- I wish we had smell-o-vision for this episode.

(sniffs) We're talking about surf and turf but not how you might expect.

(upbeat music) Have you ever tasted something that transported you to another world?

Dude, that's so legit.

I'm Chef Yia Vang.

That's what I aim to do every time I cook.

This looks amazing.

As a Hmong refugee from Southeast Asia, I use food as a way to share my culture, my family, and our history.

Join me (laughs) as we step into the kitchen with local chefs to relish the cuisines and culture of our neighbors.

Many of the foods we enjoy today come from humble beginnings.

Before refrigeration, folks had to get pretty crafty to keep their foods from spoiling.

Think drying, salting, smoking, all methods we still use today, like in one of my favorites, sausage.

- [Orest] Wonderful.

- Delicious.

We'll dig into that a little later.

But first, we're talking about one preserved food that you might be a little less familiar with, lutefisk.

(upbeat music) Hey, I'm Yia.

- I'm Nels, nice to meet you.

- What are we doing here?

- [Nels] We're at Olsen Fish Company.

We're here to get some lutefisk.

- [Yia] Meet Nels Thompson, also known as the lutefisk guy.

He runs one of the largest holiday lutefisk dinners in Minnesota.

- I am a Scandinavian American.

I have a wonderful Norwegian sweater that I got at Costco.

- Very Norwegian.

- [Nels] Very Norwegian.

- [Yia] From Costco.

(chuckles) - [Nels] Hey, Chris, I'm Nels.

Nice to meet you.

- [Chris] Hey.

Hey, Nels.

- I'm Yia.

- Hey, Yia, welcome to Olsen Fish Company.

- [Yia] Thanks.

(laid back music) - Why don't we get suited up here and I'll show you how we make lutefisk.

When we import the dried cod from Norway, it's basically some dried fish fillets that have just been naturally dried with- - Oh, wow.

- [Chris] This is actually our raw material that we're making lutefisk out of.

- It's kinda like fish jerky.

- It's not gonna mold.

It's not gonna spoil.

- It's preserved indefinitely, and that was the tradition of lutefisk.

It was an ancient way to preserve the fish.

(laid back music) Lutefisk is about a two-week process.

We soak 'em in fresh water for a few days, then we're adding the lye, which is caustic soda, to start that rehydration process, and also to bring the pH of the fish up so it will last longer.

- [Nels] Lutefisk is a compound Norwegian word.

Lute is lye, and fisk is fish.

So it's the lye fish, fish you soak in lye.

- We have a tank of fresh lutefisk here that's basically ready to be processed.

- [Yia] What are we looking for?

- It's the bend of the fish.

- Okay.

- It should bend over but not break.

- [Yia] Okay.

- [Chris] There you go, that's a nice fillet.

- Oh, wow.

This is the first time I've touched lutefisk, by the way.

- [Chris] Well, congratulations.

(Yia laughs) - [Yia] So what are we trimming here?

- Just trim the little edges off.

And then we wanna basically cut it.

It's about the length of your hand.

- [Yia] Okay.

- [Nels] Is that a good piece of lutefisk?

- [Chris] Yeah, yeah, it's perfect.

Yia, your turn.

- [Yia] Oh, boy.

Some hands are bigger than others, I found out.

(group laughs) - That's true.

(upbeat music) You guys wanna see some of the other stuff we do with dried cod around here?

(upbeat music) Here, everybody can have a piece.

- What?

- This is dried cod or stockfish.

We used to make lutefisk out of this exact thing.

- I've seen these out drying up in Northern Norway.

Kinda cool to hold one in my hand here now.

- It's an old world tradition where they would basically catch the cod and cut the head off, remove the guts.

- Mm-hmm.

- Tie the tails together.

And they would just hang on racks, and the fish would just naturally dry.

(laid back music) We stumbled across it about 20 years ago when a Nigerian family from St. Paul asked us, "Can you import this for us?"

The Nigerians and some other West African countries, they have a process where they're gonna cut this into steaks and reconstituted it by boiling it in water for a very long time to get it soft enough where they'll either use it in their soups or bake it as the protein for their meal.

- [Yia] So how did Norwegian cod end up in Nigeria?

A civil war in the late 1960s caused widespread famine.

As part of a worldwide relief effort, Norway sent stockfish because it didn't need refrigeration, and it was a great source of protein.

