Can you tell us a little about food in Finland, like... What do you eat day to day? What are sweets like? Which fast food chains are the most popular? or something else you think is interesting. Thank you! :D
Thank you for the ask! I can tell you a lot about food in Finland, fortunately, because both of my parents happen to be cooks, so I can ask about stuff from them. A lot the information Iāll tell you probably came from them.
Well, first off, I want to say that today Finnish people often eat food that isnāt necessarily traditionally Finnish or anything, for example my town has at least 5 pizza-kebab restaurants, and spaghetti is very popular. This thing called āraketti-spagettiā is sold in stores, itās just normal spaghetti but cut into shorter pieces, and the name literally means rocket-spaghetti. Iām not sure how that name came to be, but it rhymes, so maybe it just sounded funnyā¦? I donāt know. Stuff like rice is pretty common too, even though itās in no way traditionally Finnish. Anyway, Iām sure that a similar phenomenon (the international foods thing, not raketti-spagetti) exists in almost every country.
Also, the Finnish cuisine has gotten a lot of influence from our dear neighbours, Sweden and Russia. Especially Sweden. So anyway, if youāre from either one of those countries and I say that something is Finnish when your country has the exact same thing, please blame my ancestors for not being more original. Although Iād like to hear about foods or customs similar to these Iām about to mention from other countries, so if youād like to, please share them in the tags!
Okay, so I think Iāll start with the fast food- part of the question.
Finland doesnāt have that many fast food chains, really. We have McDonaldās, Burger King, Subway, and soon a few Taco Bells. Like, three. BUT! We do have a chain of our own, Hesburger, which is my personal favorite out of these. It is the most popular fast food chain in Finland, with 268 restaurants. For comparison, McDonaldās has 65, Burger King 32, and Subway 155 restaurants here.
If you want to have a taste of Hesburgerās food, but donāt want to come all the way to Finland, thatās totally fine! There are Hesbugers in eight other countries, too: Estonia (42 restaurants), Latvia (44), Lithuania (47), Russia (34), Germany (3), Ukraine (3), Bulgaria (3) and Belarus (1). Pretty impressive for a chain from such a small country, huh?
I hope this doesnāt sound too much like an ad, this post is not sponsored by Hesburger. I just think itās pretty neat. I donāt know where the restaurants are more specifically, but Iāve been to Tallinn and there were a few Hesburgers there. They have really good paprika-mayonnaise! Just saying.
Scratch that, I now know where is the Hesburger farthest from Finland:Ā
Now, for sweets, I think Iāll have to make their own post, but we do have a lot of different kinds of candy in Finland, since we have two bigger and several smaller candy manufacturers, the two big ones being Fazer and Panda. Fazer also makes bread and cookies.
Popular candies are suklaa (chocolate) in different forms - bars, slabs (?? I hear that is also called a bar sometimes? Like smaller bars like Snickers and then slabs like the one Iāll show a picture of), chocolates, like the ones sold in a box, with filling or without, you get the idea, a lot of chocolate - and, of course, salmiakki, salty liquorice. Salmiakki candies get their amazing/awful taste from ammonium chloride. Mmmm. Potentially life-threatening chemicals combined. Delicious. (pic source)
Here is perhaps the most iconic Finnish sweet: Fazerin sininen, Fazerās Blue. Itās just simple old milk chocolate and yet is the most popular candy in the country. Is it really that good?
Yes. Yes it is. The shade of blue used in the wrapping is trademarked*, by the way.
Okay, moving on to the day-to-day stuffā¦
In Finland we drink the most maito (milk)Ā in the world per capita, a bit over 360 liters. The 2nd is Sweden by the way, with around 356 liters. We also consume the most kahvi (coffee) per capita, the national average being around 2.6 cups. Seriously, people here drink coffee all the time. In the morning, after lunch, when you come to visit you can be sure youāll be offered a cup of coffee, at weddings, at funerals, with dessert, I mean, all the goddamn time. Sometimes they donāt even have a reason Iām sure. You know when at work there are those shorter breaks? In Finland a break like that is called kahvitauko. It means coffee break, which Iām sure is a familiar concept in other countries too.
But yeah, people do drink milk at every meal - not everyone, of course, but most people - and for people who are lactose intolerant there are special kinds of milks where the lactose has been processed already, so lactose intolerant people can drink it safely.
This is our fridge. That milk probably lasts like half a week. The light blue one is fat-free.
āThere is also this thing called piimƤ, which is a drinkable product made from milk with Lactic acid fermentation. Itās not my favorite, but itās okay.
Maito versus piimƤ. (source)Ā
Apparently there is a strict divide in Finland between west and east, where west likes piimƤ better, but east prefers something called kokkelipiimƤ, which, to me, sounds very suspicious, and I did not know it even existed. Itās piimƤ with something more solid also made from milk mixed into it. Looks like this.
