Anchorage, Alaska – Bob Hicks is taking a uniquely Alaskan gift to a Christmas party in New York City: hot and mild sausages made with reindeer meat.
“I’ll tell them it’s Rudolph,” Hicks, a retired lawyer who moved to Alaska in 1971 from the Boston area, said with a devilish grin inside the bustling Alaska Sausage and Seafood shop.
Behind the counter, workers hustled to fill holiday orders, including the ever-popular all- reindeer package.
Across Alaska, restaurants offer reindeer sausage year-round, and street vendors hawk sizzling reindeer hot dogs during the summer and at the start of the Iditarod sled-dog race in March. And the delicious irony is not lost on locals over the Christmas holidays.
At Indian Valley Meats, near Anchorage, reindeer sausage and jerky are big hits in gift baskets snapped up by locals to send to relatives outside the state.
Reindeer is a lean meat that must be blended with beef and pork to make the sausage. It tastes like ordinary sausage, though maybe spicier. But in Alaska, reindeer is more than just meat.
How about a reindeer hide to hang on the wall? Earrings and cribbage boards carved from reindeer antlers? Knives with antler handles? Traditional dance fans from the animal’s beard? Mukluks, or furry snow boots, with hair from reindeer legs?
At the Alaska Fur Exchange, owner Gus Gillespie, an avid hunter, said he has no problem with the idea of Rudolph as an edible gift.
“In the Lower 48, people are hitting deer with their cars all the time,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather harvest that critter and eat him?”
