[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":375},["ShallowReactive",2],{"recipe:toast-skagen":3,"recipe:country:sweden":171},{"slug":4,"title":5,"nativeName":6,"pronunciation":7,"countrySlug":8,"region":9,"emoji":10,"summary":11,"intro":12,"story":13,"whyThis":14,"tips":19,"substitutions":26,"variations":39,"serveWith":49,"storage":51,"faq":52,"equipment":68,"baseServings":73,"prepMinutes":74,"cookMinutes":75,"difficulty":76,"course":77,"diet":79,"mainIngredients":81,"ingredients":86,"instructions":131,"nutrition":153,"images":159,"keywords":163,"publishedAt":169,"updatedAt":169,"authorSlug":170},"toast-skagen","Toast Skagen (Swedish Shrimp and Dill Toast)","Toast Skagen","toast SKAH-gen","sweden","Stockholm","🍤","Cold hand-peeled shrimp folded through dill, mayonnaise and crème fraîche, heaped onto bread fried golden in butter and finished with a spoonful of roe.","Toast Skagen is a shrimp salad served on hot fried bread, and the contrast between the two is the whole design. Small cold-water shrimp — the sweet, hand-peeled kind — are folded gently through mayonnaise loosened with crème fraîche, a great deal of chopped dill, lemon and a little grated horseradish, then piled high on a round of white bread fried in butter until it is crisp and golden right through. A spoonful of bright orange bleak roe goes on top. Cold and creamy against hot and crunchy, sweet shrimp against sour lemon, and it takes twenty minutes. It is the most ordered starter in Sweden and it deserves to be.","Unusually for a national classic, this one has a known author. Toast Skagen is credited to Tore Wretman, the Stockholm restaurateur who did more than anyone in the twentieth century to codify and defend Swedish cooking, and who created it in the 1950s — the often-repeated version of the story places its invention on a boat. He named it for Skagen, the fishing town at the northern tip of Denmark, though the dish itself is not Danish and Danes did not make it first.\n\nWretman matters here beyond the recipe. He ran Stockholm restaurants at a time when serious Swedish cooking was being pushed aside by imported French menus, and he argued instead that husmanskost and the smörgåsbord were worth taking seriously — writing about them, standardising them and putting them on white tablecloths. Toast Skagen is a product of that project: it uses entirely everyday Swedish ingredients, shrimp, dill, mayonnaise and bread, and arranges them with restaurant precision. That is why it slipped so easily from fine dining into every bistro, hotel bar and home kitchen in the country.\n\nThe shrimp are not negotiable and this is where most versions fail. Swedish toast Skagen uses small cold-water shrimp from the North Sea or the Baltic, sold cooked and often still in their shells, sweet and delicate in a way that large warm-water prawns simply are not. Buying them shell-on and peeling them yourself takes twenty minutes and produces something incomparably better than the watery pre-peeled kind sold in brine. The roe on top is löjrom, the pale orange roe of the vendace from the Gulf of Bothnia, which carries a protected designation of origin — a luxury topping in Sweden, and one worth substituting honestly rather than pretending any roe will do.",[15,16,17,18],"Mayonnaise cut with crème fraîche, so the salad tastes fresh rather than like a heavy deli filling.","The bread is fried in butter, not toasted — a crucial difference in both texture and flavour.","The shrimp are folded in at the very end so they stay whole instead of breaking into shreds.","Honest about the roe: what löjrom is, and what actually works as a substitute.",[20,21,22,23,24,25],"Buy cold-water shrimp, cooked and shell-on if you can find them. Large warm-water prawns are too firm and too bland, and the dish collapses without that sweetness.","Drain the shrimp properly and blot them on paper. Any brine clinging to them will thin the dressing into soup within five minutes.","Chop