Recipe
🍽️ DINNER
Hangikjöt
Iceland's Christmas centerpiece: smoked lamb gently boiled and sliced, served with béchamel, potatoes, peas and pickled red cabbage.
Icelandic · medium · serves 6
prep 15 min · cook 150 min
~863 cal · 65g protein · 40g carbs · 48g fat · 5g fiber · 10g sugars · 23g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Hangikjöt, "hung meat," is the smoked lamb at the heart of the Icelandic Christmas table. With little firewood on the volcanic island, farmers cold-smoked legs of lamb over birch and dried sheep dung, giving the meat a deeply aromatic, faintly sweet smokiness found nowhere else.
For the feast the smoked leg is gently boiled until it pulls from the bone, then thinly sliced and served hot or cold with a classic béchamel, boiled potatoes, green peas and pickled red cabbage, alongside the wafer-thin fried laufabrauð. It is not everyday food but a Christmas and Sunday treat, and its flavour is impossible to fake by any other method.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
3 lb smoked lamb leg (hangikjöt), deboned
1 onion, halved
2 bay leaves
5 black peppercorns
2 lb waxy potatoes
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
3 cups whole milk
1 pinch grated nutmeg
1 cup green peas
1 cup pickled red cabbage, to serve
to taste salt and pepper
Instructions
1
Put the smoked lamb in a large pot with the onion, bay and peppercorns, cover with cold water, bring to a boil and skim.
2
Simmer gently, allowing about 40 minutes per kilo, until the meat pulls easily from the bone, then leave it to rest in the broth.
✎ Chef’s note
Letting the lamb cool in its own broth keeps it moist and carves cleanly, hot or cold.
3
Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender and keep warm.
4
For the béchamel, melt the butter, whisk in the flour and cook 1 minute, then gradually whisk in the milk and simmer to a smooth sauce; season with salt and nutmeg.
5
Slice the lamb thinly and serve with the potatoes, béchamel, warm peas and pickled red cabbage.
Icelandic Christmas tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Reykjavík. The rye bread is baked by geology. Hverabraud is a dark, sweet, dense loaf sealed into a container and buried near a hot spring, where ground heat cooks it slowly for the best part of a day. The lamb comes off the same landscape, grazing loose on wild herbs through the short summer.
🗺️
Iceland. The old preservation methods are still visible. Hardfiskur is wind-dried fish torn into strips and eaten with butter; hakarl is Greenland shark, cured for months because it cannot be eaten fresh; and rugbraud is baked as hverabraud, buried in the ground near a hot spring and left overnight to steam itself dark and sweet. Plokkfiskur, by contrast, uses fresh boiled fish.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Iceland
PlokkfiskurIceland’s "plucked fish": cod and potatoes folded into a warm, oniony white sauce, served with dark rye and butter.
Hafragrautur (Icelandic Oat Porridge)Creamy stovetop oat porridge simmered with a pinch of salt, served the Icelandic way with a spoon of skyr, brown sugar, and butter.
PylsurIceland's lamb-based hot dog with crispy and raw onions, remoulade, and a sweet-brown mustard, a Reykjavik institution.
Browse all Iceland recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Pot or saucepan, Whisk.
Storing it: Keeps 2 to 3 days refrigerated. Resteam or warm through gently to serve.
Make it a Iceland meal
VínartertaDessert
PylsurLunch
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Frequently asked questions
What is Hangikjöt?
Iceland's Christmas centerpiece: smoked lamb gently boiled and sliced, served with béchamel, potatoes, peas and pickled red cabbage.
Where does Hangikjöt come from?
Hangikjöt is a Icelandic dish from Reykjavík, Iceland.
Can Hangikjöt be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Hangikjöt recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Hangikjöt safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Hangikjöt take to make?
About 165 minutes total (15 minutes prep, 150 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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