🖖 This missing ingredient

Why aren’t we cooking in space? Right now, prepared, pre-portioned and dried meals sponge up hot water from a valve on the space station wall.

Might as well insert surgical tubes into the body that deliver nutritionally precise goop into the body.

Not an exciting future to think about.

No, one main reason (and there’s a few) that we’re not cooking in space yet is because they don’t have the secret ingredient that you’re already using.

Think about it.

Sure you could strap a cutting board to a table on the space station, but you can’t put an onion on it.

It would float away.

You’d have to hold it down and cut it. Even then you can only do that once or twice before there’s too many pieces for you to handle.

See where I’m going with this?

We never think about how big a role gravity plays in cooking.

A blender only works because the foods sit on the bottom.

Gravity.

Grilling only works because food lays on the grill.

Gravity.

Think of a recipe that doesn’t require

gravity…

Those 9.8 meters per second per second that we’ve left off our recipes.

We need new ways to prepare foods without gravity. Even ingredients. We can’t use ground spices. They’ll float away and cause damage to ship systems. Or fly into your throat while you’re sleeping.

On the ISS they use a saline solution- salt mixed with water. And they use a black pepper infused oil to season their food. 

The next time you’re in the kitchen, try to think: What would happen if I let go (of my knife, my ingredient, etc.)? Would it be convenient to finish the recipe?

If you have any ideas regarding recipes or even techniques, send them my way so we can discuss them. 

Something to think about today. Happy cooking.