Minnesota State Fair lutefisk: A break from tradition, or new hit?

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. (FOX 9) - There have been other attempts to bring lutefisk to the Minnesota State Fair, but none have succeeded, perhaps until now.

"We succeeded in making it taste good," Erik Forsberg, owner of Devil’s Advocate in downtown Minneapolis told FOX 9. "We cracked the code."

And he’s quite confident fair-goers will agree, with the new crispy lutefisk steam bun being one of this year's new fair foods.

"I will challenge every Minnesotan to try it and dare themselves to do it and they'll thank me in the end," Forsberg said.

This is the third year that Erik’s team at Devil’s Advocate has provided food for Shanghai Henry’s, which is a staple of the International Bizarre in the fair’s southeast corner.

When pitching new food ideas, they felt lutefisk was overdue for its debut.

"No one balked at lutefisk," he said. "I mean, of course, when you say the word at first, they were like we’re going to need to try that."

For months, his operations manager, Carissa Asleson, was buying pounds of lutefisk every few weeks as they experimented with just how to serve it up and make it palatable for a mass audience.

And, until now, she could never tell the folks at Ingebretsen’s on Lake Street why she was in there so often.

"In fact they just confessed to me this morning they've been wondering what I’m up to and what my deal is," Asleson said.

Asleson, of full-blooded Norwegian heritage, fondly remembers eating it growing up. But she also knows the biggest hang-up is not its taste, but rather its jelly-like texture.

"There has not been a lot of trial and error with what’s going into it," Asleson said. "But there’s been a lot of trial and error with the consistency of the lutefisk itself."

The final creation takes diced lutefisk, marinates it in a hoisin sauce, bakes it to a crispy texture, puts it in a steamed lotus bun and garnishes it with cabbage, carrots and onions.

A taste test by FOX 9’s Rob Olson, who endured lutefisk as a child and never liked it, found this version to be delicious. There’s a hint of cod flavor, but otherwise if you didn’t know this was lutefisk, you may never guess.

Lutefisk purists may not like it. But they think many others will love it.

It just so happens that one of the largest producers of lutefisk in the world is Olsen’s Fish Company in Minneapolis. Convenient, since Erik ordered two tons of it to serve at the fair - that’s 4,000 pounds of an acquired taste of fish.

And he’s not worried about leftovers.

"We're worried we'll sell out," said Forsberg. "There’s a certain amount of concern that maybe we should buy more!"