Appetizers & nibbles

Tjúgu (cured smoked mutton casings)

A traditional Faroese dish made from mutton casings, that is, intestines stuffed with fat, salted, then smoked and dried. The texture is firm and the flavour smoky. It is eaten in thin slices, often as a pre-dinner snack or with bread.

1 h
4 servings
Advanced
Budget-friendly
🇫🇴 Faroe Islands

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Ingredients

4 Mutton casings (intestines), cleaned
500 g Mutton fat (suet), in pieces
60 g Grey sea salt
1 tsp Crushed black pepper

On the side

1 Rye bread

Instructions

Clean the casings thoroughly under cold water, then soak them for 2 hours in lightly salted water.
Cut the mutton fat into small cubes and mix it with the salt and pepper.
Fill the casings with the salted fat, leaving them fairly soft, then tie each end with kitchen string.
Dry them for 24 hours in a cool place before smoking.
Hang the casings in a smokehouse or a covered barbecue with birch or beech wood shavings, at 40–50 °C, for 4 to 6 hours.
Let them cool completely, keep them in a cool place, and slice them thinly to serve.

Variations and tips

With what you can find here. If casings are hard to find, use pieces of natural-casing pork sausage or half-tubes of edible collagen casing instead.