Scott Kimmel, owner of New Day Fisheries, carefully displays a treated and ready-to-cook lutefisk. The cod has been salt-dried, soaked in clear water, marinated in a lye solution and rewashed in preparation for the season’s lutefisk dinners. – Photo by Susan Colby
Traditional foods are wonderful things. We get turkeys for Thanksgiving, chocolate hearts for Valentine's Day, colored eggs at Easter, hot dogs and hamburgers for the Fourth of July. But what about lutefisk? Why would anyone celebrate a fish? And not even a plain fish at that, but a fish that has been chemically treated?
Some might argue that smoked salmon is chemically treated or cured, but to most Pacific Northwesterners, a bit of smoke and seasoning is acceptable. So what about lutefisk?
What about lutefisk?
The Scandinavian people have long had a tradition of consuming lutefisk during the holiday season. It's a cod, or whitefish, which is first salted and dried, then soaked in fresh water to remove the salt, soaked again in a lye solution and then washed again in fresh water to remove all traces of the lye.
A long process? "Yes, it is," acknowledged Scott Kimmel, owner of New Day Fisheries located at the Port of Port Townsend.
Kimmel's business is the largest supplier of lutefisk on the West Coast. Last year he shipped 40,000 pounds of it. "From when we salt the fish to the finished product takes about eight weeks."
It's a labor-intensive process, but it has been simplified in the past few years, Kimmel said. "We used to have to skin and bone the fish by hand, but now the fish boats skin, bone, fillet and freeze them onboard."
In days of yore, women typically sat for hours filleting the fish, removing the skins and pulling the needle-sharp bones from the fillets with pliers. Now, the prepared fillets are packed and shipped in bulk and New Day stores them, frozen, ready for the season.
It doesn't stink
Lutefisk has always had a bad rap because of the perceived nasty smell, but when it is processed correctly, "it doesn't stink," Kimmel vows.
"It doesn't have a strong flavor either," he said, smiling. So why do people eat something that has a sometimes-questionable texture, described by some as "glutinous" or like Jell-O and with very little flavor?
"It's the butter."
According to Poulsbo-born Jeanne Jorgensen of Port Ludlow, the traditional way of serving lutefisk is to smother it in butter. "It's the butter and salt and pepper that give it the flavor," she said. Jorgensen bakes her fish, while many others boil the treated fillets. Some of the more daring lutefiskers serve theirs with a mustard-spiked white sauce, but all serve boiled potatoes, peas or carrots and other root vegetables. For those who are afraid to try the fish or have tried it and said "never again," there are always meatballs and gravy.
"Immigrants remember the traditions," she said. In Scandinavia, people are more likely to celebrate the holidays with roast pork than with lutefisk. There are numerous people of Scandinavian origin in this area, and many belong to the Daughters and Sons of Norway organizations, which host traditional lutefisk dinners. According to Jean Kaldahl of Port Townsend, whose mother was Norwegian, from October through December there are numerous lutefisk dinners staged throughout the region, many of them at Lutheran churches.
"Scandinavians seek out and attend many of the dinners on what we call the 'lutefisk circuit,'" she said. After growing up with the tradition, "It's hardly Christmas without lutefisk."
New Day Fisheries hasn't always made lutefisk, although the recipe came with the business they bought in 1982. But with the Kimmels' Norwegian heritage, they are the ideal folks to produce the traditional food.
Fishing in his blood
Scott Kimmel has been going to sea with his dad, Denny, since he was 6 years old. When the senior Kimmel decided he had had enough of commercial fishing, he and his wife, Gail, bought the seafood business in Poulsbo from Vic Veals. Plans to target the retail market were killed by zoning regulations, and they were thrown into the wholesale seafood processing business.
After a few years, Denny decided the business wasn't for him and went back to commercial fishing, leaving Scott in charge. When they outgrew the facility in Poulsbo, they moved the plant to Port Townsend, but the restaurant and fish market they had finally founded in Poulsbo, New Day Seafood Eatery and Fish Market, continued to operate until 1996.
Since its move to Port Townsend in 1987, New Day Fisheries has continued to grow, providing jobs locally and supporting the local fishermen. Depending on the season, "We have between 10 and 50 people working here," said Scott Kimmel. "We deal with more than 200 local fishermen who come from all over the local area."
Theirs is a symbiotic relationship: Independent fishermen provide their catches to New Day, which in turn buys their catch, providing income to the fishermen and jobs to workers on shore. The fishermen are both commercial and tribal fishermen. It's a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week business, with salmon, crab, shrimp and, more recently, sea urchin fishermen offloading their catches into waiting trucks or live tanks.
Live seafood
"Our biggest change over the past few years has been toward selling live seafood," Kimmel said. The company has added more live tanks, which can hold up to 15,000 pounds of live product, meaning crabs and prawns.
"Last year we did more than half a million pounds of Dungeness crab."
The most recent addition to New Day's wares is sea urchins. "We ship these to Japan," Kimmel said. When the boats come in, the urchins are loaded live into boxes, packed with gel ice packs, and then driven to SeaTac International Airport for immediate delivery to the other side of the world. But with the majority of their products sold locally, Kimmel said the company is looking for ways to expand the operation on the dock, to make the hours more consistent and provide a wider array of seafood.
Along with the lutefisk, New Day Fisheries makes its own Poulsbo pickled herring and canned tuna, which is sometimes found locally in Jefferson County but more consistently at Central Market in Poulsbo.
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