When it comes to choosing the ideal smoker and grill combo, you would surely find the Masterbuilt 7 in 1 Smoker and Grill a good choice. It is a 7-in-1 smoker and grill that is known for its versatility. You can either operate it using charcoal or gas.

In this review, we are going to look at the salient features of Masterbuilt 7 and try to figure out if it is worth buying. In this review likewise, we are also going to make use of the following metrics—design and features, range of temperature, ease of cleaning, ease of setup and transport, price, and warranty—to determine the merits in buying this item.

Related article

Big Horn Wood Pellet Grill

1. Design and Features:

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 is basically designed vertically. It features a modular design that lets its users interchange and match its different parts to get a wide array of functionalities. This fact makes this item very versatile. Moreover, with it, you got the option of fueling it with gas or charcoal.

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 is basically a gas smoker, charcoal smoker, gas grill, charcoal grill, camp stove, deep fryer, and steam/broiler; hence, it is tagged as “7-in-1.” It functions perfectly either using propane or charcoal. It also comes with a heat-resistant handle that makes it quite easy to handle when using it. Moreover, it comes with a hands-free lid holder which makes using this equipment easy.

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 comes with a 45,000 BTU cast iron burner with a push button ignition. It also has two porcelain coated grates for cooking. These two cooking grates can hold up to 50 pounds of food.

It provides a larger and expansive smoking and grilling surface area with its design. It also has an intuitive control setting that allows you to have perfect control of its temperature. Thus, you can produce a consistent smoking result with this cooker. It is definitely not a “set and forget” unit, but it is surely easy to operate.

• Range of Temperature

The good thing about the Masterbuilt 7-in-1 is that you can easily adjust its cooking temperature to cook various types of food. You can smoke meat at lower temperature, you can also cook burgers and steaks at high temperature. You can also engage in indirect cooking. You simply need to check out the smoker recipe book to figure out how best to cook a particular food.

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 also functions as a steam/broiler. It is equipped with a 10-quart pot with a basket for broiling seafood. You can also use it to deep fry chicken wings. Its easy temperature settings make this cooker a veritable 7-in-1 equipment. It also comes with a built-in temperature gauge for easy monitoring of temperature.

• Ease of Cleaning

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1features a drip-free design. This makes it easy to clean because it requires less cleaning up. Moreover, this feature makes it easy to maintain.

• Ease of Setup and Transport

Out of the box, the Masterbuilt 7-in-1 is almost ready to use. This unit is lightweight; hence, it is easy to transport. It weighs around 38.8 lbs. and has the dimensions of 18.5 L x 18.1 W x 17.3 H inches. It doesn’t take much space, therefore. It is also very easy to carry around for an easy transportability.

• Price and Warranty

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 is definitely cheaper as compared to other smoker grill combos. Moreover, it also comes with a one-year warranty.

Pros:

• It comes with multiple functions.
• It offers great temperature control.
• It is affordable.
• It is easy to use.

Cons:

• It comes with poor igniter quality.
• Its manual instructions are poorly written.

Conclusion

The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 is surely a good choice if you are looking for a versatile cooker. Its design is good and is well-built. Its ease of use is highly commendable. Moreover, it is lightweight and takes minimal space. It is also affordable. The Masterbuilt 7-in-1 may not be the best options out there, but it would surely provide you with a good alternative if you are looking for a reliable smoker grill combo.

It is easy to be overwhelmed with the long list of the options available for the best wood pellet grill. Among others, one that should be on your radar is Big Horn Wood Pellet Grill, which is the subject of the rest of this review. It may not be as popular as the other more established brands, but it is a good alternative if you are looking for budget-friendly alternatives that do not compromise performance.

Main Product Features

While it is an economical option, you can be confident that it is packed with features that make it deliver the best value for money.

580 Square Inches Cooking Area

This is an ideal option for those who are looking for a mid-sized pellet grill. There is enough space for all your grilling needs. There is no secondary rack, but the left part of the grill has an even surface that can be used for preparation and warming.

15-pound Hopper Capacity

Another excellent feature of this grill is the hopper, which can hold up to 15 pounds of wood pellets. This is quite a lot, which means that you don’t have to add pellets every now and then. This requires less work on your end as against models with a smaller hopper.

