Broodje Haring, or As Close As I Can Get

Two of the sandwiches the Tribunal is covering in May are Dutch sandwiches. Wikipedia, a poor terrestrial analog to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but possibly more complete in its descriptions of Earth cultures, has this to say about Dutch cuisine: “[it] is often seen as bland, due to a culture of frugality. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Dutch food became designed to be economical and filling rather than pleasing.” Yet the Dutch sandwiches we’ve covered have been, if not brightly-flavored and challenging, at least inventive and fun.

There’s Hagelslag, of course, the Dutch version buttered bread with sprinkles, which is called Fairy Bread in Australia. The Dutch version, though, trades in the brightly colored hundreds and thousands of the Australian rendition for high quality Dutch chocolates in a highly miniaturized form. Hagelslag is no joke, and I highly recommend anyone who hasn’t tried Dutch chocolate sprinkles to get on that.

Then there’s Broodje Kroket, which also has an international analog in the Japanese Korokke Pan. Whereas the latter is a much less interesting version of a croquette-stuffed bun, featuring panko-breaded potato mash in a hot dog bun with Worcestershire sauce and perhaps a few wisps of shredded cabbage, the Broodje Kroket uses a rich meaty ragout, rolled into cylinders, breaded and fried and served in a crusty roll with a spicy brown mustard.

Something tells me we could spend months working our way through the many different types of Dutch sandwiches that start with the word “Broodje.” Broodje means, essentially, bread, or a specific type of bread, a roundish roll, one that may be only slightly elongated or fully torpedo-shaped, soft-crumbed but likely crusty on the outside, multiple variations on the Belgian Pistolet or the German Brötchen. Broodje means the roll itself, yes, but it is more often used to mean the product of combining the roll with a named ingredient–i.e., a sandwich. Broodje bal is a meatball sandwich; Broodje frikandel features cheap, skinless sausages; Broodje kaas fills the bread with cheese. “Broodje” is practically one of those national sandwich categories that we’ve covered extensively, where there are many different options and no set recipe.

Yet there are a few named broodjes that our desire to try every sandwich compels us to cover, and today’s is among the more popular and puzzling sandwiches of the Netherlands: the Broodje Haring. It is made with raw herring, insists many a site. Not raw, insist yet others, but lightly pickled. Or perhaps marinated. Or just salted and slapped on a bun. Then someone else will say no, no, it really is raw and the cycle begins anew. However our own Marinus, friend and Sandwich tribunal contributor, provided a little additional nuance in a recent comment:

It’s not quite raw, though people often refer to it that way. It’s very lightly cured in a lightly spiced brine and intended to be used in the short term. Tradition describes a specific cleaning method… but it really just is a fish with the head, gills, guts, and bones removed… It matters that the brining is very light, and Dutch law limits your ability to name something ‘maatjes haring’ to the young herring caught and sold to be eaten (i.e. not preserved) during the appropriate season, between May and… July. The stuff you and I are likely to get overseas will be saltier, if only because it has sat in its brine for longer, and will be the product of some other herring-consuming nation.

The term I’ve found in my research is “soused,” as in soused herring, but as that article notes, the particular kind of soused herring used in the broodje haring is a young herring, as mentioned by Marinus, that is called maatjes herring, which is only preserved to a mild extent and is thus largely only available in the Netherlands, in young herring season. So it seems as if I will be unlikely to exactly match this sandwich without traveling to Amsterdam (or somewhere else in the Netherlands but realistically, probably Amsterdam) sometime between Mayish and Julyish and ordering one from a street vendor.

However, I was able to acquire a number of different brands of pickled or marinated herring, from a number of countries near the Netherlands, and I will do my best to give this sandwich its due. Much like the Chinese Donkey Burger, I may not succeed but dammit I will eat some sandwiches!

One important detail to note right away is that these are not whole young herrings. The young herrings sold in the Netherlands are often sold mostly whole–split open, head, bones, and guts removed, but otherwise two linked skin-on filets that are often simply dipped in some diced onions and then eaten. There is a well-known and frequently-duplicated pose, found in any Google image search for herring in the Netherlands, with which one approaches a maatjes herring served this way–the eater’s head tilted back and mouth wide open, the herring held by the tail, diced onions adhering to its surface by some viscous tension.

