Seaweed has quietly shaped the way we build flavour at Noma for years. Through curiosity, collaboration, and time spent along the coastline, it has evolved from an ingredient into an entire language of cooking for us.
Kelp and other seaweeds bring salinity, minerality, texture, and deep umami â adding layers that make flavours feel fuller, brighter, and more connected. Today, they appear throughout many dishes at Noma and in many different forms: dashi reductions, kelp salt, aronia kelp, pickled kelp, kelp flour, and even raw in salads, like those served during Noma LA.
In many ways, seaweed continues to teach us how flavour can be built from the landscape itself.
You can explore more about kelp, its versatility, and how weâve worked with it over time in our new book, The Noma Guide to Building Flavour.
đ· Seaweed harvested along the coast by @wild.foragers
Last week, Test Kitchen chefs Mette and Mattias went out in search of one of springâs clearest signals: ramsons.
Also known as wild garlic, ramsons arrive with the unmistakable flavor of âspring greenââfresh, sharp, and with a touch of allium funk. When they come into the kitchen, we try to use as much of the plant as possible, preserving that short seasonal window in sauces, oils, and other preparations.
For this sauce, the leaves are first blanched to soften their aroma, and then blended with, roasted kelp dashi, truffle juice, and fava shoyu. The result is a savory way to add the first taste of spring through a dish, perfect for spooning over a fried egg or as a dipping sauce for vegetables.
A quick note: ramsons and ramps are close cousins, but not the same plant. Ramsons are native to Europe and Asia, while ramps are native to parts of North America. Both carry a pungent wild garlic character, but ramsons are the version that marks spring for us here in Copenhagen.
Find the recipe in The Noma Guide to Building Flavour.
Most people are familiar with the tender, crimson flesh of tuna. Fewer have encountered its enormous eye. At its center is the vitreous humorâa clear, gelatinous substance with a clean, briny salinity.
Working to use as much of the tuna head as possible, chef @ali.biggins shows us how to prepare tuna eye for the Noma LA menu. After marinating in a horseradish and bergamot vinaigrette, the eyeâs jelly-like interior is dressed with salt, bergamot and Meyer lemon and served in a banana blossom petal.
What started as a gargantuan tuna eye now eats like a fresh oyster.
The star of this recipe is Noma Roasted Umami Saltâ a savory kelp-based seasoning we use wherever we can at Noma Projects and on the menu at Noma.
By diffusing this umami-rich salt in butter and water, @pablosotor showed us how to make a versatile sauce that works brilliantly with squid, scallops, grilled artichokes and root vegetables. Chef Pablo recommended taking it one step further: add it to vanilla ice cream, freshly cut peaches, and even hot chocolate.
Find the recipe in The Noma Guide to Building Flavor, now available at nomaprojects.com.
Have you ever tasted an oyster mayonnaise? Thatâs essentially what our Oyster Emulsion is â a mayo made with raw oyster instead of egg yolk.
Test Kitchen chef @mattiasshikatani_ showed us how to make this seafood condiment pop with a bit of parsley and lemon. While weâve primarily used it on the Noma menu with shellfish, itâs also the perfect accompaniment to crisp vegetables, or even french fries!
Find the recipe in The Noma Guide to Building Flavour, now available at nomaprojects.com.
Bits and pieces from the last week of Noma LA:
1. The Noma LA team đ·
2. Shooting the flat-lay with @ditteisager
3. Cleaning sea urchins
4. Macadamia milk
5. In prep
6. Tuna eye đïž
7. Aloe pearls
8. Sea urchin custard with caviar and acorns
9. FOH meeting
10. Sliced kelp
11. Baby agave
12. Koji-moulded crĂȘpes
This book has been 20 years in the making, and for most of that time, we didnât even know we were writing it.
The Noma Guide to Building Flavour is the result of two decades of trials, errors, curiosity, and exploration in the Noma Test Kitchen. Brought to life by our incredible team, past and present, with @artisan_books .
Available via the link in bio, or in our shops in Los Angeles and Copenhagen.
âFudgeâ is a foundational part of the Noma flavor pantry, a flexible template for embedding any aromatic fat into a smooth, rich medium. Developed by Test Kitchen head @ryoriya as part of a weekly session of recipe development, weâve now used fudges on Noma menus for over a decade.
Black currant wood is a particularly important flavor to us. When hammered and infused into a neutral oil, it reveals a complex quality akin to a fine olive oil. When this oil is incorporated into a fudge, it elongates flavor, adds body, and delivers a lasting finish to a dish.
Learn the secret to this silky, savory, acidic, and umami staple in the Noma Guide to Building Flavor. Pre-order the book at the link in bio.
Cactus has been eaten for centuries. Until coming to Los Angeles, chef @benvonstebut hadnât tried it before đ”
In order to prepare the Cactus Pickle dish on the Noma LA menu, the team relies on a technique developed in Mesoamerica called nixtamalization. By using an alkaline solution, we remove the slimy texture from the cactus, then marinate the petals in bergamot juice, sugar, white sage tea leaf, and mezcal.
The resulting âCactus Pickleâ is light, crunchy, and served chilled with lacto-honey reduction and bergamot zest.
âYou just need one ingredient for thisâ Noma Head Chef @pablosotor told us. âDuck.â Technically, this recipe calls for some chicken, too. We capture the intense poultry flavor by reducing stock until it becomes a demi-glace, then gently remove the umami-rich âskinâ that forms on top. When crisped up in a pan, this delicate sheet has the same savory flavor as a roasted duck skin. The difference is the texture, which at first bite is crisp like a sheet of ice and then disappears as soon as it hits your tongue.
Try your hand at this addictive, lacy treat, found in the Noma Guide to Building Flavor. Pre-order the book at the link in bio.