Two Side Wheels

On the left portion of the bottom part of the grill, you can see two metal wheels. It will never go flat and will roll smoothly on different surfaces. This makes it easy to move the grill around despite the fact that it is quite heavy.

The Good

Having a hard time deciding if this is the best pellet grills for your needs or if you should look for alternatives? To help you decide, below are some of the compelling reasons to pick Big Horn Pellet Grill.

High-Quality Construction

One thing that you will love the most in this grill is the fact that it is made using premium materials that are guaranteed to withstand the test of time. Steel is the main material that is used in its body, which is weather-resistant. The cooking grates, on the other hand, are porcelain-coated.

Easy to Assemble

Right out of the box, you don’t have to exert a lot of effort to assemble the grill. The manufacturer also provides a manual with comprehensive instructions on how to put it together. Within a short span of time, the grill is ready for you to enjoy.

Intuitive Design

Aside from being easy to assemble, it is also user-friendly. One thing that makes this possible is the presence of large controls that will be easy for you to adjust. You do not need to be an experienced chef to prepare a delicious grilled feast.

Easy to Clean

It also does not require a lot of time and effort on your end to clean the grill. One thing that makes this possible is the drip system, which effectively catches the grease to keep the grill mess-free. All other components are effortless to maintain.

The Bad

There are also some issues that can confront you when using this pellet grill, including those that are briefly mentioned below.

May Not Reach High Temperatures

Based on the experiences that have been shared by some users, one of the common problems in this unit is that the maximum temperature may be difficult to reach, especially when it is new. Some people even noted that the stated maximum temperature cannot be reached at all.

Quite Heavy

For its size, the grill can be quite heavy. This, however, should not be too much of a problem. There is a reason why it is heavy – it is made of high-quality materials that can withstand the test of time.

Final Verdict

In sum, the Big Horn Wood Pellet Grill may not be as popular as the grills from Traeger and Rec Tec, but it is definitely worth considering if you are searching for the best. It has a high-quality construction that makes it long-lasting. Assembly does not need to be difficult. It also has decent size for most needs.

Scientists are pushing hard to make kitchen appliances more “intelligent” and increasingly independent, requiring less and less user interaction. It no longer seems like an if, but rather a when will we cross the line between having just a smart kitchen appliance and a fully independent kitchen robot, maybe even of humanoid design? Could chefs and robots be working shoulder to shoulder in restaurant kitchens in a near future, or will the the quest for low-wage (or no-wage) unrelenting workers completely chase humans out of the kitchen and into mere supervising roles?

Would we accept robot-made food becoming a future standard? A realistic picture of the large food industry I’m sure, but wouldn’t you disapprove of having your upscale restaurant meal cooked by a machine?

Will it ever be possible to make a robot think outside the box?

Recently Evan Selinger and Evelyn Kim discussed the matter of robot cooks and their hardship to acquire tacit knowledge in their article “Can a Robot Learn to Cook?” in The Atlantic

Would a robot ever be able to replace a chef?

First of all we need to understand that not all cooking is the same. Home cooking, industrial cooking, chain restaurant cooking, café cooking, street cooking, Michelin star cooking. They are all very different and require different instruments and considerations in their respect. Robots could surely replace or complement chefs in certain situations and in certain types of cooking.

We know that robots are already making a lot of food, especially in the industrialized food sector. Butchering, cutting meat and fish, washing, stirring, cooking, frying, baking and packing are some things that are all automatized. One of the aspects with robot-made food is that robots (or simply machines) are specialized in performing one single task, and do not have the versatility of a human chef. I don’t doubt the quality of robot-made food. On the contrary, monitoring hygiene and cleanliness is easier with machines than with human beings. More, a machine could for example work in a chilled environment to minimize the risk of food spoilage, something that a restaurant cook cannot always do.

Situations where robots might come in very handy are found in the kitchens where production is based around many repetitions of the same task or the same dish. Think banqueting, institutional caterers and canteens. Here the human would to a certain extent take on a part as supervisor, with the bulk of the work being executed by machines.

