Swedish Pickled Herring with Beetroot & Horseradish

Keep it simple with your pickled herring on flatbread. A perfect Swedish lunch!

Pickled herring is an ingredient that is firmly placed in the Scandinavian and Baltic cuisines. Not a buffet goes by where you wont see an exciting array of herring pickled in various sauces. These can be anything from curry sauce to sour cream to a simple sweet onion sauce. They are all delicious and are perfect to top a crisp knäckebröd.

Believe it or horseradish is a vegetable that features quite strongly in Swedish dishes. It's easy to buy in Sweden from fresh horseradish on the produce counter to tubes of pureed horseradish for those times when you don't want to stand crying over a horseradish root. If you've never done than, then I urge you not to try! It's excruciating!!

The sweet earthiness of beetroot mixed with the sharp pungency of horseradish is perfect in this dish. Pickled herrings, although not strong, are certainly able to hold their own in a sauce with other strong flavours.

Pickled herrings in all their different forms (curry, dill, sour cream) are usually found on the tables of summer and Christmas buffets. They are perfect on a slice of hearty bread or atop a knäckebröd, but they also appear at breakfast time too. However you enjoy your pickled herring be s

When buying the herring for this dish, try and find the simple pickled herring in vinegar and onion. This is most often sold in Polish, Scandinavian or German stores.

Swedish Pickled Herring with Beetroot & Horseradish. Serves 4

Ingredients

200g / 7 oz pickled herring cut into bitesize pieces.

1 medium sized beetroot, fresh or lightly cooked

1 small apple

100ml / 3.5 fl oz sour cream

1.5 teaspoons grated horseradish either fresh or in a jar.

To serve:

knäckebröd, crispbread or flatbread

Freshly snipped chives

Method

If the beetroot is fresh peel it first. Grate the beetroot and apple with a course grater into a bowl. I don't bother to peel the apple because I like the texture of the skin.

Mix the beetroot and apple with the sour cream. Stir in the horseradish, taste and season with salt and pepper. Add the herring. Stir well and chill until needed.

Serve a spoonful of the herring atop a knekkebrød with a sprinkling of freshly snipped chives.