Tørrfisk

Name: Tørrfisk
Total time: 2 d
Cuisine: Norwegian
Ingredients: 600 g stockfish, reconstituted; 2 tbsp butter; Salt, for the poaching water; For the white sauce: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, 400 ml milk, nutmeg; Boiled potatoes and fried bacon bits, to serve

Wind-dried Lofoten stockfish — intensely savoury — soaked, gently poached and served with root purée.

2 day soakAdvanced

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Cultural Context & History

Stockfish — cod dried on wooden racks in the Arctic wind — is Norway's oldest export, unchanged since the Viking age. Rehydrated and cooked, it delivers a concentrated taste of the sea and the cold.

Ingredients

600 g stockfish, reconstituted312 kcal · 73.2 g protein · 1.8 g fat · 0 g carbs per 100 g
2 tbsp butter714 kcal · 0 g protein · 78.6 g fat · 0 g carbs per 100 g
Salt, for the poaching water0 kcal · 0 g protein · 0 g fat · 1330 g carbs per 100 g
For the white sauce: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, 400 ml milk, nutmeg
Boiled potatoes and fried bacon bits, 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

Deep non-reactive tubHolds the fish and cold water through the long soak.
Slotted fish sliceLifts the delicate poached flakes without breaking them.
Balloon whiskWorks the milk into a smooth, lump-free sauce.

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Step-by-Step Instructions

1
Reconstitute the dried stockfish in ice-cold water in the fridge for 7 to 10 days, changing the water daily until the flesh is plump and pliable.
2
Cut the fish into even portions and lower them into a pot of gently simmering salted water.
3
Poach for 10 to 15 minutes, until the flakes separate easily at the touch of a fork.
4
Melt the butter, whisk in the flour, then loosen with the milk to a smooth white sauce and season with nutmeg.
5
Serve the poached fish under the sauce, with boiled potatoes and crisp fried bacon bits.

Chef's Tip

Keep the water at a bare shiver rather than a boil — hard heat toughens the reconstituted flakes and shakes them apart before they turn tender.

Chef's Tip

Change the soaking water at the same time each day and keep it close to freezing; a warmer soak risks souring the fish over so long a stretch.

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: Vestlandet — 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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