Published Oct 26, 2026

She has served porridge at the Nobel Banquet, made baby food from crooked vegetables and won Sweden’s Chef of the Year competition. Now Jessie Sommarström is working to improve the food served in schools, hospitals and care homes. She is being awarded KTH’s Great Prize for showing how good food can combine pleasure, health and sustainability.

Jessie Sommarström

Age: 47
Profession: Chef
Current roles: Executive chef at Sodexo, where she works 60 per cent of the time; also runs a business with her husband, Gordon, organising events and private dinners.
Family: Husband and two children
Role models: Her mother, Astrid Lindgren and Parul Sharma
Charities and causes: WWF, Barnfonden and the Flickebarnsprojektet, which supports girls in India
Favourite way to spend a day off: Spending time with her children
An ingredient she would like to give a new release of life: Cereals
Always in her fridge: Flavour boosters such as crispy chilli oil, soy sauce and miso
A “last meal”: Spaghetti Bolognese – with 50 per cent pulses, of course
Best student food: Porridge!
If she could work with a KTH research team for a year, what problem would she tackle? Something related to human behaviour.

You can find the recipe for the Nobel porrage here

It is the days leading up to the 2024 Nobel Banquet. Jessie Sommarström has been commissioned to create the menu for one of the world’s most prestigious dinners. When she tells the media that porridge will be served as the main course, the reaction is swift. Soon, 1,300 guests will gather at Stockholm City Hall for a dinner expected to bring together innovation, glamour, research and Swedish culinary traditions.

“It caused quite a stir,” Jessie recalls.

“‘Woke’ porridge for royalty and Nobel laureates. Scandal!” But amid the criticism, she also received some welcome encouragement to stand her ground.

“Taking something as simple as porridge, a dish that has sustained generations, and elevating it to Nobel Banquet level – that’s what I find exciting.”

And porridge it was. The much-criticised grain dish turned out to be a hit. So much so that Jessie and her husband, Gordon, later took the idea to the Way Out West music festival, where they set up a porridge stall.

“Suddenly, young people were queuing up at our stall because an influencer had tried the blueberry dessert porridge.”

For Jessie, the episode captures something important about food: our ideas of what counts as luxurious, desirable or worth eating can change. She wants to challenge those assumptions, starting with the ingredients themselves.

“Knowing exactly where an ingredient comes from, and that it has been produced with care – that’s luxury to me.”

“A cheesemaker who names her goats after their personalities tells you a lot about how the animals are treated. Surely that’s luxury, if anything is?”

Jessie Sommarström was adopted from Goa, India, and grew up with her mother and brother in modest financial circumstances. At home, they ate vegetarian food, often lentil stews. For a long time, Jessie herself took little interest in food. That changed when she began eating at friends’ homes and discovered just how much there was to explore.

“My strongest food memory is actually eating pork chops, potato wedges and mushroom sauce at a friend’s house.”

She started out washing dishes at a restaurant in Vaxholm and worked her way up through the kitchen hierarchy. She went on to work at restaurants including Sturehof and Esperanto, win Sweden’s prestigious Chef of the Year competition and compete alongside other top chefs in the TV4 series Kockarnas kamp.

But professional success has brought a growing interest in a bigger question: how can good food be made accessible to more people, and how can gastronomy help tackle the challenges facing society?

“The food system affects almost everything. Many of the challenges we face are connected to how we produce and consume food – from water use and biodiversity to public health, hunger and obesity. I follow research closely, but we need to turn that knowledge into practical solutions.”

After having children, her determination to help change the food system grew stronger. She wants to change the way we eat: to eat less but better-quality meat, and to make greater use of plant-based ingredients without compromising on flavour. She is also passionate about reducing food waste, which she sees as one of the most effective ways individuals can contribute to a more sustainable food system.

Today, Jessie works both in gastronomy and on developing meals for the public sector. As executive chef at Sodexo, she helps develop food for schools, hospitals, care homes and workplaces – meals that must work on a much larger scale.

She leads a team that inspires and trains chefs, while developing recipes that balance flavour, nutrition and climate impact. Making the most of ingredients and reducing food waste are central to the work.

“A public meal is never just a cost. It can give a child a better chance to learn, help a patient recover and give an older person strength and quality of life.”

For Jessie, the scale of the task is also an opportunity.

“As chefs, we have a great responsibility, especially when we cook for large numbers of people, as I do now. In Sweden, three million public meals are served every day. That’s three million opportunities to make a difference.”

Nor does she see the constraints of large-scale catering as a barrier to creativity.

“Working within limits helps you develop as a chef. Constraints can spark creativity.”

Whether she is creating a menu for the Nobel Banquet or developing a school lunch, the principle remains the same: the food has to taste good. It has to make people want to eat it.

For Jessie, there is no contradiction between culinary pleasure and social responsibility. A meal can be nourishing, sustainable and carefully prepared – and still be something to look forward to.

“Is there anything better than making someone happy through food? It’s a gift you can give quite simply.”

Text: Anna Gullers