How to Eat Pølse – Norwegian Style
The Norwegian icon ‘pølse’ is just sausage similar to a Hot Dog or Frankfurter, however, at least 45 million kilograms of pølse (that’s 100kg of pølse per person) is eaten every year. Norway is the biggest sausage eating country per capita in the world! Pølse is THE fast food of Norway. They are sold at service stations, news agents, corner stores and fast food outlets.
Pølse are also eaten on special occasions such as children’s birthday parties or 17th May – Norway’s National Day. They are a must at every BBQ and often out shine a big steak or chop.
When the grilled pølse was first introduced to Norway in the 50s (via Denmark) it was eaten naked – without bread. Bread soon became an accompaniment, eaten on the side, but the influence of the Americans quickly put the pølse inside the bread.
Even though pølse is considered ‘lolly-meat’, there are strict requirements by the Food Safety commission for traditional ‘pølse’ to be of the highest quality and they have even set requirements for what types of ingredients are allowed to be used.
You’d be amazed how many ways you can eat a Norwegian sausage. There are the stereotypical ways, of course, like bread with ketchup and mustard but for so many sausages to be eaten in such a small country, the producers have certainly made an art out of re-inventing the humble pølse.
These days pølse can be eaten as a meal with potatoes, as a fry-up, in stew, or even in soup. (This is one of Farmor’s tricks to fill out her soup when she has the hungry boys -oops, men- home for dinner.) Some pølse are boiled and others grilled. Norway even has a Christmas pølse (Julpølse) which is baked and eaten with potatoes and gravy along side ribbs.
Christmas Eve dinner at Farmor’s with white julepølse and kjøttpølse.
But of course you have the grilled ‘hot dog’ style pølse. They come with an uncountable variety of condiments that are just plonked on top. Some unusual ones that I have found are: shrimp salad, potato salad, onion salad and gherkin salad.
Below are some quick recipes of the most common ‘pølse med brød’ (sausage with bread) that you’d find at the local fast food stores here in Norway that you can easily make yourself at home:
Pølse med salsa – Sausage with Salsa!
Just grill your sausage and put it in the bun. To make the salsa: Dice tomato, onion and continental cucumber. Mix with a dash of salt and pepper – a squeeze of lemon, if you like. I sometimes had some hot taco sauce for extra bite. Salsa is best when it is room temperature, especially when you put it on the pølse – cold salsa wouldn’t go well with hot pølse.
Pølse med Bacon – Sausage Wrapped in Bacon
This is a no-brainer. Wrap the grilled pølse in bacon and put it in the bun. Make sure the bacon isn’t cooked to a crisp otherwise it will crumble when you try to wrap it around the pølse.
Pølse med Sprøstekt Løk – Sausage Topped with Crispy Onion
In Norway you can buy crispy onions in a packet but to make your own… Chop the onions, roll them in a batter (like for fried fish or Corn Dogs), then fry them in a pan of oil til crispy. Make sure you drain them well. You could also have crispy bacon instead – dice the bacon and fry in a pan til crispy. Plonk on a pølse in a bun.
Pølse med Lompe – Sausage with Lompe
Lompe is a special type of traditional Norwegian bread made from potato. Anything and everything can get stacked into it as it is a flat bread which raps around your sausage. If you don’t have lompe you can use a tortilla, pita bread or any other flat bread. The best thing about using flat bread is it expands and you can fit a lot more condiments on – the skies the limit!
Pølse Kebaber – Sausage Kebabs
(Pictured first) This one isn’t sold in stores but it’s a fun way to eat pølse for the kids (and they get some vegies in them too ;D)
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I think I mentioned somewhere else on your blog how much I like pølse, and my favourite is with lompe. Here in the UK, we still eat pølse, but now we tend to eat them in a roll. A visit to IKEA usually ends with a “crispy” pølse smothered in mustard, with a dribble of ketchup!
Oh, and because they don’t sell julepølse here, I replace them at Christmas with German weißwurst!
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from L-Jay:
Pølse almost seems like a weekly diet here. However, I do miss beef sausages. in Oz we call them ’snags’ and just wrap a slice of bread around. But they have come out with a lot of ‘gourmet’ pølse this Summer – cheese and bacon, chilli, garlic, bratwurst and Argentinean. I’m shy to say we have tried them all! lol. My favourite were the garlic ones.
I was raised by my grandparents from Norway and they made their own sausage but nothing tasted like plain old hotdogs. Tell me that this doesn’t taste like hotdogs!
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from L-Jay:
Well, they are no where near as nasty or cheap as the Australian Cheerio or Frankfurter that oozes fat – you know the ones you boil for kids birthday parties – yikes! Norwegian pølser are more like the hard compact gourmet (or skinless) ones. They are best grilled (you can boil if you want) but they keep a dense texture like ham and don’t go limp. Sooooo much better!
Where can i get the polse in the USA – i am interested in trying on the grill
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from L-Jay:
As far as we know, you can’t. But you might want to ry internatiional delicatessens – they might sell Norwegian brown cheese too. If you are anywhere near Minnesota (where a lot of the Norwegian-Americans live) you might find a store that imports Norwegian food. However, there is usually srict guidelines for imporing meat so it is very rare to do so. Good luck!
Thanks for sharing. I recently had them with lefse and crispy onions at a Scandinavian place here in the Pacific Northwest. Quite tasty!
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from L-Jay:
I don’t think I’ve had as many sausages in my life than I have while living here in Norway. I think they are growing on me –
hei pølse er det samme som hot-dog
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from L-Jay:
It’s the same concept – meat in bread – but the meat isn’t as nasty as the US ones as they have strict regulations on quality and meat content in Norway. This is to preserve the ‘Norwegianess’ of the pølser. In fact, they advertise that the pølser, when bent, is supposed to snap with a crisp sound. If they don’t you know you haven’t got the real deal. The Norwegian pølse was inspired by the Danish red sausage (not the American Hot Dog). In fact, the American Hot Dog was invented by immigrants who were selling wieners (a German sausage) a little too hot for the hands, so they wrapped them in bread because they had no serviettes.
Reality check – wow… isn’t is a little odd that an Aussie would know so much about the ‘Hot Dog’? (As they aren’t really eaten that much, except by kids, in Oz)…lol.
Only the “modern sausage”(the hot-dog type) was introduced to norway in the 1950’s. Traditional sausages that are more related to wurst have existed for a muuuuch longer time. There exists many variations of traditional sausages, each with it’s own “personality”. Vossakorv, Smoked Sausage or Medisterpølse for example.
Nowaday’s people often use “modern sausages” in the same meals as the traditional ones were(soups, stews etc.). So people are used to using sausages in many different ways, which is probably one of the reasons there is a lot of creativity in the use of “modern sausages” too. 
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from L-Jay:
Yes, I’ve noticed the pølse in the soup thing. They also do stir-fry pølse with potato and bacon etc, almost like the ‘bubble and squeak’ I know from back home. But pølse does seem more like a Summer food than Winter and is often used as a filler in meals.