It's been a staple in Nigerian cuisine ever since.

- [Chris] Hey, guys, here's a nice fillet of lutefisk for you.

- This will be plenty.

Chris, thank you so much.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for everything.

- [Chris] You're welcome.

You bet.

- Thank you so much.

- [Chris] You bet.

It was great to meet you guys.

- [Yia] No one is sure where and when lutefisk originated.

It's mentioned in writings from 1555, and some say it dates back further to the Vikings.

(knife slashes) Both Swedes and Norwegians claim they invented it.

Regardless of its origins, these days, it's usually found in church basements.

(upbeat music) See.

See.

(grunts) Oh, yeah.

Okay, Nels, Chris provided us with this beautiful hefty fillet of lutefisk, also known as your championship belt.

- That's right, champion of lutefisk.

(crowd cheers) (triumphant music) - Okay, what are the first steps?

- We're gonna be taking our lutefisk out of its bag and start cutting it up into some appropriate size pieces.

- [Yia] Just wait for that smell.

Ooh.

- [Nels] There's some smell.

(harp music) (laid back music) - [Yia] Is there any seasoning or anything involved or just straight into the oven?

- [Nels] A little bit of salt.

- [Yia] Okay.

- But pretty much just straight into the oven.

We'll do drawn butter on top to kinda help, quote-unquote, I would say "season" with a little bit of butter.

(Yia laughs) So my mom actually made this lefse for me yesterday, so this is- - Oh.

We're you like, "Ma, I need lefse!"

(Nels chuckles) - Where's the lefse?

Yeah.

(laid back music) I actually had an opportunity to go up to Norway as a Norwegian major.

- Wait, you majored in Norwegian?

- I majored in Norwegian.

- Oh, that's a major?

- It is a major at one school.

- [Yia] Wow.

(laid back music) - So I got to live in Norway and experience the Norwegian way that things evolved the hundred years since everyone came over here.

Some of the things that I thought were so kinda sacredly Scandinavian just weren't that over there.

Things like lutefisk, most of my Norwegian friends pinch their nose and go, "Oh, my God, I can't believe you eat that over there."

- So even in, like, Norway, it's kinda like a, eh, you know?

- Oh, yeah.

They're like, "We don't do that anymore."

And as lutefisk kinda developed, it was this food preservation technique.

It's something that's seen of with Norway's days of kind of poverty, where things were pretty tough and that's the way you could kinda keep and save your food.

So they've really moved on.

And here, all those immigrants that came over to United States were people living in those kind of conditions, and it's a warm kind of tradition for all of them.

So it is something that they've really moved on from, we've embraced and hold near and dear and is truly kind of, in that sense, an American tradition at this point almost.

We got our lutefisk in.

Gotta start melting our butter and get our cream sauce warmed up.

- [Yia] I've never had lutefisk before.

- [Nels] Yeah.

- So what would you say is the first thing I should prepare myself for when eating lutefisk?

- Take a small bite.

And then after that, it is the consistency or the texture that can feel a little bit different.

It's not quite like regular fish.

It's got a little more firm, kinda bouncy texture to it.

But we really focus on the baking of the lutefisk.

- [Yia] Hmm.

- That makes it significantly better and less stinky than the boiled types of lutefisk.

And I think the sides that we put with it, you've got cream sauce, butter, meatballs, potatoes, lefse, those types of things really help.

You can have a bite with little bit of everything in it and it really kind of tastes pretty good.

Good to go.

(soft music) - [Yia] Looks beautiful.

- [Nels] That's right.

We got it to a perfect 140 degrees, not a second over.

- [Yia] Oh, that's the stuff.

- And a little bit of cream sauce across the potatoes.

- [Yia] Mm mm.

- And a couple pieces of lefse, and there you have the most colorful meal I've eaten in weeks.

- I can, like, kinda see through it a little bit.

- You definitely can.

- Yeah.

- It's really good.

- Is it?

- Mm-hmm.

- Mmm.

Okay, I'm not mad at it.

I'm not mad at it.

- I know.

A lot of people misunderstand lutefisk.

- Mm-hmm.

- It's really something pretty fantastic.

(laid back music) - [Yia] How did you become the director of the lutefisk dinners?

- My church had been running their lutefisk dinner for about 40 years.

They put out a call to the congregation to say, "Who's willing to run the dinner?"

