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Red Pepper Risotto Wins NASA Food Space Contest; Second Dish To Travel To Space

By Sara Gale | Update Date: May 29, 2016 06:00 AM EDT

Red pepper risotto won the NASA's Food Space Contest and is going to be the second dish to be had by astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS). Students from Passaic County Technical Institute in Wayne, New Jersey that came up with the dish outsmarted nine other teams to receive the honor.

About ten teams participated in the cook-off contest for high school students missioned to prepare a dish suitable to feed the astronauts in ISS. NASA announced this contest earlier this year and ten teams were selected through a nationwide culinary challenge on April 21 at the Space Center Houston.

The team from Passaic County Technical Institute that comprised of three children, Carolan Terro, Jada Sanders, and Sierra Bronas won the contest by preparing red pepper risotto in accordance with the set requirement criteria.

The children were required to prepare a dish that has eight grams or less of sugar, less than 30 percent of fat, three grams of fiber or more and finally something with 300 to 500 calories. The food should be able to be used in microenvironment and should have the ease of packaging.

"The combination of the fire roasted pepper puree, the protein filled edamame, the saltiness of the asiago cheese, along with the creaminess of the rice cooked slowly in our housemade vegetable stock is surely going impress and satisfy the perfect image of a risotto," reads the team's description of its risotto, according to PC Mag.

The risotto will be processed by Johnson Space Center Food Lab processes and will be sent to space in November after undergoing one of the three process freeze-drying or thermostabilization, or heat preservation. Astronauts, however, will get to taste the dish in April, 2017 just like the first dish, spicy Jamaican rice and bean combo with coconut milk was served this April.

The Jamaican rice is now being used by the three astronauts Tim Kopra, Jeff Williams, and Tim Peake in space. The dish was catapulted to space through SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle, reported Science World Report.

"Within our research, while writing our paper and learning about food preparation in space, we determined that a risotto would work best with the rehydration process and microgravity conditions presented upon the astronauts," noted the team, reported PC Mag.

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