Cooking at higher levels of cuisine is, however pretentious it may sound, closely related to other art forms. Their relationship stem from the desire to create and innovate, to produce something unique, but most of all from the inherent wish to express something truly personal. To reach the higher peaks in cooking (as any truly great chef) one must have a story to tell (and a concept to sell). Error 412 – robots have no story to tell.

Could a robot make a painting – not a copy of a painting – but a real painting made out of experiences, ideas, dreams and feelings while playing around with color choice and techniques? Does any such thing as an artistic robot exist? If concurrently looking at a copy of a painting and its original – I might see the same thing, but what I feel is different. Knowing that behind the original lies a human mind, a person, complete with imperfections and all, lends a bigger value.

The same goes for food – surely, eating industrial, mega-production food would stop my stomach from growling, but when I’m aware of eating something prepared by an actual human being, preferably with passion, the feeling is different. And I’ll probably pay 10 times as much too. Humans need paychecks, robots don’t.

I think, and hope, that robots will not replace chefs, but there’s nothing saying we couldn’t share the same space working alongside one another.
A human chef is such an incredibly complex creature thanks to the way we can combine our advanced senses and analytic thinking in a million ways.

A robot substitute would need such a huge amount of sensors, functions, processing units and artificial intelligence to even come close to a chef with a medium-sized brain, that the whole thing seems highly unlikely to me.
A much better idea would be the cooperation with specialized robots executing specific tasks or handling particular situations alongside the real chefs.

Talking about robots cooking, here’s a video that totally gives me the creeps:

After having focused on the topic Robot vs Chef, please explain, what does it actually mean to be a chef?

The truth is, chefs can also be robots sometimes. In some cooking there is no art element, blindly following a recipe or cutting meat and veggies in a certain pattern does not leave room for any ‘ad lib’. Imagine a cook in a chain restaurant outlet wanting to give a little personal “touch” to the dishes. Goes without saying that it would be out of question. But if we talk about a different level of cuisine, our sense of taste and the ability to assess flavor compatibility becomes much more important, and there is a higher percentage of ‘ad lib’ work, tasting, seasoning and adjusting, often with the base recipe settled by fixed measurements.

As you continue further up the scale of the various cuisines you will reach a point were the act of performing well, over and over again is just not enough. In addition to a job well done, there are boundaries to be pushed.
Even given that we all have different taste, in all cooking there are still culinary standards to aim for.
A cutting-edge chef though, is responsible not only for reaching up to these culinary standards, but ultimately changing these standards, making us look at food in new ways.

Would the introduction of robots in the kitchen ultimately change what it means to be a chef?

In some ways definitely so. In the future a chef’s job might become less physical and more intellectual. Robots would be able to take over some of the “less rewarding” tasks, the purely mechanical ones where no human mind is needed. In that way the chef, and not least the other human cooks in the kitchen could free up time to concentrate on performing more advanced assignments. On the other hand, in many restaurants, I’m sure, this readily available workforce of perpetual energy would lead to lay-offs in money-saving efforts to maximize margins. This is exactly what has already happened in many other professions.

Implicit knowledge
Why did recipes in old cookbooks always say to use a copper bowl when beating egg whites? Chefs knew that the egg whites were superior when beaten in copper, but no one could tell you why.
Not until recently was it explained that copper ions form a strong bond with the conalbumin in the egg white, thus producing a much more stable foam.
Much of the knowledge that a chef possesses is of the implicit type, something quite abstract. These are things that after a number of years of work in the kitchen is “just there”. You might not know how you learned it nor when you learned it. You use this knowledge it to execute tasks and resolve situations around the kitchen everyday.

This type of knowledge goes way beyond the usual and straightforward cause-and-effect knowledge but still has its roots in the latter.
It’s also this type of knowledge that is hard, sometimes even impossible, to teach and transfer to another person.

Mentoring is one way, a shortcut as such, since it limits the experience required from the apprentice to obtain a certain knowledge. Mentoring is a fast way to let the trainee “tap in to” the mentors experience and consequently in a faster way acquire similar knowledge. Though no matter how good your mentor is, acquired experience can never be transferred to the apprentice, but the lesson learned by the experience process can.
Most chefs know very well how important mentoring is when it comes to developing new skills, progress in the kitchen hierarchy and to one day grow from cook to chef.