So that's where I raised my hand as kind of, I think I was 23 at the time.

- [Yia] Paint me a picture of what I'm going to experience today.

- Hey, welcome.

- [Yia] Thank you.

- [Nels] So this dinner, it's gonna be a lot.

The dinner starts at about three, so we are gonna be - The dinner starts at three.

- [Nels] 3 p.m., yeah.

- Okay.

It's like a late lunch.

- It's a late lunch.

We tend to get about 600 or 650 people each year.

- Dude!

- It's a lot of people.

And in three hours, we serve all 650 people.

- [Yia] What?

- [Nels] We've got about a hundred volunteers that are gonna be coming in and going throughout the day.

- [Yia] I mean, it's like a legit restaurant operation you guys are running.

- [Nels] Yeah.

And we run a restaurant for, like, three hours every year.

(Yia chuckles) - Nels.

- Yia, hey.

Welcome to the dinner.

- Yeah.

Good to see you.

- Enjoy and welcome.

- [Yia] Dude, everyone's got a sweater.

- That is so dumb.

(chuckles) Let's get you some fish.

- [Yia] Ooh, I can smell it.

- [Nels] I know.

- [Yia] Oh, yeah.

- [Nels] And the meatballs.

- [Yia] That's the good stuff.

- [Nels] There are lots of lutefisk dinners throughout the Midwest, and there's even a website where someone goes through and kind of creates a calendar of lutefisk dinners.

The people who love lutefisk will be on the circuit, hitting every lutefisk dinner throughout that kind of winter season.

- I grew up with a family who ate lutefisk, but I don't particularly care for it.

- Mm-hmm.

- The Norwegian seems to put butter on it.

- [Yia] Yeah.

- And the Swedish people, which is my husband- - [Yia] Mm-hmm.

- They like the cream sauce- - [Yia] Mm-hmm.

- With pepper on it.

I try to put a little bit of each- - [Yia] Yeah.

- Because I'm a little bit of both.

- [Yia] Absolutely.

(upbeat traditional music) - I love lutefisk.

And this is exceptionally wonderful lutefisk.

- [Yia] Oh, look at that.

Thank you.

Grab some lefse.

(upbeat music) - [Nels] So Yia, I'd like to introduce you to one of our main lutefisk cooks here tonight.

This is my father, Kirk Thompson.

- Kirk.

- Greetings, hello.

- Good to meet you.

- [Kirk] Nice to see you.

- [Nels] He's been doing this for quite a few years.

- I will admit, like, when you're eating lutefisk, it is about eating it as one with others.

I don't know if I could just do straight up, right out of the oven with nothing.

- [Nels] No, no.

- Some food is great in the mouth.

This is, lutefisk is not exactly.

That's not its selling point.

(Nels chuckles) But this is pretty good.

- [Nels] Eating it with the other things and eating it with other people here.

It's about bringing the community together - Like, right away, I'll be honest, like, I wasn't like super excited for it 'cause of all these like things I've heard, right?

But I think that the one thing that I extract out of it is your deep, deep connection with lutefisk.

I get it.

You're like me 'cause I'm like, I'm this refugee kid who came here, didn't want anything to do with my culture because I felt embarrassed about it- - [Nels] Yeah.

- And then later on went seeking for it.

So there's just this thing that calls us home.

- [Nels] Yeah.

- And man, this is what it's about.

(laid back music) Now, from surf to turf.

They say you don't wanna see how the sausage is made, but that's exactly what we're gonna do next.

This is my dad, Nhia Lor Vang.

He's been cooking over fire his whole life.

He fought for the Americans in the Secret War in Northern Laos, which is why my family came to the US as refugees in 1988.

He was the first person to teach me how to chop, (knife slashes) how to grill, (grill sizzles) and how to make Hmong sausage.

(Nhia speaks in Hmong) So what we have here is we have garlic, lemongrass, scallions, shallots, and ginger.

And then we have pork shoulder, pork belly.

And so we'll chop up all this ingredient.

(Nhia speaks in Hmong) Dad was saying the trick to having the best lemongrass is taking the outer part out.

And we're trying to really target that center where it's white.

That's where it's the most fragrant.

(soft music) Making sausage, it takes a lot of meat, and for us, we didn't have a lot of meat.

So every time we made sausage at the house, we just knew, like, this was a special occasion.

