in Iran etc. According to the folklore, it has its origin in ancient Yemen.
ArabMusic23 Islamic cuisine is a distinct cuisine. Sure culture is a human activity but Islam as a religion dictates the culture and makes changes in to it through halal and haram. Islamic cuisine is distinct because it doesn't allow any use of liquor, pork, blood and meat of an animal which is not slaughtered in an Islamic way called the zabeeha. So learn something you ignorant fool before opening your potty mouth. Peace!
OMG HUGE kudos for the sheep's head! I couldn't do it. I could have tried everything else, but the head, no can do. You guys rock! Love your videos. You are inspiring. I travel a lot and often in Europe and the UK. Thanks for all the great vids and reviews. :)
we found the best value and tastiest things to eat in Iceland were suprisingly the pre packed rolls you get in the supermarkets and petrol stations..the Salmon Subs are really good Salmon or Lax is quite reasonable there, very tasty
I LOVE every single element of this video. She is precious with her true honest reactions. I enjoy your video immensely. Greetings from San Francisco ~Theresa
I am Indian I ate every thing with spice and flavour so when I was new in Europe it was difficult for me to eat food without spice and flavour but now I am habituated to such food I enjoy all food
When you ask locals who really enjoy something, your expectations tend to be too high. The thing is still really good, but just not as good as your expectation let you think.
Well done for trying the boiled sheep's head, I'm pretty open minded about what I try to eat when traveling abroad, but I think this would test my resolve as well.
I'm a Navajo and this is our best thing to eat .. we literally eat everything .. I'll tell u the Brain is a acquired taste .. but still we love it .. I mean the only time we butcher a sheep is when something is important and even than we use everything .. we don't waste nothing .. it's a blessing of sorts .. but I'm glad u were honest ..
I'm Mexican American (I'm accustomed to eating cow head, pig head, and goat), and from the footage, I could go to town on all that food with their local Beer, everything looks tasty, and I've had shark before, wish i could go there to visit all the restaurants.
Yet another video I somehow missed! We went to Iceland a year and a half ago, had never thought to eat a sheep’s head. Kudos to you guys! My kids are like NO WAY. You should go back to Iceland! Love that country.
Most of those foods are only eaten during the "Þorri" festival in late January. its kinda old school. Younger people dont like it as much. Come eat it while you can!
watching this video makes me hungry, I got choco pie next to me, so im fine. now, its interesting that happy/unhappy stocks effect the taste of its meat. this is something new thank you for that. as im asian, i wonder if all these time i ate stressful animals
My mother sometimes buys a ton of fermented shark and eats it like it’s done kind of snack, the whole house always smells horrible after. Great video though!
sorry for using lower case letters, cap key is not working. i love it when you keep it real about if the food taste good! i hate when they pretend to like it and you can see in their face it is awful. so thank you for keeping it honest about how another part if the world food may not be to your liking. i will not eat anything that still has the eyes, and brain matter in it.
Haha, no worries about the caps! It happens to the best of us 😂 Luckily we don't often come across dishes we don't like, but the sheep's head and fermented shark were definitely just too strange for us haha!
The faces that Allison makes right after putting the sheep head meat in her mouth. 2nd clip looks like she was about to cry. Yes, that head would creep me out as well.
living in iceland back in the day was the worst so we used to eat literally anything we could so as to not starve. personally (as an Icelander) I don't like most of the traditional food, it's just hardship food. Harðfiskur (the dried fish) is a great hiking snack
When I was young the Italians would eat sheepshead on a certain holiday. after it was done we would use the jaw bone, it was shaped like a gun. Just wanted to share that, good luck and safe journey on your next trip.
Oh, I could live on dried fish, all day, every day. I kind of giggled when seeing your reactions to the sheep's head. Do you really think that the meat you eat has no head? :D In the old days people used all the meat the could get from the animal. Even it's insides. And till this day, we still do. Iceland is an island in the middle of the Atlantis sea, it's not like we could have just ordered food from elsewhere, in the old days. We had to count on what we had and when we had it.
I ate those hotdogs; Icelandic food can be bland which is why it's good to add flavoured salt (fruit, cider etc) and pickled foods - they're kinda traditional condiments from when summer foods had to be preserved for long winters. Our hotel was in the background and you opened the video with my favourite shot over Reykjavik. You always shoot the same things I shoot when we've visited the same places, which makes me feel validated, but you've also visited some great places I now want to visit. So thank you twice for these great videos.
I wasn't expecting it to actually look like a sheep's head - should have looked closer at the thumbnail 😅 I can imagine the thought of eating a face is worse than the actual taste. We're in Nicaragua at the moment and we hear that cow's tongue is a popular dish during Christmas. We're considering trying it - hoping they prepare it in a way that it doesn't have the texture of tongue 😬
i'm guessing they've never tried cabeza or cachette tacos? meat from the heads of certain animals can be delicious. Fish head curry in Singapore is AMAZING!
if you eat the eye of the sheep dont just eat the eyeball eat everything in the eyesocket the small black ball dont taste that good on its own but the eyes are my favorite part of the sheephead run your knife around the eyesocket and scoop out the whole eye
I have eaten scorpions and bamboo rat in Guilin China. I have eaten dog in Bali Indonesia. I will eat anything that you put in front of me as long as I can get it past my eyes. Most of it was quite good. I learned how to do this whilst I was in high school. My high school friends from the north end of Boston dared me to eat squid. I did and found it wonderful! I have eaten it ever since. Trying new things is great for you.
My grandparents boiled the heads and cleaned them for meat. But further south west, in Western Norway proper, they serve the heads in half like this. Tastes yummy, I think. But look like something out of a horror movie.
First time viewer. I appreciate your openness to trying new things and being respectful to other cultures. You both seem amiable, intelligent, articulate. This was a nice balance of honesty with tact. And. You were braver than I would be. Pass on that eyeball and tongue, please. Best Wishes!
I'm happy to try and eat anything but I think I would've had my work cut out with the sheep head!! Really brave of both of you!! Your trip has been amazing guys.
To an Icelandic person this is like "So they take this small sharpened stick and they push it between their teeth to clean them. They call them touthpikks"
A person goes to diner and asks for specials. waitress says we have lamb's tongue on special. The person says I'll just have some eggs. I could never eat anything that came out of an animal's mouth.
We then play with the sheeps teeth, legs and jaw. I'm not even kidding, my grandmother owns a box full of bones for me and other grandchildren to play with.
Well done guys for tackling the Sheeps head got to sample it on a Icelandic Safari thankfully missed out on the fermented shark as our guide could not purchase any,the dried fish I believe is called Hard Fisk saw them being dried in the open air on racks got to sample some in a snack form as the Icelanders eat them cut up like potato chips in a packet.
So the tongue of a cow/lamb needs to be cleaned, boiled overnight with lots of garlic and onion. Then de-skinned and then fried with some onion and THEN it's the best meat ever and very expensive where they know what it is!
