Greenland chef shares island's history, culture through food

A halibut dish that Chef Inunnguaq Hegelund prepared in his home kitchen in Nuuk, Greenland. Grace Widyatmadja/NPR hide caption

NUUK, Greenland — Chef Inunnguaq Hegelund is constantly moving.

On a recent trip to a local hunter's market, the car barely stops moving before the star chef jumps out to see what options are available for dinner.

"The fisherman or the hunter will come with this fish or meat here, and then we can buy it fresh," he says as he inspects the offerings. The market advertises musk ox, belugas, narwhals, seals, caribou, polar bear and walrus. He settles on an eider, a type of sea duck.

Hegelund has been a chef for about 20 years and is now working to preserve Greenland's Indigenous food traditions by leaning into what he describes as new Arctic cuisine. It's a movement toward local, sustainable and traditional food — more about the ingredients and sourcing them than any particular technique.

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"In Greenland, we have the world's wildest kitchen, but we also have the [cleanest tasting] foods in the world," he says.

Hegelund stops by a traditional hunter's market in Nuuk to see what is available to buy. Grace Widyatmadja/NPR hide caption

Hegelund cuts up the blubber of a narwhal. He shows us a thin line in the blubber, indicating that the narwhal was young. The thin line is similar to rings on a tree. Grace Widyatmadja/NPR hide caption

All Things Considered recently spent an evening with Hegelund to learn more about the island's history through food.

Hegelund says most of the food, like different types of vegetables and most dairy, is imported from other countries. At the grocery store, he points out freezers with only locally produced Greenlandic foods. He fills a cart with locally caught halibut and smoked salmon, narwhal meat and dried whale.

Hegelund says when non-Greenlanders think of Inuit food, they always mention whale blubber. When he thinks about Inuit food, his mind immediately goes to dried fish. There are hundreds of varieties.

"I normally compare it to curry," he says. "Because a family in India will have their own recipe in their own house. And this is the same with the dried fish up here."

He wants Greenland to be self-sufficient and to preserve the time-honored traditions of local food. He says where the food comes from and how it's sourced matters.