In the old country, (chuckles) back in Laos, this was all done by hand.

So there was no grinder.

It was just knife.

You would chop it down, and it would be, the whole community would be out here.

All the little kids, they would do their part.

So it would be passing down from generation to generation.

Okay.

And we have some salt, some fish sauce.

We'll mix that all together, making sure all the ingredients are incorporated, making sure all those aromatics are incorporated and spread out.

And then you can either stuff it or just roll it out into like little logs, and then you just put 'em right on the grill.

My dad's Hmong sausage means so much to me.

It represents our story, our culture, our family.

It's such an honor to serve it at my restaurant.

But that's a lot of sausage for one guy to make, and I knew just the family to turn to to get the job done.

Hey, gentlemen!

- [Nick] Hey.

- [Yia] Good to see you.

- [Nick] Good to see you.

- Hey, Nick, how you doing?

- [Nick] Come on in.

- Meet Orest Kramarczuk and Nick Kramarczuk.

Their family has owned and operated Kramarczuk Sausage Company for more than 70 years.

How many times do people mispronounce Kramarczuk?

- The worst one I've ever heard was Cracker Jack.

(Yia laughs) I think that person just gave up.

(laughs) - [Yia] Tell me a little bit about the history of this place.

- Kramarczuk's was started by my parents in 1954.

They were refugees from Ukraine, escaping from World War II.

So my parents did not know a word of English.

They did not know anything about American culture or society.

They just had this really strong will to succeed in the United States.

Northeast Minneapolis was a thriving community.

First of all, it was Germans, and then Polish people, and Russian people, and Ukrainian people, and they all supported my father.

On Saturday mornings, you'd come in here in the '60s and '70s, you'd hear like 10 different languages.

(upbeat music) My father, he employed a lot of refugees that came after the war.

So there were Ukrainian, Polish, all kinds of people that worked here.

It's sort of come full circle.

With what's happening in Ukraine, we have a lot of refugees that have come over here that virtually lost everything.

So they come here, they learn how to speak English, and they make a huge contribution to not only our business, but our society and our culture.

- [Yia] So gentlemen, what are the unique things about Ukrainian sausages?

What are we looking for?

- Garlic.

(laughs) - That's awesome.

That's why I love it so much, I think, you know?

- Yeah, yeah, I know, right?

But also very coarse ground meat, like large chunks of meat.

This cut is a pork sirloin, very lean meat but an undesirable meat.

- Yup.

Sometimes I hear this called like cushion meat.

- Cushion meat, yep.

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Nick] That's another term for it.

- [Yia] That what they call it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- [Nick] This is what we call regular trim.

- [Yia] Mm-hmm.

- [Nick] That's pretty much pork fat.

- [Yia] Yeah.

- [Nick] A lot of it's taken from, like, the belly.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And then here's the picnic.

That's like a shoulder roast.

And those are our three different textures.

- [Yia] Okay, awesome.

How do you want us to cut this?

- [Nick] So we're just, half to one-inch dice.

- Ah, I didn't realize how big the cubes were, 'cause I've had the sausage many times, you know?

- Yeah, so when you're biting into it, it's almost like the chunks of ham in there.

- With Hmong sausage, the old school way of doing it, they have a cutting board block which is like a tree stump, and then you just have your knife and you just- - Du du du du du.

Yeah, uh-huh.

- Yeah.

- Just a little bit of ice water.

Add the spices.

(dramatic instrumental music) Then mix.

- I'm really nervous to do this in front of you.

(Nick laughs) (Yia laughs) - [Orest] Don't be nervous.

- His mom, my grandmother, her house, I tell people it smelled like sauerkraut- - [Yia] Oh, yeah.

- Ham and cigarettes.

(Yia laughs) If I smell that- - That's a candle scent, by the way.

- It is.

- [Yia] That's a candle scent.

- [Nick] I would buy it.

She was an amazing cook.

When I'm trying to hone in how our food tastes, I think of meals at her place.

- [Yia] So for you, Nick- - [Nick] Yeah.

- [Yia] You went to college, but like, you came back here.

- [Nick] Yeah.

- [Yia] And you're holding this down.

Like, what inside of you is like- - Well, I didn't grow up with an interest in food.

I went to school to study marine science.

(upbeat music) I didn't realize how important this food was to me, so I came back.

