Alaskan ice cream facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Alaskan ice cream

Alaska wild berries from the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge, a mixture of true berries (blue Vaccinium uliginosum and red Vaccinium vitis-idaea) and aggregate fruits (red Rubus arcticus). These berries are used in Alaskan ice cream.
Alternative names	Native ice cream, Alaskan ice cream
Type	Dessert
Place of origin	United States
Region or state	Alaska
Created by	Alaskan Athabaskans
Main ingredients	dried fish or meat, fat, berries

Alaskan ice cream (also known as akutaq, Alaskan Native ice cream, Eskimo ice cream, or Native ice cream) is a dessert made of dried fish (especially pike, sheefish or inconnu, whitefish or cisco, freshwater whitefishes), dried moose or caribou meat and fat and berries (especially cowberry, bilberry, cranberry, bearberry, crowberry, [high-bush] salmonberry, low-bush salmonberry, raspberry, prickly rose) or mild sweeteners such as roots of Indian potato or wild carrot, mixed and whipped with a whisk or formerly hand made by Alaskan Athabaskans. Traditionally, it was made with whipped fat mixed with berries like cranberries, salmonberries, crowberries, cloudberries (also known as salmonberry in Alaska), and blueberries, fish, tundra greens, or roots with animal oil or fat. It may also include whitefish, caribou tallow, moose tallow, walrus tallow, or seal oil. There is also a kind of akutaq which is called snow akutaq. The most common recipes for Indian ice cream consist of dried and pulverized moose or caribou tenderloin that is blended with moose fat (traditionally in a birch bark container) until the mixture is light and fluffy. It may be eaten unfrozen or frozen, and in the latter case it somewhat resembles commercial ice cream.

Not to be confused with Canadian Indian ice cream (or sxusem) of First Nations in British Columbia and kulfi (or Indian ice cream) from the Indian Subcontinent of Asia.

The "ice cream songs" used to be sung during the preparation of Alaskan Athabascan Indian ice cream.

Recent additions include sugar, milk, and vegetable shortening.

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  Akutaq made from raspberries, blueberries and vegetable shortening

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  Tumnaq, a wooden bowl used to make akutaq

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  Iced akutaq made from raspberries and blueberries

Native names

See also

In Spanish: Akutaq para niños