Researchers at Columbia have used multi-wavelength lasers to cook 3D-printed chicken. Apparently, it tastes like chicken. We were not overly surprised that 3D printed chicken protein cooked up to taste like chicken, but, then again, you have to do the science.
While additive manufacturing is the latest buzzword for all kinds of manufacturing, there’s also been a variety of attempts to 3D print food. We’ve seen pizza printers and fake steak printers, too. It makes sense that you don’t want to print raw food — the finished product needs to be cooked. You can see several videos about the process, below.
On the plus side, chicken cooked with blue and infrared lasers shrinks less than conventional cooking techniques. It also supposedly retains twice the moisture content, so it is possible that 3D printed chicken might have some real advantages compared to just throwing some fryer on the grill.
We aren’t sure we are ready to convert our printer to create nuggets and we’ll stick to more conventional cooking for now. But it is good to know that when we are ready to print our next meal, there’s scientific data to help us.
If your tastes range for beef analog, we’ve seen that printer before. Converting a printer to work with food doesn’t appear to be that hard, although your results, of course, may vary.
Source:: Hackaday