Forget Noma, Danes vote for dripping bacon as their national dish

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark may have the world's best restaurant but Danes' favorite dish is a simple "Stegt Flaesk" - thick slices of fried pork bacon dripping in fat with lashings of white parsley sauce and homegrown potatoes. Reindeer moss or sea urchins on a bed of samphire, as served at Copenhagen's lauded Noma restaurant, did not figure in a survey by the Food and Agriculture Ministry. After the pork dish, Danes preferred fried minced beef steak with soft onions, Smorrebrod open sandwiches with salmon, prawns or potatoes stacked with garnish on dark rye bread, and mashed potatoes with bacon and fried unions - a dish simply called "Burning Love". "Danish, and new Nordic food, is world famous. But at home in our own kitchens, we often forget our food roots. The vote for the national dish has contributed to the rediscovery and development of our food traditions," Agriculture Minister Dan Jorgensen said after the result was announced on Thursday. The winning dish was a personal favorite of his, he added. More than 63,000 Danes took part in the vote, launched to promote health and the environmental benefits of eating local food. Almost half of ballots went to Stegt Flaesk - not surprising for a country where pigs out number humans two to one and where pork accounts for 5 percent of total exports. The most cooked dish in Denmark, however, was Spaghetti Bolognaise. (Reporting by Annabella Pultz Nielsen, Editing by Angus MacSwan)