the dill just before mixing. Dill loses its aroma faster than almost any other herb once it has been cut.","Fry the bread in real butter over medium heat until deep gold on both sides — a toaster gives you dry toast, which is not the same thing.","Assemble at the last second. The bread must still be hot under the cold shrimp mixture, and there is no way to fake that.","Cut the bread rounds with a glass or a cutter and keep them small. Toast Skagen is a starter, and a slab of it is unbalanced.",[27,31,35],{"original":28,"swap":29,"note":30},"Löjrom (vendace roe)","Trout roe, salmon roe, or lumpfish roe","Trout roe is the closest in size and salinity. Salmon roe is larger and burstier but works. Dyed black lumpfish roe is the cheap option and looks dramatic, though it bleeds colour into the shrimp.",{"original":32,"swap":33,"note":34},"Fresh horseradish","A teaspoon of jarred horseradish, or a small squeeze of Dijon mustard","You want a faint heat behind the dill rather than a noticeable kick. Jarred horseradish is usually milder, so taste as you go.",{"original":36,"swap":37,"note":38},"Crème fraîche","Full-fat sour cream, or thick Greek yogurt","Yogurt is sharper and thinner — use a little less and add it a spoonful at a time so the dressing does not slacken.",[40,43,46],{"name":41,"description":42},"Skagenröra on crispbread","The same shrimp mixture served on Swedish rye crispbread instead of fried bread, which is the everyday home version and much lighter. Sold ready-made in every Swedish supermarket.",{"name":44,"description":45},"Toast Skagen with avocado","A modern Stockholm addition: a layer of sliced or mashed avocado between the bread and the shrimp. Purists object; it nonetheless appears on plenty of menus.",{"name":47,"description":48},"Crayfish Skagen","Made with the tails from an August crayfish party instead of shrimp — firmer and sweeter, and a good use for a leftover pile of kräftor.",[50],"A wedge of lemon, a few dill fronds, and a cold lager or a crisp dry white wine.","The shrimp mixture keeps 1 day refrigerated in a sealed container, but no longer — cooked shrimp deteriorate quickly once dressed and the dill goes dull and grassy. Never freeze it: the mayonnaise splits and the shrimp turn cottony. The fried bread should be made only at the moment of serving, since it softens within minutes of leaving the pan; if you want to work ahead, mix the dressing without the shrimp up to a day early and fold them in just before assembling.",[53,56,59,62,65],{"question":54,"answer":55},"What kind of shrimp should I use for toast Skagen?","Small cold-water shrimp, cooked — the North Sea, Greenland or Baltic kind, sold either shell-on or peeled. They are sweet and tender in a way that large warm-water prawns are not. If you can only find pre-peeled shrimp in brine, drain and blot them thoroughly, because the brine will thin the dressing.",{"question":57,"answer":58},"What is löjrom and do I have to use it?","Löjrom is the small, pale orange roe of the vendace, fished in Sweden's Gulf of Bothnia and carrying a protected designation of origin. It is expensive even in Sweden. Trout roe is the best everyday substitute; lumpfish roe is the budget option, and the toast is still very good with no roe at all.",{"question":60,"answer":61},"Can I make toast Skagen ahead of time?","The shrimp mixture can be made a few hours ahead and kept cold, though the dill fades if it sits overnight. The bread cannot — it has to be fried and used immediately, because the entire appeal is hot crisp bread beneath a cold topping. Assemble at the last possible moment.",{"question":63,"answer":64},"Why is my shrimp mixture watery?","Almost always undrained shrimp. Cooked shrimp hold a surprising amount of liquid, especially the pre-peeled kind packed in brine, and it leaches into the dressing as it sits. Drain them in a sieve, blot them dry on paper towel, and only then fold them into the mayonnaise.",{"question":66,"answer":67},"Who