3-D-Printed Chicken Dinner Cooked by Lasers

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 03:45:00 GMT
Scientific American - Technology

A laser-focused chef prints and cooks complex designs

Tomorrow's gourmet menus could feature items prepared with complex cooking techniques and intricate presentation-all at the push of a button.

Columbia University mechanical engineers have designed a 3-D printer that can simultaneously produce and cook dishes with details at the millimeter scale.

The proof-of-concept design, described in npj Science of Food, combines a multiwavelength laser cooker, roughly the size of five smartphones stacked together, with a microwave-oven-sized food printer.

As the device's robotic arm deposits fine layers of chicken puree, a high-powered beam zigzags over them and cooks the meat-with literally laser-focused precision.

The system, which the researchers say is the first to combine a laser cooker with a 3-D food printer, uses various light wavelengths to cook in different ways: a short-waved blue laser penetrates deep inside meat, for example, while infrared beams broil or brown the surface.

The new technology is "Astounding," says Megan Ross, a food scientist who studies 3-D printing at Ireland's University College Cork and was not involved in the study.

Ross notes that the design is still at a nascent stage and that many technical challenges remain, such as preventing cross contamination between layers of raw and cooked meat.

Still, Ross is impressed by the device's ability to produce foods outside the realm of conventional cooking.

Compared with 3-D-printed chicken cooked in a traditional oven, the laser-cooked version retained nearly twice as much weight and volume, the researchers found.

"Cooking is a skill set that has been practiced and perfected for thousands of years," he says.

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