This is such an amazing place, and I wanted to be a part of it.

Perfect.

- [Orest] That's right.

- I remember one of my first times coming in here and I'm looking at the selection of sausages you guys have, and it's just not Eastern European.

It's from all over the world.

Every culture has their own sausage, right?

What drove you to go beyond just Eastern European style sausages?

- When I came into the business with my father, I wanted to try new sausages.

And my mother said to me, said, "Why do you have so many varieties?

What's wrong with the ones we had before?"

And then Nick really started going at it with South African boerewors.

- [Yia] Yeah.

- It speaks to the diversity in Minneapolis.

Customers were asking for it.

We were like, maybe we should try mixing that up and see what it tastes like.

Yeah, and I think it's that openness and inclusivity and just our curiosity for other cultures' sausages that led us to make your dad's recipe, the Hmong sausage.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Orest] It's very nice.

- Yeah, it looks really nice.

- [Orest] So then you can tie it out there.

- [Yia] Okay.

- [Nick] It's like tying snot.

(laughs) - It's like jump roping.

- Yeah.

- Which I was never good at.

- Twist it, twist it.

Yeah, there you go.

- [Yia] Look at that.

- And that'll smoke for about four hours and then it's ready to eat.

(whimsical music) - I think what's really interesting is how we come from different worlds, but we have a shared history and really knowing what it means to come here as a refugee.

But what connects us is sausage.

(Nick chuckles) Mr. Kramarczuk.

- Hi.

- Hey, hi.

It's a pleasure to meet you.

- My dad, Nhia.

To be completely honest, like, my father never wanted me to get into the food business.

He was a carpenter.

And he would say, "I break my hands and I ache my knees so that you could sit on a chair and sign checks for people who work for you.

That's what I want.

I want more for you."

And when I wanted to cook, he was like, "This is, this isn't the life I want for you."

But, like, for me, like- - [Orest] Hey, man.

- Like, that, like, ache- - I know where you're coming from.

- You know?

- Because my parents wanted me to be a lawyer.

- Yeah.

- I told my dad, I said, "I don't really wanna do that."

- And I can't do that.

And so for me, like when my hands are achy and my knees hurt, like, I feel connected to my father, you know?

- [Orest] Yeah.

(laid back music) (Nhia speaks in foreign language) - Hmm.

So my dad says that what they would do back in their village is they would literally save a hog for a whole year.

- Wow.

- And then that hog, the whole hog is dedicated to making Hmong sausage.

I don't know.

Like, I think of it as like you're licking your lips the whole time you're watching the hog.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - You're like, "Three months away, buddy.

We're almost there."

- [Orest] Why don't you cut yours first?

- [Nick] Dig in.

- [Yia] Yeah.

- [Orest] Wonderful.

- [Nick] Yeah, I love the lemongrass in there.

We don't use a lot of that here.

We just buy it for your sausage, really, so- - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's like really cool that at our restaurant, we can have Hmong sausage with your help, working with your family.

The pop of that- - [Nick] That natural casing.

- Yeah, natural casing is incredible.

- So I would take a piece and then put a little spoon of this on there.

- [Yia] Okay.

- [Nick] Beat horseradish.

- [Yia] Okay.

- [Nick] It's called hren in Ukrainian.

It's not spicy, but it cleans out your sinuses.

- Yeah, tastes good.

- It's delicious.

You can taste the pork.

The garlic, definitely.

- That pretty much reminds me of Easter morning at my grandparents.

- Hmm, yeah.

- That, and this combination especially.

- Yeah.

- When I was growing up, my father would bring some sausage home.

Every Sunday morning, we did like a taste test to make sure the sausage was coming out right.

- Hmm, like, you know what that taste is and it's ingrained inside of you, and kind of passing from one generation to the next generation.

(Nhia speaks Hmong) Yeah.

He was just saying this is our way of loving our children, our way of loving that next generation, you know?

- Ugh, that spoke to me as well.

- And so it is so, such an honor for me to be here, to be a part of the Kramarczuk legacy.

- [Orest] Oh, thank you very much.

- Yeah.

Just, yeah.

A meal is always more than a meal.

And when we continue to make sausage or lutefisk, we're not only preserving food but the cultures and tradition that surrounds them.

And that's what I'm all about.

(whimsical music) (laid back music) (gentle tone ringing)