Astronauts savor grilled chicken and beef in space

The Chinese people are known for their rich and diverse culinary traditions and mouthwatering meals, vindicating the old Chinese saying, "One will never be tired of superb cuisine".

Now, thanks to advanced technologies, six Chinese astronauts have extended the nation's famous gastronomic pursuit to the Earth's orbit and become the first humans to not only grill chicken and meat in outer space but also eat them.

The three crew members of Shenzhou XXI, who arrived at China's Tiangong space station early on Saturday morning, and their peers from Shenzhou XX used a specially built oven to prepare grilled chicken wings and black pepper beef steaks.

In a short video beamed down on Monday night from the space station, which orbits at an altitude of about 400 kilometers, Shenzhou XXI spaceflight engineer Major Wu Fei is seen taking marinated chicken wings out from a package, placing them on a special skewer rack, and sliding them into the oven.

Shenzhou XXI mission commander Senior Colonel Zhang Lu is heard saying in the video clip, "As the chicken wings go inside the oven, all of us desire to see what will become of them at 180 C after 28 minutes. Please stay with us."

Later, Wu is seen taking out the rack, sizzling with space-made chicken wings, and he says they smell as good as they look.

The rack of wings is first passed to Shenzhou XX mission commander Senior Colonel Chen Dong, who leans in and savors the whiff of grilled chicken, and then lets the others follow suit. Chen also quips that his mouth had been watering while waiting for the food.

In the video, the astronauts gather in front of the oven and eat the chicken wings, and they unanimously agree that the taste is heavenly.

Wu and Shenzhou XX crew member Colonel Wang Jie, both of whom hail from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, which is known for its high-quality beef and mutton, also prepare black pepper steaks and share these with the others.

According to Liu Weibo, an engineer at the Astronaut Center of China, researchers designed and built the special oven to allow astronauts to cook inside the massive orbiting space outpost.

"No matter where we Chinese people are, we love our food hot. We would like to cook our meals, rather than have freeze-dried food," he told China Central Television. "With this oven, they can make cakes, grill meat, or roast peanuts. It will help to enrich their dining portfolio and improve their living quality in orbit."

Wang Yanan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said it is never an easy job to create an oven that can be used in outer space.

"Unlike what happens on Earth, where the air is churning around in the oven, the necessary process called convection just doesn't occur in space. Therefore, engineers needed to work out a unique way to heat the food and handle the cooking fumes, while also ensuring the safety of crew members," he said.

In 2019, the United States delivered an oven to the International Space Station and had astronauts bake cookies in microgravity as part of an experiment. However, the cookies were not eaten at the space station, but sent back to Earth for further research.

Until now, there have been no reports of astronauts aboard the ISS cooking meals using an oven. Liu, from the Astronaut Center of China, said the Chinese-made oven is the world's first that can be used for cooking in outer space.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn