On one Tuesday every February or March, kitchens all over Iceland smell the same. A big pot of yellow split peas has been bubbling for hours, and next to it sits a second pot of salted lamb. The dish is saltkjöt og baunir, salted meat and peas, and it is eaten on Sprengidagur.
The name of the day translates as Bursting Day. That tells you most of what you need to know about portion sizes.
This is a guide to the dish and a recipe you can cook at home, with notes on what to use if you live somewhere without an Icelandic butcher.
What is saltkjöt og baunir?
Saltkjöt is salted lamb, usually bone-in pieces from the shoulder, neck or ribs. Baunir means beans, but here it refers to a thick soup of yellow split peas cooked with onion and often a little bacon.
The two are cooked side by side and served together, with chunks of rutabaga, potatoes and carrots. Some families put the meat into the soup bowl. Others keep it on a separate plate and eat it with a fork between spoonfuls.
The result is salty, earthy and very filling. It belongs to the same family as Dutch erwtensoep and the Swedish ärtsoppa served on Thursdays, but the salted lamb makes it unmistakably Icelandic.
Sprengidagur: the day of bursting
Sprengidagur is Iceland's Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It falls 47 days before Easter, so the date moves between early February and early March.
It is the middle of three days with their own customs. Bolludagur, the Monday, is for cream-filled buns. Öskudagur, the Wednesday, is when children dress up and sing in shops for sweets.
The idea behind Sprengidagur is old and simple: eat as much rich food as you can before the fast. Few Icelanders fast for Lent today, but the meal has stayed. Shops stock up on salted lamb and split peas in the weeks before, and many restaurants and canteens serve it on the day.
Why salted lamb?
Before refrigeration, Icelanders preserved meat in three main ways: smoking, souring in whey, and salting. Lamb from the autumn slaughter was packed in salt or brine in barrels and kept through the winter.
Smoked lamb became hangikjöt, the Christmas favourite you can read about in our recipe for hangikjöt with uppstúf. Salted lamb was the everyday winter meat, boiled and eaten with root vegetables.
Today saltkjöt is lightly cured and sold in vacuum packs, so it is far less fierce than the barrel meat of the past. It still tastes noticeably saltier than fresh lamb, and that salt is what seasons the whole meal.
Ingredients
This serves about six people, with leftovers of soup. Use a large pot for the peas, as they swell and foam.
For the salted lamb:
- 1.5 kg (about 3 lb) salted lamb on the bone, in large pieces
- 1 onion, halved
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
For the split pea soup:
- 400 g (2 cups) yellow split peas
- 2 litres (8 cups) water
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 100 g (3.5 oz) bacon, diced (optional)
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 500 g (1 lb) rutabaga (swede), peeled and cut into bite-sized chunks
- 300 g (10 oz) carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
- 500 g (1 lb) potatoes, peeled
- Freshly ground black pepper
How to make saltkjöt og baunir
Start with the meat. If your salted lamb is very salty, soak it in cold water in the fridge for a few hours or overnight first. Then rinse it, put it in a large pot and cover it well with cold water.
Bring it slowly to the boil and skim off the grey foam. Add the halved onion, bay leaves and peppercorns, turn the heat down and let it simmer gently, partly covered, for 1½ to 2 hours, until the meat is tender and pulls easily from the bone.
While the lamb cooks, rinse the split peas in a sieve. Soaking them overnight shortens the cooking a little, but it is not essential.
Melt the butter in a second large pot and fry the bacon and chopped onion over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add the split peas, water and thyme and bring to the boil, skimming off the foam for the first 15 minutes or so.
Lower the heat and simmer, partly covered, for about 1 hour. Stir now and then, scraping the bottom, as split peas catch easily. Add a splash of hot water if it gets too thick before the peas have broken down.
Add the rutabaga and carrots and cook for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and the peas have collapsed into a thick, golden soup. Meanwhile, boil the potatoes in a separate pan of water.
Now taste. Do not add salt until this point. Ladle in a little of the lamb cooking liquid if the soup needs more depth and seasoning, and finish with black pepper.
Serving it the Icelandic way
Lift the lamb out of its pot and carve or cut it into pieces. Serve it on a platter with the boiled potatoes, alongside deep bowls of the split pea soup with its rutabaga and carrots.
Some people cut the meat straight into their soup, others eat it on the side. A dab of mustard is a common extra, and buttered dark rye bread such as rúgbrauð is good for mopping up.
Drink water. You will need it.
If you can't find Icelandic salted lamb
Outside Iceland, saltkjöt is hard to buy. A smoked or salted ham hock is the most common stand-in and gives a similarly salty, savoury soup, although the flavour leans towards pork.
In Norway, pinnekjøtt, the salted and dried lamb ribs eaten at Christmas, is another option. Soak it in cold water for about a day, as you would before steaming it, then simmer it as above.
You can also use fresh bone-in lamb shoulder or neck and season the soup more generously with salt. It won't be quite the same, but the structure of the meal stays intact. For a fresh-lamb meal in a single pot, try our kjötsúpa, Icelandic lamb soup.
Tips for a better split pea soup
Keep the heat low. Split peas go from gentle simmer to scorched bottom quickly, and a burnt taste runs through the whole pot.
Salt last. Between the bacon and the salted lamb broth, the soup often needs little or no extra salt.
Cut the rutabaga a little smaller than the carrots, since it takes longer to soften. It is the vegetable Icelanders most associate with this meal, so don't leave it out.
Make plenty. The soup is famously better on the second day.
Storing and reheating
Cool the soup and meat quickly and keep them covered in the fridge for up to 3 days. The soup thickens to almost a paste as it cools, so loosen it with hot water when you reheat it, stirring well.
The split pea soup freezes well for up to 3 months. Leave the potatoes out of anything you plan to freeze, as they turn grainy when thawed.
Leftover salted lamb is good cold, sliced thinly on rye bread, or chopped and stirred back into the reheated soup for a quick lunch.
Questions about saltkjöt og baunir
Can I use green split peas? Yes. The soup works the same way, but it turns green and tastes a little sweeter and grassier. Icelanders use yellow peas, which give the soup its golden colour.
Should the lamb cook in the soup? Some cooks add one or two pieces of salted lamb to the pea pot for flavour and boil the rest separately. Cooking all of it in the soup can make it far too salty.
Is it only eaten on Sprengidagur? It is most closely tied to that day, but plenty of families cook it on cold winter evenings too. The leftovers make an easy supper for the rest of the week.
About Sigrún Ólafsdóttir
Sigrún grew up baking rúgbrauð with her grandmother in Akureyri and has spent the last decade collecting recipes from kitchens all over Iceland. She writes Icelandic MAT's recipes, one dish at a time.