How do we make dried, salted fish more attractive to young people?

Dried, salted cod should be a more natural choice for our dinner habits. Especially children and young adults have a declining seafood consume. A Nordic workshop has addressed this challenge. Scientists, chefs and educators together with chef students work together to make this wonderful raw material more trendy. A joint food lab aims to develop new savoury dishes to make it a more popular choice.

Despite being one of the largest producers of salted and dried cod in the world, Norwegian knowledge and consume is relatively low. In the Nordic kitchen there are few recepies with dried, salted cod as a base. In comparison, the Portugese kitchen include over a thousand.

The project «Trendy klippfisk» sets out to change this. The project has been granted 100 000 NOK from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries. On October 29 and 30 2019 a workshop gathered experts from related fields to develop new dishes that will appeal to young consumers. They hope the new recipies will help young people to discover dried salted cod as a popular dinner choice.

The project is a cooperation between the Norwegian regional reasearch institute Møreforsking, Klippfiskakademiet and chef trainees from Herøy High School. In addition the cooperation includes Matis, the National Food Reasearch Institute of Iceland and high profile chefs with expertice on dried, salted cod from
Iceland, The Faroe Islands and Norway

- This is a very helpful collaboration, says Kolbrún Sveinsdóttir from Icelandic Matis.

- We have similar challenges and it has been fruitful to gather competence from different areas in learning more about how to create new, attractive recipes for the youth. We can also work together on how they can be more efficiently approached with new recipe ideas, with the aim of increased consumption of these traditional Nordic products. There is a big potential for increasing the number and variety of ready-to-cook-dishes of salted and dried salted fish.

- Fortunately the trend is turning towards more interest in local ingredients, local food traditions and history, says Ole Kristian Skogen, chef at Klippfiskakademiet in Aalesund Norway – a food institute specializing in dried, salted cod.
- It is a smart move to include youngsters in the cooking. That way they can participate in deciding what to make and what ingredients to include. Kids and young adults tend to have a stronger sense of taste than adults, he explains.

- And that is an important factor to take into consideration.

- We have a lot to learn from other countries on how to prepare and enjoy our wonderful dried salted fish, says project coordinator Ingebrigt Bjørkevoll from Møreforsking. And we need to better utilize Nordic ingredients and tastes when developing new trendy dishes with our own identity.
- This is our inspiration when we now develop new recipes. We are so excited to show our results!

TV-report from the workshop