Order up: robot cooks and prints custom food

Engineers have produced a technology that can assemble and cook custom food. The Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science used 3D printing technology and lasers to assemble and cook chicken that was subsequently tested by precision scientific instruments — human mouths.

Printing food is not a new technology but it has not been analysed in tandem with automated cooking technology. Blue lasers and infrared light were used to cook printed chicken samples and various parameters such as cooking depth, moisture retention and flavour were analysed and controlled for. In the end, blind taste testers enjoyed the laser-cooked meat more than they did the conventionally cooked samples.

While this sounds a bit clinical right now — few would ask a personal chef to “print me a 3 mm thick sample of chicken and cook it using a 445 nanometre light” — with some development this technology may be a viable option in the future, including in wider industrial applications.

Blue laser is used to cook chicken. Image credit: Jonathan Blutinger/Columbia Engineering

“What we still don’t have is what we call ‘Food CAD’, sort of the Photoshop of food. We need a high-level software that enables people who are not programmers or software developers to design the foods they want. And then we need a place where people can share digital recipes, like we share music,” said Professor Hod Lipson, Director of the Creative Machines Lab.

The research study titled ‘Precision cooking for printed foods via multiwavelength lasers’ has been published in the npj Science of Food journal.

Top image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/besjunior