The Icelandic Hot Dog Has a Correct Order. You Got It Wrong.
Eina með öllu. One with everything. It's the first phrase most visitors to Iceland learn, usually at a hatch in the rain with a queue behind them.
What almost nobody registers at the time is that "everything" isn't a pile. It's a sequence, and the sequence is the reason the thing works.
The order
- Crispy fried onion — $5.99 — in the bottom of the bun
- Raw white onion, chopped, on top of it
- The sausage
- Ketchup — Vals, $9.99
- Sweet brown mustard — pylsusinnep by SS, $9.99. Not yellow mustard, not Dijon
- Remúlaði — Gunnars, $7.99. A mayonnaise-based sauce with capers and herbs, over the top
Onions underneath. Sauces on top. That is not a stylistic preference.
Why it's built that way
Put the onions on top and two things happen. The crispy onion goes soft in the sauce within thirty seconds, and the raw onion falls off the first time you bite. Put them underneath and the crispy layer stays crisp against the bun while the sausage holds everything in place.
It's a good piece of engineering that nobody in Iceland thinks of as engineering. It's just how it's done, and getting it wrong marks you out immediately.
The sausage itself
Mostly lamb, with pork and beef. That's the difference people notice and can't name — Icelandic hot dogs taste of meat rather than of smoke and salt, because the lamb carries a flavour that a standard pork-and-beef frankfurter doesn't. Icelandic sheep spend the summer loose in the highlands eating whatever they find, and it shows up in the meat.
They're boiled, not grilled. If you've been grilling them at home, that's your second mistake.
SS — Sláturfélag Suðurlands — has been making them since 1907, and theirs are what most of the country and most of the hatches use.
The ketchup argument
Icelandic hot dog ketchup is sweeter and thinner than the standard version, and it is genuinely part of the recipe rather than a concession to children.
This causes trouble. There is a reasonably serious position, held by reasonably serious people, that ketchup has no business on a pylsa and that mustard and remúlaði are sufficient. There is an equally serious position that removing it breaks the balance and leaves the whole thing sharp.
We're not going to settle it. We will say that "eina með öllu" includes it by definition, so if you're ordering with everything and taking the ketchup off, you've ordered something else.
Making them at home
Boil, don't grill — six to eight minutes in water just under a simmer. Warm the bun — Myllan pylsubrauð, $7.99. Fry your own onion or use the tinned crispy kind, which is what most Icelandic kitchens do.
The three sauces are the part you can't improvise. Ordinary mustard is too hot, ordinary mayonnaise isn't remúlaði, and standard ketchup is too sour. All three ship well, which is fortunate, because the sausages are the easy part and the sauces are what actually makes it taste like the hatch in the rain.
Order The Hot Dog bundle — the whole set in one go. Or buy the sauces separately: Sinnep $9.99 · Remúlaði $7.99 · Tómatsósa $9.99 · Steiktur Laukur $5.99 · Pylsubrauð $7.99.