Suovas

Name: Suovas
Total time: 35 min
Cuisine: Norwegian
Ingredients: 400 g suovas (smoked reindeer), thinly sliced; 1 onion, sliced; 150 g chanterelles or other forest mushrooms; 2 tbsp butter; 2 tbsp cream; 3 juniper berries, crushed; Pinch of thyme; Pita or gáhkku flatbread, to serve

Smoke-cured reindeer, thinly sliced and seared hot, wrapped in soft gáhkku bread with lingonberry.

35 minModerate

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Cultural Context & History

Suovas — from the Sami word for smoke — is reindeer salted and smoked over birch, then fried and folded into warm flatbread. It is the great street food of Sápmi's winter markets.

Ingredients

400 g suovas (smoked reindeer), thinly sliced
1 onion, sliced289 kcal · 10.9 g protein · 0.8 g fat · 59.4 g carbs per 100 g
150 g chanterelles or other forest mushrooms
2 tbsp butter714 kcal · 0 g protein · 78.6 g fat · 0 g carbs per 100 g
2 tbsp cream195 kcal · 3 g protein · 19.1 g fat · 3.7 g carbs per 100 g
3 juniper berries, crushed62 kcal · 0 g protein · 0 g fat · 12.5 g carbs per 100 g
Pinch of thyme
Pita or gáhkku flatbread, to serve

Per-100 g values shown for ingredients verified against Nutrition data: USDA FoodData Central (snapshot 2026-09-11). Ingredients not yet verified show no nutrition line.

Recommended Tools

Cast-iron skilletHolds a fierce heat so the slices sear rather than steam.
Sharp slicing knifeCuts the smoked meat wafer-thin against the grain.

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Step-by-Step Instructions

1
Melt the butter in a pan over medium-high heat, then add the sliced onion, mushrooms and crushed juniper. Sauté until the mushrooms are soft and the onions golden, and set aside.
2
Lay the thin slices of suovas into the hot pan and fry quickly for 2 to 3 minutes, just until the edges catch and the smoke comes alive.
3
Return the mushrooms and onions to the pan, stir in the cream and thyme, and heat through for a minute.
4
Season with salt and black pepper and serve at once, folded into warm pita or gáhkku flatbread.

Chef's Tip

Slice the suovas while it is still half-frozen — the cured meat firms up and yields near-translucent pieces that sear in seconds without drying.

Chef's Tip

It comes already salted from the cure, so hold back the salt until the very end and taste before you add any.

How this page was made

Written by: The Norcook editorial archive. No individual author is named yet — see the editorial and food-safety policy for what that means and what has to happen before a byline appears.
Content last checked: 2026-07-21 — “checked” records an editorial check, not a qualified review. Where one exists, the recipe-specific review record appears in the food-safety callout.
Regional context: Sápmi — the hub carries the wider background, the ingredient glossary and its own sources.
Sources: No page-level sources are recorded for this recipe yet. The cultural background above is written as general context, not as a sourced historical claim.

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