But could you upload 10, 20 or 40 years of in-kitchen experience to the CPU of a newly built robot?

The work of the chef is very much a logical process, revolving around things and facts that are easy to describe, monitor and explain. But there are also the other side – a much more inspirational, creative job that’s all about feeling and intuition – trying to transmit not only flavors but also emotions and the chef’s philosophy.

Top chefs are driven by curiosity and passion, an ambition to please their guests and a wish to show off newly invented creations.

Could all the aspects of cooking be replicated by machines or technology?

Surely most of the mechanical tasks in the kitchen could be executed by a robot, some of them already are today, and some will be in the future with further progress in the field of robotics. But when will you be able to let a robot also take over the creative tasks, assignments that require personal views to be taken into account?

Would you like to discuss wine pairings with a robot, without the human values, personal experience and opinions of a sommelier?

A lot of knowledge can be codified and expressed in personal instructions, recipes or robot programming. But what about all that “other” knowledge?
Things that will be hard for a machine to learn are the processes and tasks where a human being uses many of its built-in “tools” to receive sensory data, process the information in the brain, always based on knowledge and experience, comes to a conclusion and act upon it, also taking into account a variety of variables connected to the kitchen, ingredients and maybe even the end-user, the eater.

Tacit knowledge applied in the kitchen might be as simple as correctly seasoning a dish – but how would a robot know what is “just right”?

Sometimes the success of a recipe used for the first time depends on the ability of a skilled cook to “fill in” gaps in the recipe where it isn’t detailed enough for the novice cook to succeed.

But one of the most fascinating applications of tacit knowledge to me is to be able to “taste” the result of a recipe, just by reading it!

Most of this knowledge needs to be acquired, not only by seeing and replicating, but by seeing, replicating and ultimately understanding. Is a robot capable of having an “aha moment” – representing that short instant when all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly comes together and you learn a lesson for life?

Other things that will be very hard to implement in robots is the ability to make decisions based on personal judgement. Would a robot be capable of determining if the fish delivery is fresh enough or it needs to be sent back?

If a cucumber is crispy enough? Where to trim the asparagus stalks to get rid of the woody ends? If a piece of meat has been seared enough or if it needs another 10 seconds in the pan? If an emulsion is emulsified or is beginning to split? Problems might arise when the answer to a question or a problem is not simply “black or white”.

Another field where machines so far cannot compete with humans is creativity. A robot cannot dream up a new dish for tomorrow’s menu. It could surely combine ingredients and cooking techniques in random or systematic patterns with the help of databases and basic flavor pairing – but the human brain is way more complex than that, and has a less limited creative freedom.

On creativity, it all boils down to this: Will it ever be possible to make a robot think outside the box?

Cooking with your (robot) heart
Humans are so incredibly complex beings, which has its positive sides but of course also its negative sides. Our intricate interaction between physics and brain makes us achieve things, that in any other animal or machine for that matter, would be impossible. In advanced cooking the brain has its natural place, as does fine motor skills, but you won’t get far with only this.

The chef needs a heart too. The old saying “put some love in your food” is not without reason. Cooking with your heart for me represents a wish to always do your best, always give more than you take and to offer something that has a higher value than the sum of the ingredients on the plate.
Until someone creates a robot that moves like human, thinks like a human but most importantly, in its own eyes feel like a human – we will only have specialized “robot helpers” in the kitchen.

What part of cooking could be helped by technology?

In their article Evan Selinger and Evelyn Kim were talking about progress in the chicken butchering area.

I’m quite certain that a robot could be designed to butcher whole chickens (as well as any human chicken processor) – perhaps not by following a pre-programmed pattern, but rather by combining a computer-generated model based on 3-dimensional x-ray with flexible cutting tools and dynamic programming. We might not see it tomorrow, but the possibilities exist.

I imagine that a robot in the everyday work in a kitchen, apart from simple mechanical duties, could be able to analyze and control things like saltiness, acidity, temperature, firmness, color.
But would it be able to make smaller adjustments based on occasional circumstances?

Could it take into account that a cut of meat has a slightly different muscle structure today as opposed to yesterday? The apples might be floury, the tomato not sweet enough.

