Newfoundland Food: Traditional and New

A commentary on foods both traditional and new in Newfoundland 

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Sources 

 ¦ Newfoundland Boy, hosted by Wayne Jones, episode 22, "Newfoundlanders and Bologna: A Love Story," September 3, 2024, https://newfoundlandboy.buzzsprout.com/2358060/episodes/15686708-newfoundlanders-and-bologna-a-love-story ¦ 

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Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, a podcast about the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 38: “Newfoundland Food: Traditional and New.”

It will take me likely two or three episodes to talk about the broad topic of Newfoundland food, Newfoundland cuisine, let’s say, as well as the influence or absence of certain non-Newfoundland cuisines in the province. I’ll start with traditional food. As in any other culture, perhaps especially one that’s an island, there are foods and dishes that are common in Newfoundland that are not so common elsewhere. Certainly not so common in other parts of the world, but even within Canada.

I’ve done, let’s call it, “in-the-field research” on Newfoundland food when I lived here until I was 21 years old, and now also just in the past 21 months when I moved back to St. John’s in late 2023 at the age of 64. My mother was a working-class single mom who prepared traditional meals, and generally simple ones because she was also working full time as a waitress at what they called the “lunch counter” at Woolworth’s.

Some of the meals were staples on Newfoundland tables and it would be hard to imagine any Newfoundlander growing up, not only in my time but before and after, without having had these foods. One of the main ones was the lunch (or, as the noontime meal is often called in Newfoundland, dinner) of a cooked dinner on Sundays. There may be slight variations in a cooked dinner from household to household, but generally it consists of chicken or roast beef or both; salt beef (more about that later); boiled potatoes, carrots, turnip, and cabbage; peas pudding; dressing (aka stuffing) from the chicken; and gravy. Typical condiments on the table would be a bottle of sliced beets and a bottle of mustard pickles. I think I’m covering all the ingredients there, but it was such a feast that I may have missed something.

Salt beef is what others might call cured beef, that is, it is sold in a salty brine, often in small or large white plastic buckets. Each piece has beef on it but also lots of fat. It is so salty that the traditional way of cooking it is to start with it as the first ingredient you are preparing, and then boil some of the salt out of it maybe two or three times. This is done by removing the beef from the pot, throwing out the water, and then starting to boil it again with fresh water. The whole meal still ends up tasting pretty salty, but at least the changing or changings of the water has made it more palatable.

In my experience at least, Newfies tend to like their vegetables well cooked, even what you might call overcooked. They are all soft and a bit mushy in a cooked meal. The peas pudding is a really nice addition. It’s made from yellow split peas that are often put in a small, tied cotton bag and plopped right into the pot with the rest of the ingredients. When everything is ready to be served, the bag is opened and the peas pudding is delicious, neither runny nor soupy nor hard, having a consistency something like hummus, but thicker and more substantial.

My friend Gwen recently informed me of the difference between a cooked dinner (or a boiled dinner) and an iconic traditional Newfoundland dish that you may have heard of, a Jiggs dinner (spelled J-I-G-G-S). The main difference is that a Jiggs dinner has salt beef as the only meat. I’d been a Newfoundlander for over 65 years, and I only found out about that a month or two ago. That’s what happens when you live on the Mainland for 40 years.

A cooked dinner is about as traditional as a meal gets in Newfoundland. As I mentioned, it’s often served as the noontime meal on Sunday, and because of that it has a cousin for the evening meal called the cold plate. This is a common term in standard English too of course, but in Newfoundland it means something very specific. It is made from the leftovers of the cooked dinner, and at least in my home, while evangelist Billy Graham preached on the radio in the background, we ate cold plates. Cold chicken; slices of the prepared meats called Klik or Kam (K-L-I-K or K-A-M); potato salad incorporating either beets, or canned peas and carrots; any leftover dressing; maybe a few slices of rolled ham; and the ubiquitous mustard pickles.

I’ll end off by mentioning three other foods and meals that are extremely popular in Newfoundland. The first one is one you’ve likely heard of, bologna. I did a full episode on bologna last September (see the show notes for a link). Newfies love bologna. As I mentioned in that earlier episode, we consume about 33% of all the bologna consumed in Canada, but we have only 1.5% of the population. One difference, at least in my experience, from the way bologna is consumed in Newfoundland in comparison to elsewhere, is that Newfoundlanders mostly cook their bologna, and also almost always fry it. Fried baloney, as they call it. Or Newfie steak. My mother told us that eating what she called “raw bologna”—it’s not raw of course, as the meat is fully cooked just like in a wiener—would give us the worms. In any case, fried bologna is a typical breakfast meat but can also be the meat on the plate at suppertime (the evening meal). Fried bologna with eggs over easy and toasted white bread with margarine is a classic Newfoundland breakfast.

The second classic is what is called a touton (T-O-U-T-O-N) or damper dog. This can also be served at breakfast, but can be a snack or sometimes even served with another meal. They are “in season,” so to speak, when the cook in the house is making homemade bread. Once the dough has risen, tear off a piece, flatten it into the size of a small thick pancake, and fry. It comes out of the pan nicely browned and sometimes slightly blackened on both top and bottom, and still white on the edges. You make it tasty by pouring molasses, Caro syrup, or maple syrup over it. It’s an excellent comfort food, but alas with enough gluten and sugars in it to make you woozy.

And the last classic I will mention is pea soup, that is, soup made from yellow split peas just as peas pudding is. It is simply delicious and though it might seem easy to make, it’s not, as I’ve proven to myself a couple of times already. There are also many variations in the way people prepare it. Some people just include the peas and a piece of ham or salt beef. Some add carrots and/or potatoes. Some add rice. I tend to prefer the simpler version with just a little ham and then with lots of pepper shaken on top. Truly an excellent dish.

I’ve left out a lot even in this concentration on the absolute classics. Notice that I have not even mentioned fish, which is kind of like talking about Italian food and omitting spaghetti. I promise: I will talk about it in the next episode. When you say the word fish in Newfoundland, people generally assume that you are talking about cod, which has been a mainstay on the island for decades if not centuries. But there’s halibut, too, and lobster, and crabs legs, and other seafoods like seal-flipper pie.

But I’ll leave it there for this episode. Thanks for listening. More to come about food and Newfoundland over the next few weeks. If you enjoy the show, consider giving me a like or adding a comment. And please join me again next Saturday.