Canadian North Cookbook

[Excerpts from “The Northern Cookbook” - a now out-of-print 1967 Canadian government publication of backwoods recipes from native & non-native peoples in Canada’s far north…]

Baked Skunk
Clean, skin, wash. Bake in oven with salt and pepper. Tastes like rabbit (no smell).

Bear Fat Pastry
1-1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/3 cup bear fat (from a little black bear that was eating berries). Makes rich white pastry.

Boiled Bone Grease
Boil whatever bones are left after all the meat has been cut off. Boil them all in a big pot for two hours. Then let the grease get cold in the pot. It is easy to pick the grease off. Keep the grease to eat with dry meat or add to pounded meat.

Boiled Lynx
Cut up the lynx and boil it until it is soft and well cooked. Good to eat with muktuk.

Boiled Porcupine
Make a fire outside and put the porcupine in it to burn off the quills. Wash and clean well. Cut up and boil until done.

Boiled Reindeer Head
Skin and wash the head well. Then chop it in quarters, splitting it between the eyes with an axe. Cover with cold water and boil until soft. One can also roast in an open pan in an oven very slowly.

Boiled Reindeer Or Caribou Hoofs
Put hoofs (skin still on them) in a large pot. Cover and boil for a couple of hours. The skin will peal off easily. The muscles are soft and very good to eat. The toe nails also have some soft sweet meat inside them.

Boiled Reindeer Tongues
Boil tongues until thoroughly cooked. Potatoes and vegetables are good with this.

Boiled Smoked Beaver
Smoke the beaver for a day or so. Cut up the meat and boil it with salted water until done.

Dry Fish Pudding
Pound up 5 to 6 dry fish. Throw away skin. Add sugar, a little grease, and cranberries.

Frozen Fish Eggs
Take fish eggs out and freeze them. They are good to eat like this.

Grizzly Bear Steaks
Cut up meat as for frying and fry in deep grease in frying pan.

Jellied Moose Nose
Cut the upper jaw bone of the moose just below the eyes. Boil in a large kettle for 45 minutes. Remove and chill. Pull out all the hairs (like plucking a duck) and wash until none remain. Place nose in a kettle and cover with fresh water. Add onion, garlic, spices, and vinegar. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until meat is tender. Let cool overnight. When cool, discard the bones and cartilage. You will have white meat from the bulb of the nose and dark meat from the bones and jowls. Slice thinly and alternate layers of white and dark meat in a loaf pan. Let cool until jelly has set. Slice and serve cold.

Muktuk (meat inside skin and fat of a whale)
After taken from whale, leave 2 days hanging up to dry. Cut into 6” x 6” pieces. Cook until tender. After cooked, keep in a cool place in a 45-gallon drum of oil, in order to have muktuk all year.

Muskrat Tails
Cut off the tails and dip them into very hot water. Pull off the fur. Either cook them on top of the stove, turning them on top of the stove, turning them after a few minutes, or boil them. (This is the same method as for beaver tails. Both are very sticky to eat.)

Oven-Roasted Lynx
Wash and clean the hind legs of the lynx and roast it with lard and a little water.

Steamed Muskrat Legs
Cut off the muskrat’s legs, dip in a bowl of flour with salt, pepper, and other strong seasoning. Put grease into a large frying pan. Put in the muskrat legs. Cover and cook for a long time as they take long to become tender. The strong seasoning takes away the actual taste of the muskrat.

Stuffed Muskrat
Clean the rats well and put them in a roaster with bread stuffing on top. Roast until the muskrats are soft.

QuotaBills
Hunger is a good cook. - Proverb

Talk doesn't cook rice. - Chinese Proverb

She did not so much cook as assassinate food. - Storm Jameson

That isn't the plural of moose. It's moosi. - Mikey Way

I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking. - Katherine Cebrian

Jello: The only food your husband has ever learned to cook - Daffynitions joe-ks.com

I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate. - Julia Child

I'm a terrible cook, but I make very good lobster salad. - Nancy Carell

My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs for Alka-Seltzer. - Rodney Dangerfield

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. - Julia Child

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother. - Maya Angelou

Smoke detectors are basically just you-suck-at-cooking detectors. - Julius Sharpe

I don't really get romance. Bring me fish or moose, not flowers. - Eden Robinson

If ever a chef were to cook a fly, he would keep the breast for himself. - Poland Proverb

The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook. - Julia Child

My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor. - Phyllis Diller

When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking. - Gail Sheehy

A recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation. - Madame Benoit

Moose: An animal that has a head and horns on one end and a living room wall on the other - Daffynitions joe-ks.com

If you meet someone who can cook and do housework, don't hesitate a minute - marry him! - Rita Rudner

My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves. - Rodney Dangerfield

I pranced around the room like a blind moose, but what I lacked in grace I made up for in effort. - Kiera Cass

I prefer Hostess fruit pies to pop-up toaster tarts because they don't require as much cooking. - Carrie Snow

A moose is an animal with horns on the front of its head and a hunting lodge wall on the back of it. - Groucho Marx

It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, 'if you want it your way, cook it yourself.' - Johnny Carson

In the words of Harry S. Truman, "If it's too hot in the kitchen, stay away from the cook." - Archie Bunker

I'm working on a second cookbook and am working on my love story, 'Black Heels to Tractor Wheels.' - Ree Drummond

The wonderful world of home appliances now makes it possible to cook indoors with charcoal and outdoors with gas. - Bill Vaughan

Kissing power is stronger than will power: Girls need to 'prove their love' like a moose needs a hat rack. - Abigail VanBuren

The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books - how not to eat what you've just learned now to cook. - Andy Rooney

An expert is like the bottom of a double boiler. It shoots off a lot of steam, but it never really knows what's cooking. - Unknown

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old. - Bill Bryson

There is one thing more exasperating than a spouse who can cook and won't... and that's a spouse who can't cook and will. - Robert Frost

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. - Henry David Thoreau

I cook a lot of Italian food. Bucatini Pomodoro is my best: it's a fat spaghetti with tomato, olive oil, and reminds me of getting married in Italy. - Bill Rancic

Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing 'Embraceable You' in spats. - Woody Allen

For this is every cook's opinion
No savoury dish without an onion
But lest your kissing should be spoiled
Your onions must be thoroughly boiled. - Jonathan Swift

If you want to go foraging into the wilds of Canada without proper gear, you deserve what you get, even if that happens to include being attacked by an undead moose. - Mira Grant

Bistro cooking is good, traditional food, earnestly made and honestly displayed. It is earthy, provincial, or bourgeois; as befits that kind of food, it is served in ample portions. - David Liederman

Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity. If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick. - Steven Wright

see also Canada & Native Indian Sections
Beaver Stretching
Moose Team

Canadian North Cookbook

“Fear Factor” Recipes from Canada’s far north

14-Aug-2020