Can a robot take into consideration a guest’s special needs, likes or dislikes? Could it translate praise from a diner about the Asian flavors during the last meal into a wish of doing something even better and therefore tweaking the duck dish with galangal, star anise and palm sugar glaze?

On the other hand, the big advantages with robot workforce are quite clear: Robots are not subject to fatigue, to fear, to anger. Robots don’t loose interest, don’t get into fights, don’t complain, need not be fed. Stress does not change the behavior of a robot as it does a human. Robots does not need praise or love to feel good.
But could a robot taste a finished dish and go: “Wow, this tastes wonderful together!”?

Speaking of robots and their possibility to acquire new skills on their own:
How much knowledge needs to be already in the robot by programming and how much would it be able to learn as time goes by? (provided the hardware is adapt for the new tasks)

In some ways we already have a move towards machinery-backed kitchens with equipment such as intelligent ovens, immersion circulators, pacojets and thermomixers.

Today’s ovens have functions that go beyond simple cooking with auto-start, auto-off, self-cleaning and a number of automatic programs that takes into account both temperature and humidity. But at the end of the day, it’s still just a finely tuned heat source regulated by computer programs. You couldn’t ever teach it to make a cup of coffee, debone a leg of lamb or to take out the trash before it shuts itself off for the day.

In an article in Slate magazine, Evgeny Morozov argues that you wouldn’t want too much help either in the kitchen, since it would actually risk making us worse cooks by depriving us of culinary challenges. Morozov writes about scientists developing helpful surveillance systems which guide the cook through the different steps of a recipe by projecting instructions and symbols onto the ingredients and workspace.

Is there anything in a chef’s job that might require long periods of training to get right?

Many things, definitely. For example, I am very fond of artisan bread baking, and it takes a lot of experience (a good recipe helps a lot too) to be able to recognize what’s happening in a bread dough in its different stages and whether or not things are going as expected. When baking in a normal restaurant kitchen there are so many variables that could make you trip on your way to a good result. The flour might be very dry, or contain high amounts of humidity. The room temperature might be a few degrees higher or lower than yesterday. The sourdough might be weaker today and stronger tomorrow. The ater might be warmer or colder than usual. The fresh yeast might have lost a bit of its strength.

I’ve never had any teacher in bread making, so all knowledge is from hit-or-miss experiences using written and non-written recipes. My first memories of baking bread by myself are from the age of 15 I guess. I remember meticulously following the recipes, one in particular, but I ended up with different results every time. Very frustrating to not understand the mechanisms behind it all, and what caused these random (so it seemed at the time) results. I have during my years in the kitchens made lots of bread – relying on a generous pinch of luck to get good results. It is actually not until during the last years that I have come to understand the processes that transforms flour and water into the beauty we call bread. My insights comes through technical literature and hands-on experience, but unfortunately without a mentor. A lot of this knowledge are things that are almost impossible to describe in text and you simply need to experience it. It’s an incredibly complex mechanism that most chefs wish they knew more about. But once you have acquired a certain amount of knowledge about the happening behind the scenes of the dough, you manage to see, understand and correct problems before they happen. Result: Better bread.

Are there parts of cooking that a machine will NEVER be able to replace?

An incredible amount of what we know in cooking (science of cooking, procedures, methods, techniques) are all results of trial-and-error during thousands of years. The same goes for science in general – many important discoveries comes from curiosity, trial and error and a bit of coincidence or luck.

A machine does not make mistakes and can consequently not make progress in this way.

The difference between machine and man is the wish to evolve, the ambition to always raise the bar a notch or two and the urge to each day get better and better at what you do.

A machine will do what it’s been told or programmed to do, whereas a chef will (hopefully) always try to do things a little bit better every day, a little bit faster, a little bit tastier, a little bit more beautiful.

Moreover, a problem for future robotic chefs might be the fact that certain things in the learning process one has to understand by oneself – they are impossible to transmit by words or act (or a data cable). Only with understanding and contemplation can these things be “learned”. A simple example: I can teach you about communism, but I can never teach you to think like a communist.

My general standpoint on technology in the kitchen is that as long as science doesn’t strangle creativity and the wish to progress, I’m all for it.

