Frida Jensen

Aarhus-Central Denmark, European Region of Gastronomy awarded 2017
Denmark

“My focus as a future chef is to actively participate in making the industry more sustainable in every possible way. We need to rethink the whole cooking process in order to make it more sustainable, and I want to be an active part in this.”

Frida Jensen is the young chef who represented Aarhus-Central Denmark, European Region of Gastronomy awarded 2017 at the European Young Chef Award 2021 and won 3rd prize.

“For me, sustainability is not just what’s on the plate and how it got there, but it’s also about the chef’s well-being, how many hours we are working, and making sure that the job in the future will be more sustainable.”

22 years old, Frida started studying cooking at Århus Tech when she was 18. She is currently a chef student at Restaurant Hærværk in Aarhus and when she is not there cooking food for the guests, she practices for chef competitions and bakes cakes for her friends and family, a passion that she developed at very young age.

As a child, she used to grow lots of plants and vegetables in her garden with the help of her mother. The effort put into growing it, made Frida really appreciate her small harvests and she always tried to ensure that nothing of it went to waste, by using every part of it creatively.

Frida describes herself as a perfectionist, one of the reasons why she loves kitchen life so much, together with it being a big creative space. She wants to build her professional career putting sustainability at the centre and constantly challenging her own work: “How can I reduce my waste to a minimum? How do I adjust my processes, so that they will be more sustainable? Is the cloth that I’m using without microplastics? How much single-use paper do I use in a day? How much wrapping do my vegetables come in? Is the fish we order caught in a sustainable way?” Every small detail is important to her.