Kjötsúpa

Ingredients

• Lamb on the bone — shoulder or neck1.2 kg
• Pearl barley120 g
• Potatoes500 g
• Carrots4
• Swede400 g
• Onions2
• Cabbage300 g
• Dried herbs1 tsp
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cover the meat with three litres of cold water, bring it up and skim carefully.

   20 min

2. 2

   Simmer for an hour and a half, never letting it boil hard; the broth has to stay clear.

   92 min

3. 3

   Add the barley and onion and cook forty minutes more.

   42 min

4. 4

   Add the carrot, swede and potato in large pieces and cook twenty minutes.

   22 min

5. 5

   Add the cabbage for the last ten minutes and season with salt and pepper.

   12 min

6. 6

   Divide the meat between bowls, ladle over the broth and vegetables and serve with rye bread.

   5 min

About the dish

Icelandic lamb grazes free on grass and moss. The meat smells more distinctly for it, and the soup needs neither spices nor herbs.

There is almost no seasoning here: salt, pepper, sometimes dried herbs. Everything else is the taste of the meat and the roots, and adding more is considered spoiling it.

The barley goes in an hour before the end. Earlier and it dissolves into gruel; later and it stays hard in the finished soup.

Worth knowing

• — Bone-in meat is essential. Without bones the soup is hollow: the flavour comes from the collagen in the joints.
• — Cut the vegetables large. Small pieces fall apart in twenty minutes and cloud the broth.
• — The soup is better on the second day. Icelanders make a big pot and eat it three days running without any embarrassment.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

36 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

42 g

More from Iceland

• Plokkfiskur — Flaked boiled fish mashed with potato in a white sauce. Icelandic home cooking made from leftovers.