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Norway · Lamb

Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish)

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Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish)

About this recipe

Norwegian cooking reflects its long coastline and short summer: cured and smoked fish, preserved meats, root vegetables, dairy, and the sweet-bread traditions of Christmas baking. Ingredients are few; quality and freshness do the work.

As a lamb dish, Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish) works the same braising-vs-fast-cooking divide as beef — lean cuts for hot fast cooking, tougher cuts for time-and-temperature stews where the flavour deepens.

The scaler above resizes every ingredient to the number of servings you actually want; Cook Mode walks you through the recipe one step at a time with hands-free timers.

Curated by the ScaleRecipe editorial teamReviewed

Recipe data is sourced from TheMealDB's open community database; ScaleRecipe handles the curation, the scaling math, the editorial commentary, and the conversion utilities woven into each page.

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Method

  1. Cut the lamb into large pieces.
  2. Slice the cabbage into large wedges, keeping the core attached.
  3. Add a layer of lamb pieces to the bottom of a large pot, fatty side down. Sprinkle with peppercorns and salt. Add a layer of cabbage wedges on top. Repeat with more layers of lamb, peppercorns, and cabbage, ending with cabbage on top.
  4. Optional: Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons on top of the lamb for a thicker stew.
  5. Add water to the pot and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat. Cook on low heat for 2 – 3 hours, until the lamb gently falls away from the bone.
  6. Serve with boiled potatoes and fresh parsley, covering generously with the fårikål broth.

Cooking notes

When scaling protein-led dishes, weigh the meat rather than counting pieces, and remember that the pan size limits how much you can sear at once.

For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.

When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.

Scaling notes

Scaling Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish)

Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish) is written for around four servings as it stands on this page — scaling it up for a party or down for a meal-for-one is the small math problem most home cooks face every week. Here's how this particular dish responds to scaling, what changes linearly, and what doesn't.

Lamb cooks similarly to beef but is leaner, which means scaling Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish) up calls for slightly longer rest time after cooking (proportional to thickness, not mass). Braises and stews scale linearly; roasts follow the cube-root rule — doubling a lamb leg adds about a quarter to the cook time, not double.

When you scale the flour in this recipe, weigh it in grams if you can — a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 113 g to 150 g depending on how you measure. The ScaleRecipe ingredient converter uses the King Arthur Baking reference of 120 g/cup for all-purpose flour, which is the same standard most modern baking books assume.

Skip the math entirely — ScaleRecipe's scaler rewrites every ingredient line above with proper culinary fractions and smart unit promotion the moment you change the serving count. Open the scaler →

Beyond the recipe

Substitutions & make-ahead — Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish)

If you're cooking Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish) for a future meal (or doubling up for leftovers), here's how this dish handles storage, reheating, and the timing decisions most recipes don't spell out.

Make-ahead, storage, and reheating

Lamb behaves like beef for storage — braises and stews like Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish) (when it's in that family) improve overnight as the spice and acid components marry. Refrigerate in a wide shallow container; reheat gently with a splash of the cooking liquid. The stronger flavour signature lamb carries mellows during storage, which can be a feature (a milder leftover the next day) or a bug (the original character gets muted) depending on what you're after.

Recipe video

Fårikål (Norwegian National Dish)

Go deeper

Where this recipe sits in the wider tradition.

Each guide below is a real essay on the cuisine or the category — pillars, staples, techniques worth learning — paired with a curated grid of recipes filed under it.

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