We already talked about chef Gordon Ramsay trying Finnish food for the first time. I already said in that post that they should have given him some reindeer meat to try. Dishes with this kind of meat have always been my favorites of the Finnish cuisine.

A reindeer dish. It looks amazing. Source (CC: by)

And that’s what they have done this time: Ramsay went to Lapland, the North of Finland (to the Finnish city of Ivalo, to be exact) to try some reindeer meat. All of it framed by the Christmas time in Finland. ThisisFINLAND’s twitter account shared this happy link during this time of the year.

Gordon Ramsay visits Lapland

When I first watched this video of Gordon Ramsay tasting reindeer meat, and heard it starting with the first notes of “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” from Tom Waits (his song “Big in Japan” inspired the title of this blog), I knew it was going to be a great video.

Ramsay said that he heard that reindeer meat tastes like the best beef, and goes to Lapland to prove this theory: You can see him taste it and cook it in different ways.

Chef Ramsay. I am a huge fan of his Master Chef USA. Source (CC: by)

Gordon Ramsay cooks and tastes reindeer meat: the video

This video is short but intense: about 15 minutes. Under it I wrote some highlights, by the minute, so you can conveniently skip to the part that interests you most.

The video is part of the “The F word” series. F of “food“, I presume, but another word that Gordon says a lot also starts with “F”. In some segments of this show he prepares some traditional dish for a celebration. This is the cause for his visit to Lapland: it’s Christmas time.

– 1.00 – Ramsay shows us the menu of a restaurant in Ivalo, a place where there are less cows than reindeer, and less people than reindeer too. He tastes the reindeer meat in different ways: smoked, sautéd and as a steak. He definitely likes this delicacy of Lapland.

– 2:35 – Ramsay meets with a Sami (the indigenous people from Lapland) that breed and hunt reindeer.

– 5:35 – Ramsay and the father of the family talk about whether it is better to hunt reindeer or take them to the slaughterhouse. Ramsay starts to get ready to hunt a reindeer.

– 7:10 – The last considerations and pulling the trigger.

– 8:20 – They skin the reindeer and show the reindeer meat.

– 9:40 – Ramsay has everything ready to cook the reindeer meat. He is going to prepare a stew with it. He uses local ingredients including lakka (cloudberry): a celebrated berry indigenous to Lapland in the north of Finland. He uses snow instead of water to add to the stew (I wouldn’t do that: it may contain – let’s say – some organic matter).

– 12.25 – Ramsay makes reindeer carpaccio from the meat and also prepares some glögi.

– 13:45 – The Sami family try the dishes of chef Ramsay and give their approval (they eat reindeer meat about 6 times a week, but Ramsay prepares it in a different way to how they are used to). As a token of thanks, they give Ramsay some dried reindeer penis meat – or that is how it seems, until the surprise is revealed.

The video ends, and it seems to me to be a great feature about cooking and eating reindeer meat in Finland and Lapland. Maybe it is a dish to consider when you prepare your Christmas dinner or your new year’s dinner.

Have you tried reindeer meat? Would you after watching the video?