BS: Inuit cooking

Subject: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 09:17 AM

In the Notes and Queries section of yesterday's UK Guardian someone asked what Eskimos (sic) used for cooking fuel and why didn't their igloos melt.
It is well known that for fuel the Inuit use rendered down whale blubber. A tripod of walrus ribs is positioned above the fire from which meat is suspended. Traditionally, this would have been seal or caribou, now it is increasingly likely to be supermarket meat.
Nanook of the North's distant cousin, Catspaw of the Mid-West put it more succinctly on the Mudcat many years ago: "Whale oil, beef hooked".

RtS
(I'll get me parka)

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 09:30 AM

Muktuk is good for you and doesn't need cooking.

Besides, cattle don't do well, ranging across the tundra and icefields.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 10:14 AM

Couple things,RtS.

1. Igloos are not built to "live" in - they are temporary shelters used (usually) only one night while out hunting.

2. They do melt a bit, and that is purposeful. You build the igloo, get a hot fire going inside, close the entrance and wait a few minutes. The entire inside should be melting. Then open the entry, pull out the fire, and let the cold air enter. That freezes the melting water, and leaves a layer of ice coating the inside. Now the structure is strong enough so that even a heavy animal (polar bear, for example) can walk on top of it without it crushing. (You hope, anyway!)

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: mack/misophist
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 10:25 AM

Rapaire:

An Inuit friend once did me the great honour of letting me have some of the muktuk his aunt had sent. Eating it with a smile is probably the bravest thing I've ever done. And I don't believe it's especially good for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: el ted
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 11:18 AM

Interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Inükshük
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 11:30 AM

They also used an ingenious lamp called, I think a kudelik. It was dish shaped and a bit of dried moss served as a wick along one edge. A lump of blubber was suspended over the wick. Once lighted the blubber would drip oil into the lamp, but as the level of the oil rose, the wick was diminished and the flame grew smaller. On the other hand, as the oil was used up, the wick became more exposed resulting in a greater flame. with only minor tending such a lamp can serve for heat, light, and cooking.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 11:47 AM

Mack/misophist, your Southern Bias is showing. A high-fat, high-calorie diet was (and is) essential in the Arctic lands. As for the nutritional content of such foods, poke around at http://www.itk.ca/english/itk/departments/enviro/wildlife/seal.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: JenEllen
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 12:28 PM

Muktuk is kind of like Gatorade, IMHO. You know, when you haven't exercised, Gatorade tastes like piss's poor cousin, but after a run it is nectar of the gods? Same deal. Muktuk in the comfort of a building is HORRIBLE, but when you've been out on snowshoes all day you could also eat the arm that handed it to you. The only reason it hasn't made it as a professional sports product thusfar is that the commercials would be to ugly.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 12:53 PM

I have a friend who believes that muktuk is not an acquired taste- that everyone will like it who does not have a preconceived dislike for the idea. And he's a very white boy from Roanoke, Virginia.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 12:55 PM

el ted, my desire is to hunt you down and pour muktuk down your 100th posting!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 12:58 PM

Here's the clicky.   For some reason I couldn't make it before.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Metchosin
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 01:01 PM

Ellenpolly, el ted seems to be a man of few words, most of them boring.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: mack/misophist
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 07:14 PM

Rapaire:

I understand the need for fat calories under severe conditions. Read Mowat's book on the Canadian Inland Eskimos. However, my friend Joe grew up in Wales, Alaska in an ordinary house and never lived in such harsh circumstances. But what he gave me was nothing but fat in oil with some anonymous greens thrown in. He missed it because it was a link with home. In a pinch, he ate still frozen fish sticks dipped in Wesson Oil.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 08:57 PM

Canadian Inland Eskimos???

Eskimos are coastal dwellers. Inland dwellers are Indians.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 10:06 PM

If he was from Wales, he knew about cold weather! The Bering Strait on one side and Lopp Lagoon on the other, and north of Nome. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr! squared. Maybe cubed.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 11:12 PM

When I was in Calgary a couple of weeks ago I made sure to get some coins as change to bring back to the states for the kids. One was of an Eskimo, I think. Someone up there told me that the coins were popular and disappeared in a hurry, so I was lucky to get one. It celebrates Nunuvik or Nunuvut, not sure which, becoming a province.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: mack/misophist
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 12:20 AM

Hudson's Bay cuts almost half way across Canada and it has Inuit there. The original 'Nanook of the North' was a Hudson's Bay Inuit. But the people Mowat wrote about were inland Inuit, caribou hunters living in skin tents all year round. 'Three mouthfuls of fat for one of meat. If you eat fish, eat the guts too or you'll end up starving.'
BTW, that's the same Farley Mowat who wrote Never Cry Wolf. The book is much better than the movie but not as pretty.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 12:44 AM