I seriously had never heard of it. I do live in the western half, so I suppose the divide is real. Huh. (source)
A traditional Finnish drink, kotikalja, is often drunk at fancier occasions, for example at the Christmas meal or at some other celebration, like weddings or such. It has a bit of alcohol, but so little that it doesnāt really count as an alcoholic beverage. Wikipedia tells me that itās similar to Estonian kali, Swedish svagdricka, Dutch oud bruin and Russian kvass. Itās not the same, but itās similar. People drink it with food.
(sourceĀ also includes a recipe for kotikalja)
Ā There is a Finnish word ruokajuoma, which means any drink that is often drunk at meals, like water or kotikalja or milk and sometimes also juice.
This post is getting really long, sorry about that. Anyway, we eat a lot of different keittoja (soups) here too. Most of the time they contain potatoes (perunaa), carrots (porkkanaa), possibly other vegetables, and some meat (lihaa). Kalakeitto (fish soup) can be creamy (I love it) or clear (not so good). LihakeittoĀ (meat soup) and jauhelihakeittoĀ (minced meat soup)are usually clear as well. There is also hernekeitto, which is made from peas, minced meat or ham or something and some carrot. People can add mustard and onion to it. Itās often eaten on Thursdays, a habit that has spread from the army. There every Thursday is hernekeittopƤivƤ, hernekeitto-day. With hernekeitto the dessert is usually pancake with jam. (pic source)
The pancake, pannukakku, doesnāt look like what you might expect, though. Itās like this.
(source)What is the closest relative to the other kind of pancake is called lettu here, or rƤiskƤle, and itās closer to a crĆŖpe or a blin. (An actual blin, in Finland there is some misconception about blinis being small and thickā¦ things, but maybe people would otherwise mistake them for a rƤiskƤle?) (source)
Ā They are usually eaten with jam or sugar or whipped cream, or ice cream, or berries, or all of them. There are also muurinpohjaletut, which are cooked differently. (source)
A very basic dish we eat a lot here is potatoes and some kind of kastike (sauce). The sauce usually has pieces of meat, or sausage, or minced meat. We use a lot of minced meat. The picture example is made with makkara (sausage). (source)
When it comes to leipƤ (bread) I might be a little biased, because my parents bake a lot of bread themselves. Most households usually have at least two types of bread available, some lighter bread like piimƤlimppu for example, and ruisleipƤ. It is very Finnish, even though rye bread is eaten elsewhere too. In grocery stores you can find many shelves full of it. There are even rye chips here! Not French fries, or potato chips, really, more like nachos. But made from rye. Weird. (source of pic below)
One of the many forms of rye bread. (source)
Usually the shelves would be full but it was late and almost juhannus. Thatās all for rye bread there. (Donāt mind my sisterās hand btw)
You can get rye bread in dried from too, all crunchy and pretty tough. Examples of this, dry, crunchy, though perhaps not that tough bread are nƤkkileipƤ and hapankorppu. NƤkkileipƤ is often served in schools, since it doesnāt go bad easily. Both nƤkkileipƤ and hapankorppu are the best when they have some butter (voi) on top, at least I think so.
Hapankorppu in the front, nƤkkileipƤ in the back.Ā
āWhich side do you put the butter on?ā is a common topic of debate between Finnish people. (Itās the side without the holes, fight me)
And yet another traditional Finnish food thatās eaten like bread and has rye in it, is karjalanpiirakka, Karelian pie. Itās basically rice porridge in a crust made from rye flour. It is also called riisipiirakka. There are other versions of it as well, for example they can have mashed potato instead of rice in them. Itās traditionally eaten with munavoi, boiled egg and butter mixed together. It is heavenly. Itās the stuff in the picture way up there, actually, but Iāll refresh your memory.
Another pretty basic, and quite traditional Finnish food that is still pretty popular as I understand, is makaronilaatikko, macaroni casserole, made of macaroni, minced meat, and a mixture of milk and egg. All the ingredients are put together and mixed, and cheese is put on top, though not in traditional versions. Then the whole thing is put into the oven and cooked for some time, and then eaten usually with ketchup. Itās one of my favorite foods.
Fish is eaten fairly often, but pork, chicken and beef are probably more common. In summer we eat a lot of sausages and nakkiĀ (frankfurters) (?? I have never heard this word). Most common spices are salt, suola and pepper, pippuri. There are also a ton of prepared foods in markets, and I mean a lot. Whole aisles, many meters, of foods like makaronilaatikko or jauhelihakeitto that you just need to warm up. Convenient. One of my favorites are pinaattiletut, small lettus with spinach in them. I like them a lot. There are also the same kinds of small lettus made with carrot. Oh, and also blood. Theyāre called veriletut in Finnish.
Well, Iād love to tell you more, but this post is already way too long, so. Iāll end it here. If you want to know more of something specific I mentioned, ask, and Iāll try to get a post made. Iām planning on covering a few topics here more in depth in the future, but weāll see.
Oh, also, a lot of the sources for the pictures in this post also feature a recipe, though theyāre in Finnish. If youād like me to translate one of them so you can try it out, just ask!
Thank you for the ask again!
(*edited because I, the smart person I am, mixed up copyright and trade marks. Sorry about that.)
