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Meat from Faroe Islands

Ræst grind and ræstur fuglur (historical)ræst grind

Ræst grind is pilot whale meat that is hung unsalted in the Faroese wind until it is half-dried and fermented, the same way as ræst mutton, fish and bird meat. A physician in 1846 called this stage "half rotten". Today pilot whale meat is mostly eaten dried or cooked, and Faroese health advisories limit or advise against eating it because of mercury and PCBs.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Ræst grind and ræstur fuglur itself.

Short entryMeat

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedA household preservation method with no recipe; the meat is hung as it comes.
Pilot whale meat, or bird meatHung without salting, smoking or other preparation[svanberg2015][svanberg2023]
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What changes: Unsalted whale meat hangs to dry in the wind

Step 1 of 3
Hang the meat to dry in the wind, unsalted
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Moulds
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Ræst grind is pilot whale meat that is hung unsalted in the Faroese wind until it is half-dried and fermented, the same way as ræst mutton, fish and bird meat. A physician in 1846 called this stage "half rotten". Today pilot whale meat is mostly eaten dried or cooked, and Faroese health advisories limit or advise against eating it because of mercury and PCBs.

What makes this one different

Ræst grind uses the same unsalted wind-drying as ræst mutton (ræst kjøt) and ræstur fiskur, but on pilot whale or bird meat. Unlike mutton, whale meat now carries health advisories.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Ræstur fuglurBird meat hung and fermented the same way.

Safety

This page records a past practice; it is not a method to follow. The meat is unsalted and half-dried, and Panum in 1846 described it as half rotten, with a mouldy look and maggots not infrequent. Pilot whale meat and blubber carry mercury and PCBs. In 2008 the Faroese Chief Medical Officer advised that pilot whale meat was no longer fit for human consumption; in 2011 the Faroese Food and Veterinary Authority, which did not support that advice, advised that a 70-kg person could eat 250 g once a month. Poorly made wind-dried meat also carries a botulism risk. In Alaska, where sea mammal foods age at neutral pH, whale was implicated in 15 of 141 confirmed botulism outbreaks from 1950 to 2010, and that toxin can be deadly.

Hazards the sources name: Clostridium botulinum (a risk in badly made wind-dried mutton; nine Faroese botulism cases were reported in 1988–2007).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Peter Ludwig Panum described the method for lamb, pilot whale, fish and bird in 1846. Until home freezers became common in the late 1960s and early 1970s, drying and fermenting was the usual way to keep animal products on the Faroe Islands.

  1. [ak-guide] Alaska Division of Public Health, Section of Epidemiology 2011, Botulism in Alaska. A guide for physicians and health care providers, 2011 update (CDC Stacks copy)gov
  2. [svanberg2023] Svanberg I. 2023, Fermented mutton in the Faroe Islands, the survival of a local artisanship and food heritage, Journal of Ethnic Foods 10:16paper
  3. [svanberg2015] Svanberg I. 2015, Ræstur fiskur, air-dried fermented fish the Faroese way, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 11:76paper
  4. [helmsdal2026] Helmsdal E.F., á Fríðriksmørk Borðoy R., Nielsen J.B., Skaalum Petersen M. 2026, Awareness, cultural importance, risk perception and consumption behavior, the issue of contaminants in pilot whales in the Faroe Islands, International Journal of Circumpolar Health 85(1):2718020paper