Smørrebrød

The introduction

Hello everyone, I hope, that you are all doing just fine!

In this article I want to tell you about some parts of Danish cuisine, and, well, it’s mainly about the Danish open sandwich or something like that, which is called Smørrebrød .

Do you know what Smørrebrød is? I didn’t know anything about it either until just recently, when it was this summer and I was to go to Denmark.

Of course, when going to another country, you just want to find out more information about it and you search everything, like the cities and tourist attractions and culture and the cuisine and the people and the living rate, etc. Well, in general, you search for everything in details, I guess. and it’s like a tradition or rule or something, that when you are going to another foreign country, you should definitely taste their cuisine and national dishes and things, thatthey usually have for lunch or dinner or breakfast.

A little bit about Smørrebrød

Well, the Smørrebrød is a Danish word and it originally was of three words: smør og brød (“butter and bread”) and, as you may have already guessed, it consists of a slice of  bread, which has some butter spread on top of it. However, that’s not just it, I mean, if it was just some butter and bread, it wouldn’t make any sense to be the traditional Danish cuisine, it would just be a slice of bread with butter. So that, they made this thing kind of fancier and decided to have some toppings on those things, so that it wouldn’t be a boring butter and bread, instead, it would be something else with all those different toppings that the people would think of.

The bread

I must tell you, that  it all depends on the type of bread, too, I mean, it’s not some white bread or whatever. It should be a piece of rye bread, which is called rugbrød in Danish and it’s a dense, dark brown bread, which tastes kind of funny and it’s not like other bread, that we usually have every day in Georgia. And, I should tell you , that we usually eat white bread in Georgia and not that black or rye one. And, well, the bread is very important part of the Scandinavian cuisine, as it is in Georgia, however, the difference is, that they prefer this rugbrød to any other bread. Rugbrød is a sour-dough rye breadand it’s dark and heavy. There are all those different types of rugbrød, if you want to know the truth. It can be light or very dark, refined or whole grain, etc. However, the bread can also be a franskbrød, which is a very light and crusty wheat bread and if you don’t’ really like the taste of rugbrød, you can replace it with that  franskbrød and have the smorrebrød that way.

The toppings

The toppings or pålæg can be some different things that you might think of, if you ask me. The toppings can be all different. You can have some pickled herrings as your toppings with some boiled eggs, which are sliced and look very appealing. They also like to have some salad leaves or some fresh herbs on their smorrebrods to make them more beautiful and, besides, they give the dish some lightness, I guess.

You know, I wanted to taste a smorrebrod in Denmark, because I knew, that it was their national dish and I wanted to taste, what they were eating, however, when I looked at those smorrebrods, they didn’t look very fancy or different, they were kind of sandwiches, and they just didn’t have another slice of bread on the top. And, to be honest, they didn’t cost cheap and they were pretty expensive for their look, and the taste, too, maybe.

Well, we had those kind of smorrebrods in our university canteen and they cost 9 DKK 1 piece, so that it was not that expensive and I decided to have a taste of one of them once, so that I could say, that I had tasted the smorrebrod. This one I our university canteen that day was this rye bread with the butter and some hard boiled egg slices with some fresh herbs on them. And since I love hard boiled eggs and I eat them very often, I decided to buy one of those smorrebrods. To  be honest, this smorrebrod didn’t taste much different, I mean, it was just the butter and bread with some hard boiled egg, which I can usually eat on my breakfast. Of course, it was pretty good, I mean, I love all the ingredients, that the smorrebrod had, however , it was nothing fancy in there, if you ask me.

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