Rapaire, might mack/misophist have meant his friend was from Prince of Wales Island? That's in Southeast and that's pretty moderate.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 12:59 AM

I once got an eskimo dessert from a nice lady. Huckleberries and Crisco. It was ok, though she said the Crisco should really have been blubber.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 03:55 AM

Mudcatters should know better than to take anything I post seriously! I'll say anything to drag up an old joke for another airing.
However, if you have factual information you want to share with the Guardian's enquirer you can e-mail [e-mail]

RtS
(I'll just get me mukluks on, then I'll sled for cover)

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Metchosin
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 04:48 AM

SRS, Canada still only has 10 Provinces. Nunavut is officially a Territory. Nunavut

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: el ted
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 05:44 AM

Mmmmmmmmmm still interested.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Inükshük
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 08:14 AM

I was interested in Guest Clint Keller's post. Half way through our first winter in Aklavik, NWT in 1968, we were not thriving well on our government rations of canned and dried goods. A kindly old Innuit couple felt sorry for us, especially our children, and came over with a generous helping of "Eskimo Icecream". It was a frozen delicacy, very rich, and delicious tasting. It was made from the tiny native blueberries and cranberries mixed with the chopped-up raw liver of fresh water ling cod (loshe).
    I guess huckleberries and Crisco would make a reasonable substitute, but not nearly as nutritious.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 11:52 AM

Metchosin, thanks for the link. I remember reading about this when it happened, but couldn't remember the sequence of events and line drawings.

Our equivalent of huckleberries and crisco is strawberries or blueberries and oil-filled cool whip (over angel food cake in a quick shortcake sort of dessert).

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Blackcatter
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 12:37 PM

As for the whole - fire in the igloo thing again - the fires started inside them were usually small - like was said - that first it was to help with creating a ice skin.

Being temporary structures, the Inuit didn't usually cook in their igloos - on hunting trips, etc., they carry dried meat, blubber, etc to eat - things that did not need to be cooked. They also carried a great deal of water with them - though the would melt water outside on larger fires.

Fires inside igloos are not good - not because of the heat - but because of the fumes and smoke. That's why arctic explorers use clean-burning gas heaters.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 10:45 PM

In the summer my igloo is water.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 24 Apr 04 - 12:57 AM

The nice eskimo lady was the sister-in-law of my ex-brother-in-law, and I only met her once. so that's really all I know about huckleberries and Crisco.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 24 Apr 04 - 01:12 AM

Hey, RtS, I got the joke right at the start! Think I was alone?

~ B in T

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Risky Business
Date: 24 Apr 04 - 11:45 AM

I think the huckleberries and crisco is called "Eskimo Ice Cream"

I was given some muktuk once, it consists of part whale or walrus skin and part of the inner lining of fat, so it's a kind of oreo colored, black white thing. The fat turned liquid and went right down. The meat part stayed rock hard. I had to dispense with it, and the nice eskio lady gave me a lovely smile and went right on chewing through hers, with one tooth in her head.

There is a also a nice Eskimo recipe for what to do with fish heads, the title begins with the word "stinky".

Song TIE IN: Stan Rogers, this genius Canadian folk song writer/ singer wrote among many great songs: "Northwest Passage" invoking the name of Sir John Franklin, who led an ill-fated expedition into northern Canada and disappeared, precipitating more expeditions to find out where his went. An apocryphal tale is that taking pity on some of his starving men, the locals (Eskimos) gave them some muktuk, whereupon the English burned the fatty part to cook the meaty part, thereby losing the caloric benefit the fat would've provided, and destroying the vitally important mite of vitamin C that was in the uncooked flesh.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 05 May 04 - 08:10 PM

anyone know how to make inuit tea?
I need to for a school project

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Sep 04 - 09:13 PM

In Alaska we make labrador tea- but I suppose the shrub doesn't grow that far north.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 10:46 AM

all I can find is that Inuit tea is made from the dried leaves, flowers and shoots of Ukiurtatuq .

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Inükshük
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 11:32 AM

Check out Ledum groenlandicum(Labrador Tea)on Google or elsewhere.
The stuff grows everywhere from the great lakes to well inside the arctic circle.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 06:37 PM

[e-mail]

They are located in Darwell, Alberta. That is their e-mail address.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Sorcha
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 07:24 PM

Is that stuff similar to Uva Ursi? (I'll check out the links)

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Sep 04 - 08:59 PM

psssstttt It isn't very good to my buds. It must be an acquired taste.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Sep 04 - 08:48 PM

is the name muktuk patented?

you could have a whole range

muktuk,shitsnax,dungbikkies,crapbars,poohpies.....