I believe, though I don’t know for a fact, that the herring served in a broodje haring is similarly intact. But I have what I have, which is herring that has been cut into small chunks or strips more suitable for a cocktail toothpick than a bread roll, however soft it may be on the inside.

The rolls and the various variants of herring were all purchased at Gene’s Sausage Shop in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, a worthy (if far different) successor to the dearly missed Delicatessen Meyer that once stood in this spot, where back in the day I would passively practice my rusty German skills by eavesdropping on old German women ordering sausages and try to pick out every third word or so. In addition to the Abba brand herring varieties from Sweden and the Skansen brand Matjes herring from Finland, I also purchased a house-made brined herring from Gene’s itself, which I suppose makes this version Polish-American.

Gene’s herring is preserved in a wine sauce, which is mild and slightly sweet, with chunks of sweet red pepper floating in the slightly murky brine along with the roughly 1″ square pieces of herring filet. I enjoy the texture of uncooked fish perhaps more than most cooked fish and herring has proven to be no different, with each of these different versions soft and able to be bitten through cleanly. The taste of herring seems mild, with the brine or sauce being the most prominent flavor in each of these renditions. The diced onions and sliced pickles provide crisp textural contrast and pungent notes to a sandwich that is, with Gene’s herring at least, an otherwise unnotably mild experience.

The Abba brand Klassisk herring on the other hand, the only one of these products to come in a tin, was seasoned with a seemingly far stronger brine redolent of and colored like mulled red wine, that stained the fish flesh a vivid claret color. This herring overpowered even the onions and pickles that accompanied it, though their crisp contributions to this otherwise soft sandwich were nonetheless appreciated.

The Abba brand Herring in Traditional Marinade was, on the other hand, at least somewhat similar to the Gene’s herring in wine sauce–no wine in this brine perhaps but sweet and sour elements that brought it to mind, along with old school aromatics like onion, mustard, allspice. It was perhaps the plainest of the herring types I tried with this sandwich but good for all that, something that would taste great on some buttered brown bread or simply speared with a toothpick from the jar.

I had high hopes for the last jar I tried, the Skansen brand Finnish Matjes herring. Only two of the products I’d found, this and the tinned Abba herring, were labeled with the term “matjes,” similar enough to the Dutch “maatjes” that I hoped to find… something different. Without knowing what I was looking for, without having experienced the “Dutch tilt” (not just a cinematography term!) of the head to eat a dangling young herring coated with diced onions, it’s hard to put into words what I expected. Something where I tasted the fish, and the sea that spawned it, as much as I did the salt and the spices that were used to preserve it, not due to the strength of the fish flavor but due to the careful hand, the attention to balance of the person preserving it.

It’s silly to admit that I hoped such a thing was possible, given that this fish was likely harvested at least a year ago, and has been sitting in brine since that time, a brine that must after all be strong enough to preserve it for the trip overseas, for the time it spends on a shelf before it’s put into a shopping basket and whisked away home. I don’t know that I really did think it was possible. But I’d hoped to be surprised.

The Finnish brine was almost as strong as the Klassisk Matjes brine had been, with sugar and salt and pie spices galore. The pieces were sliced thinner and arranged in an attractive way around the periphery of the jar, their texture maybe a touch tighter, more finely layered than the other, non-matjes herring types had been. They tasted good as well, the Scandinavian predilection for pickling pescetarian products no doubt coming into play. This fish was good; the sandwich was good. All the fish had been good; all the sandwiches had been good. None of them had been quite right though, a failure which weighs on me. I’ve called around and stopped by a few of the usual suspects when searching for some of the more obscure fruits of the sea, but listlessly, half-heartedly, knowing that this sandwich is simply one of those “you had to be there” things and yet I did not grab my towel, stick out my thumb, and actually go there to try it.

But perhaps a few of you Tribunal readers can weigh in, add your voices to that of Marinus, and tell me your impressions of this sandwich, and the young herring harvest in the Netherlands from which its made. I look forward to reading your comments!