invented toast Skagen?","It is credited to Tore Wretman, the Stockholm restaurateur who championed traditional Swedish cooking in the mid-twentieth century, and dates from the 1950s. He named it after Skagen in northern Denmark, although the dish is Swedish rather than Danish in origin.",[69,70,71,72],"Frying pan","Round cutter or a drinking glass","Sieve","Mixing bowl",4,20,10,"easy",[78],"appetizer",[80],"pescatarian",[82,83,84,85],"shrimp","dill","lemon","creme-fraiche",[87,92,95,98,102,106,109,114,118,122,125,128],{"ref":82,"qty":88,"unit":89,"name":90,"group":91},400,"g","cooked cold-water shrimp, peeled weight","For the shrimp mixture",{"qty":93,"unit":89,"name":94,"group":91},100,"mayonnaise, good quality",{"ref":85,"qty":96,"unit":89,"name":97,"group":91},60,"crème fraîche",{"ref":83,"qty":99,"unit":100,"name":101,"group":91},5,"tbsp","dill, finely chopped",{"ref":84,"qty":103,"unit":104,"name":105,"group":91},1,"piece","lemon, zest of half and juice of half",{"qty":103,"unit":107,"name":108,"group":91},"tsp","fresh horseradish, finely grated",{"ref":110,"qty":111,"unit":100,"name":112,"optional":113,"group":91},"chives",2,"chives, finely snipped",true,{"ref":115,"qty":116,"unit":107,"name":117,"group":91},"white-pepper",0.25,"ground white pepper",{"qty":119,"unit":120,"name":121,"group":91},null,"to taste","salt",{"qty":73,"unit":104,"name":123,"group":124},"thick slices of white bread, crusts removed","For the toast",{"ref":126,"qty":96,"unit":89,"name":127,"group":124},"butter","butter, for frying the bread",{"qty":73,"unit":100,"name":129,"group":130},"löjrom or trout roe","To finish",[132,135,139,142,147,150],{"title":133,"text":134},"Drain and dry the shrimp","Tip the shrimp into a sieve and leave them for 5 minutes, then spread them on paper towel and blot the surface dry. Pick over them for any bits of shell. This step decides whether the finished mixture is creamy or watery.",{"title":136,"text":137,"tip":138},"Make the dressing","In a bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, crème fraîche, chopped dill, lemon zest and juice, grated horseradish, chives and white pepper. It should be thick enough to hold a soft peak on the spoon. Taste and add salt — it will need a decent pinch.","Season the dressing before the shrimp go in. Once they are folded through, stirring to distribute salt breaks them up.",{"title":140,"text":141},"Fold in the shrimp","Add the shrimp and fold them through with a rubber spatula in as few strokes as possible, so they stay whole and glossy rather than shredding into the dressing. Cover and refrigerate while you fry the bread.",{"title":143,"text":144,"timerSeconds":145,"tip":146},"Cut and fry the bread","Cut a round from each slice of bread with a cutter or a glass. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat until it foams, then fry the rounds for about 2 minutes per side, until they are deep gold, crisp at the edges and no longer soft in the middle.",240,"Keep the heat moderate. Butter that browns too fast leaves the centre of the bread pale and spongy.",{"title":148,"text":149},"Assemble immediately","Set each hot round on a plate and heap a quarter of the cold shrimp mixture on top, mounding it rather than spreading it flat. Work fast — the bread should still be warm when it reaches the table.",{"title":151,"text":152},"Finish with roe","Spoon a tablespoon of roe on top of each mound, add a frond of dill and a wedge of lemon, and serve at once, before the bread has any chance to soften underneath.",{"calories":154,"protein":155,"carbs":156,"fat":157,"fiber":111,"sodium":158,"estimated":113},480,26,22,33,950,[160],{"src":161,"alt":162},"\u002Fimages\u002Frecipes\u002Ftoast-skagen\u002Fhero.svg","Toast Skagen with creamy dill shrimp heaped on butter-fried bread and topped with orange roe",[164,165,166,167,83,168],"toast skagen","shrimp toast","skagenrora","lojrom","swedish 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