A food artisan: meet Astrid Nässlander

Astrid Nässlander is an artisan chef with her own butchery and a growing reputation for her nose-to-tail approach to food. In her debut book, Moose – a cookbook, she’s as likely to turn moose tallow into a candle as she is to use the fat in shortbread. She has some unexpected twists on the classic Norwegian Friday taco, too. 

“I work with what I call old-fashioned common sense. That means looking at the food resources around me and working out how I can use them in a sustainable way,” she says.  

Astrid lives on the small island of Steigen opposite Lofoten in northern Norway. It’s an area crammed with produce and where she sources most of her ingredients – not that she needs a particularly bountiful larder to create food worth salivating over.  

Astrid began to develop her particular “less but better” cooking philosophy during her time as Head Chef at Manshausen, a renowned hotel on a tiny island off Steigen, where she fished for her own ingredients and foraged in the nearby forest.  

“I got really good at being adaptable with ingredients and not wasting anything,” she says. “Cooking three-course meals daily for three years on a remote island with a once-a-week delivery makes you extremely creative. It’s almost like the less I have, the more creative I get.” 

Even then, it was clear that Astrid would make a difference in the world. In 2018, aged just 26, she won the Chef’s Prize for her sustainable cooking and creativity in Norway’s National Food Awards.  

A year later, D2 magazine, part of Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s leading business newspaper, named her one of their 30 under 30 ‘guiding stars’ – young people who they believe will make the world a better place through their ideas, drive and leadership qualities.

Her ambitious way of working with the seasons and local ingredients, foraging and fishing for produce herself, and the strict rules she imposed around food waste, packaging and composting impressed the judges.   

Today, you’ll find Astrid at work in her own butchery in Steigen, where she hosts courses and events, and makes local food with a focus on moose. She plans according to the season and availability of meat from the local hunters.  

Those relationships with local producers are at the heart of Astrid’s approach to food. “If I want meat, I establish a contact in the local hunters’ community. I like to have these relationships, to know whom I am supporting. It’s a way to work around the supermarket system, which in many ways is not sustainable.” 

When it comes to the provenance of her ingredients, Astrid is insistent. “We owe it to ourselves and to the planet to think hard about the decisions we make around food. I go to some lengths to keep things local, to produce local food for local people, and to think about who and what I am supporting.” 

That tenacious insistence on knowing precisely where her produce comes from – and making sure it’s from as close to home as possible – is part of the reason we appointed Astrid a Culinary Ambassador in 2022. Her nose-to-tail food philosophy dovetails nicely with our fjord-to-table approach in Norway’s Coastal Kitchen.  

As a Culinary Ambassador, Astrid is an inspiration to our chefs and our menus. As well as helping train our kitchen crew, she embodies our commitment to sustainable eating. Her innovative and delicious recipes – featured in her debut cookbook and on our seasonal menus – encourage us to rethink our relationship with food by placing local ingredients and traditional techniques centre stage.

She’s also among the many local producers delivering food directly to our ships; look out for her moose sausages in our onboard restaurants!   

Thank you, Astrid, for being an invaluable part of our culinary journey. You really do give us food for thought.