Fish & Brewis

Fish and brewis is Newfoundland’s national dish, and it doesn’t get much more stripped-down than this. Three ingredients: salt cod, hardtack bread, and salt pork. It’s food born from centuries of Atlantic fishing, where everything had to be preserved and nothing got wasted.

Both the cod and the hardbread soak overnight in separate bowls of cold water. The cod needs that long soak to draw out the heavy salt cure and rehydrate the flesh from stiff and leathery to tender and flaky. The hardtack, which is rock-solid straight from the package, softens into something you can actually chew.

The salt pork gets fried into scrunchions, those golden, crispy cubes of rendered pork fat that are basically Newfoundland’s answer to bacon bits. The rendered fat and the crunchy scrunchions get scattered over the fish and bread right before serving. That’s the only seasoning this dish needs. The residual salt in the cod and the richness of the pork fat do everything.

Boil the cod gently. Salt cod shreds if you cook it at a hard rolling boil. Fifteen to twenty minutes at a gentle simmer is enough to cook it through without falling apart.

Kitchen Tips

• Soak for a full 8 hours minimum. Under-soaked cod stays unpleasantly salty. If it still tastes too salty after soaking, change the water and soak longer.
• Drain the hardtack immediately after it reaches a full boil. Even a minute too long turns it to paste. You want it softened but not mushy.
• Fry the salt pork low and slow until the cubes are golden and crispy all the way through. Rushing this on high heat leaves chewy centers.
• Serve on warm plates. This dish cools quickly, and cold fish and brewis is not the experience you’re after.

Variations

• Drawn butter version: Serve with melted butter drizzled over the fish alongside the scrunchions for extra richness.
• With onion: Fry sliced onion in the rendered pork fat until soft and golden, then scatter over the fish with the scrunchions.