And in any case, should there be problems – just pull the plug!

I often get the question “what type of restaurant is Noma really?”
It’s a very valid question from someone who has never been there, but perhaps has heard its billing as “the World’s best restaurant” and bastion of modern regional Nordic cuisine. I wrote a bit about the New Nordic cuisine concept in this other post.

I usually summarize Noma as being as far from classic fine dining as any restaurant possibly could be. The restaurant itself is housed in an old 18th century whaling warehouse on the Copenhagen docks. The building has been brilliantly restored and now houses not only Noma, but also a center for art and culture of the whole North Atlantic region. This setting – the ancient waterfront trade dock is a beautiful one, although quite unpretentious in its simplicity.

Once inside the restaurant; this place lets you experience a spectacle, an interactive performance more than a regular sit-down-and-be-fed-meal. There’s much more conversation between guests and staff, opinions are shared, questions are asked, facts are told. You may even be lucky enough to cook one of the dishes right at the table.
Something that started long ago at Noma and now is replicated in so many restaurants around the world is its chefs taking part in the food service. It’s a kind of evolution of the Japanese tradition where chefs directly serve guests sitting at the bar confining the kitchen. At Noma chefs leave their posts in the kitchen to bring the dishes to the table and in a calm and informative way explain its components and their origin. This creates a unique feeling of ownership and pride for the staff – and who could be better suited to answer questions about techniques or flavors than the chefs themselves? The service from the waiting staff is equally down-to-earth, honest and courteous and makes you feel comfortable in your chair.

Working in the kitchen

Early morning – The kitchen really starts rolling at 8:30 in the morning. Before that, only the AM team (starting before 6 am) dwells in the Noma galley. They fire up the Noma engine each day – executing many of the lengthy tasks in the kitchen; making fresh juices, toasts for the snack section, scraping chicken skin, blanching leeks and smoking eggs. At 8:30 there’s a wave of people hitting the kitchen – knives in hand. Everyone’s pulls out their respective ingredients, chefs instruct stagiaires, chopping boards are set up, and, in another corner of the kitchen, the eternal herb picking starts. (Throughout the four seasons, Noma uses roughly 100 different types of herbs, leaves, shoots and wild plants).

11:30 – Lunchtime briefing with the whole staff
One of the most significant things that I will bring with me from Noma and implement in future positions, is the use of short briefings with the whole staff – chefs, waiters and stagiaires – before each service. Not many restaurants do this, but it’s a critical moment for the chefs and the waiters to snap up the latest facts – number of guests, arrival times, allergies, special requests and potential problems. From a stagiaire’s point of view it’s equally interesting and it makes you feel like a part of the team, au courant with the day’s happenings, and not just like an herb-picking robot.

17:00 – The only real break during the long days is for staff meal (or family meal as it’s also called); 45 min of happiness, joy, amusement, relaxation and recharge. Everyone has their own ritual to get ready for yet another service. Someone spends 10 minutes eating and 30 minutes on the phone, another hurries out after the meal to have one, two, three cigarettes. A third tries to get a power-nap in his chair while another instead locks himself into the bathroom for some peace and quiet.

17:45 – The second pre-service staff briefing of the day.
“For a couple of hours, the guests eating in the restaurant are our very close friends” says René.

00:30 – Staff meeting, evaluating the day and presenting facts about tomorrow.

00:48 – Saturday night projects:
Every Saturday night, after dinner service, the mise en place is put away and the kitchen is cleaned. But, hold on, it’s not quite time to go home just yet. It is Project night – the chefs from the different sections of the kitchen present a dish of their creation to the rest of the staff, letting them taste it and in return receive feedback and thoughts. It’s a sort of incentive to be creative outside the daily work. It’s also a fabulous way to study how the other chefs think about food, how they manage to express themselves with food. Anyone is welcome to present a dish, chefs and apprentices, as well as stagiaires.

01:53 – Now that the day finally is over, the only thing that stands between work and the evening goodbye is the locker room. Here 40 people change before heading off home into the Danish night. Try putting all those shoes, used for more than 15 hours, in a small room together with chef’s jackets perfuming of fish, herbs and braising liquids. No surprise everyone is in a hurry!

