Fish and brewis

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Fish and brewis (pronounced like the word "bruise")^[1] is a traditional Newfoundland meal consisting of codfish and hard bread or hard tack. With the abundance of cod around the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador it became synonymous with all Newfoundland households as a delicacy to be served as a main meal.

The recipe may vary from community to community or even household to household but, the ingredients were always the same. The typical recipe called for salt fish that required to be soaked in water overnight to reduce the salt content of the fish. The hard bread was broken in to bite size pieces and it too was also put in water overnight for soaking. Next day the fish and hard bread are boiled separately until tender then both are mixed together and cooked together for final preparation.

The traditional meal is served with scrunchions ^[2], salted fat pork which has been cut into small pieces and fried. Both the rendered fat and the liquid fat is then drizzled over the mixture of fish and hard bread.

Drawn Butter was sometimes used instead of scrunchions. Drawn butter was a mixture of melted butter and chopped onions that was thickened by flour in a saucepan then served hot over the mixture of fish and hard bread.

[edit] History

The meal was originally developed by sailors that were often at sea for weeks and even months where few fresh ingredients was able to withstand such lengthy trips. Therefore long lasting foods were a necessity and fish and brewis became the crew's favorite. They called the hardtack or sea biscuit brewis (pronounced 'brews') because of their practice of bruising or breaking up the bread into bite size pieces.