3-D-Printed Chicken Dinner Cooked by Lasers

[Judi Lynn]

A laser-focused chef prints and cooks complex designs

By Huanjia Zhang | Scientific American January 2022 Issue

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. “It’s almost like having a crème brûlée torch,” says Jonathan Blutinger, lead author of the paper and a digital-cooking researcher at Columbia. “It gives you a lot more control and customization.” The researchers tested only chicken for this study, but the system can work with other foods as well.

Beyond applying sophisticated texture and presentation motifs, this type of software-controlled setup could someday scan a QR code to automatically prepare dishes tailored to individual eating habits and dietary restrictions, Blutinger says.

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 (which have longer wavelengths) broil or brown the surface. Thus, users can achieve elaborate results—say, a machine-made burger that alternates between rare and well done in a checkerboard pattern.

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-d-printed-chicken-dinner-cooked-by-lasers/

[Binkie The Clown]

1. ... and eaten by robots. nt

[patphil]

2. Sounds like Captain Picard on Star Trek...tea, hot, earl gray.

Replicator food! Mm Mm Good. Eat it up, yum!