The drive behind Noma

Fine dining in the modern meaning of the word, according to me, refers to the care with which the ingredients have been sourced and prepared in the kitchen, as well as the way the guests are cared for and the way the food is presented in the dining room. It’s not about white tablecloths, valet parking or waiters in tuxedos with fake smiles anymore.
Here I feel that the New Nordic cooking is setting a sort of standard with its low-key and minimalist approach to cooking and serving, still pushing the envelope in terms of ingredient quality.
But, this blessing of using only the best ingredients it’s not something that comes cheaply. It takes incredible amounts of time to source them (at Noma one of the sous-chefs has the responsibility of keeping a good relationship with the nearly 100 suppliers, butchers, fishermen, and foragers).
In wintertime it can be rather hard and sometimes even frustrating to try to find fresh and interesting ingredients. During the colder months the North seems to have a limited array of flavors, forcing you to work your creativity on what’s at hand. But as the old saying goes: “Seek and ye shall find” – and that is just what René and his team has done during many winters, finding both common and uncommon (but certainly edible) things.
Surely some ingredients or cuts of meat have raised eyebrows – like the live Danish fjord shrimps (eaten live. Yes, live.) and reindeer tongue. But ultimately these ingredients are not at all about producing a shocking effect. It all comes down to serving truly delicious food from the Nordic region and a wish to go your own way, being as far from “trendy” as possible.
Quite a few of the ingredients in the restaurant are served raw, or nearly. Somehow it would be a shame to modify the flavor of them too much over the fire.
Chef René often points out that if you know all about the origins of the produce you are cooking, maybe you’ve seen it grow or even picked it yourself; it’s harder to perform an unfair massacre on it in the kitchen. At Noma you learn to respect your ingredients in a unique way.

Staff

The common kitchen language is English since there are people from literally all over the world working here. Although I personally understand Danish, most of the people (I counted 15 different nationalities) do not – making English the obvious choice over Mandarin, Russian or Spanish.
In a place as big as Noma (with a staff of 60 or so persons) it’s imperative to have a smooth, collaborating and very hierarchically structured organization. A bit like a military squadron, orders running through the ranks in a well-ordered manner.
Another great strength at Noma is the pure number of workers. If anyone should run into trouble or unforeseen difficulties during preparations, there are always enough helping hands around to resolve any potentially bad situation.
I must say I have rarely seen a kitchen with so much energy, a vibrating feeling from a constant adrenaline flow. So many people giving their all with a sole objective – to serve every guest a perfect and memorable meal—is truly unique. This is not always an easy task in the harsh environment of a professional kitchen. Everything is subject to rigorous inspection and any mistake is rectified immediately. Chefs must withstand plenty of stress, tough attitudes, and live up to first-class quality demands, all while serving the guests with a smile.
The chefs of different ranks sacrifice a lot for their job, even their spare time, offering their services as early as 6 o’clock in the morning to forage in parks and on beaches around Copenhagen. And finding time for partner or family can be quite hard. Many of the chefs at Noma are also far away from their home countries, which makes it even more difficult to keep these remote social contacts alive. Therefore you often end up spending even your free time with collegues – making work and social life blend into one.
Chef René Redzepi

René was born in Copenhagen in 1977, son of a Danish mother and a Macedonian Muslim father. As a child he spent his summers in Macedonia (ex-Yugoslavia) with the family on his father’s side. They were living a traditional farm life, eating what they could grow and milking their own cows. This experience in southern Europe was of course much different to the life in Denmark in those years. It’s also something that has influenced the way he cooks and the way he approaches food nowadays. Growing up between two different cultural heritages has been a big advantage for Redzepi. When faced with Scandinavian ingredients he has been able to create a whole new way of cooking with them, without having hands tied by local traditions.

The Spanish gastronome and food critic Rafael García Santos said something special about Chef Redzepi during an event we attended in Spain. “Every time I eat in a new restaurant, anywhere in the world, I can always pin-point from which mentor the chef got his inspiration – with René I can’t! And this is a beautiful thing. I truly do not know where he gets his inspiration from.”
Well Rafael, let me tell you the answer to that question: From nature itself. That’s what is genius about him.