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 12:01 AM

I thought 'cooking' implied changing the flavour, texture and other aspects of raw food by the application of external forces to change the resultant physical and chemical composition of the product?

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 04:36 AM

Ah, come on, weelittledrummmer. Muktuk is not the waste product of an animal. The Inuit and other native people would be more likely to judge it akin to berries or bird eggs, something that is ready to eat. Cultures differentiate between what is acceptable and what is offal.

Not too many years ago, a great many Americans would not have tried Sushi.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 07:10 AM

... or Sashimi.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Sep 04 - 11:26 AM

apologies to all Inuits.

in England, Tuck as in Friar Tuck is food. Tom Brown and all posh English schoolboys have access to a tuck shop, with scrummy snax. And muck is ....well ...muck.

there was no suggestion of enjoying a crap sandwich out there on the ice floes, I'm sure thing are difficult enough and in dietary terms they have much to teach us all.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST,skizzza
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 12:06 AM

please tell me how to cook traditional tnuit desserts

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: InOBU
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 10:11 AM

As to the question about Canadian inland Inuit, the people about whom Farley Mowat wrote, now have a semi autonimous state called Ninavut. It is a great book, and well worth reading. I spent and hope to spend time among the Innu, are are far northern "Indians" as they speak an Algonquin language, but many aspects of their life are like the Inuit. In fact the plural of Innu is Innuat, but they do not speak the same language. They live in Quebec and Labrador, and hunt the same carabou as the people of Ninavut, on the carabous seasonal migrations. I learned that the traditional food not only tastes good, but eating it is a protection (to some small degree) against the voracious mosquitos and black flys, which given the option will eat the guy who is eating sugar, garlic, or using soap or antipersperant, or other things that taste yummy to huge blood sucking insects. When Innue friends such as Yvette (from my song Yvette's song, on Mudcat someplace) would come to speak at the UN, they'd often bring me a huge hunk of Carabou in an ice chest, and there is nothing like it... yum. Also, the Innu dried powdered carabou is a real treat - polverized pemicin.
When one eats with an open mind, lots of things are good. Innu traditional cooking also has been added to by the boarding school years, the dark days of Innu life from the late 1940s to the late 60s. The only good part of those days was the injection of French cooking, which a lot of traditional families add to their tradition, as Bannock (Scottish Whitebread) was added hundreds of years ago.

Quai Quai
Lorcan

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: meself
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 01:47 PM

Farley Mowat: to be consumed with copious quantities of salt; known by some old northern hands as, "Hardly Know-it"

"Nunavut" - "semi-autonomous" in the sense that any Canadian province or American state is semi-autonomous (incidentally, not to be confused with "Nunavik", which is the Inuit region of Quebec, in French, "Nouveau Quebec", or, as a certain beer label would have it, "Fin du Monde").

In the several years I spent there, about the only cooking I saw was of "southern" food - although occasionally some caribou or seal meat would be tossed into a frying pan. And of course bannock. The general habit was to eat "country food" raw.

By the way, muktuk is a true delicacy, once you've acquired a taste for raw fish and meat.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: gnu
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 02:10 PM

meself.... "Hardly Know-it".... hahahaha. Yup. A lot of people have the same opinion.

My uncle was in the north a valley or two away from Farout when he "researched" "Never Cry Wolf". Was a good book. Made a great movie. Did not make a friend of many northerners, including my uncle. Subsequent books and antics are much the same. Written to sell copies at the expense of some. Ask the sealers.

I never met the man. Don't care to. I've met enough who have. Maybe they were jealous? all of them? I dunno.

In any case, the movie "Never Cry Wolf" was... is... amazing. The cinematography... the characters... the jokes... I highly recommend it.

As for caribou and seal and such, it's okay when yer hungry, nooguktook.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Peace
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 02:57 PM

I really like caribou. Very lean meat and great slow cooked. Only had caribou from the east a few times. The rest was near the Circle in the west. Seemed leaner there for some reason.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: gnu
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:58 PM

I first ate seal stew and caribou stew in Makkovik, Labrador. At Susie Anderson's Hotel. Never saw a piece of meat in any of it. It was.... ahhh.. thick.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: gnu
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 07:33 PM

I like Virginia White Tailed Deer (venison?). Then moose. Of course, Birch Partridge (Ruffed Grouse) taken in budding season, when they are eating alder and birch and poplar are the best. Of course, that's kinda PI these days.

Caribou. Not particularly.

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: GUEST,Inobu
Date: 07 Mar 09 - 10:16 PM

Don't forget Moose, and moose pie... yum. Lorcan sans cookie

Subject: RE: BS: Inuit cooking
From: Peace
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 03:08 PM

I like dry meat--a kinda jerky made from moose meat. Tough as nails, but smoked properly it's DEE LISH USS.