Subject: Chips/Fries In Space

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/12/10/article-2521450-1A027D7500000578-241_634x417.jpg
Researcher Thodoris Karapantsios began by using a giant centrifuge to cook chips under conditions of hypergravity. He found that at a force of 3-g (three times the gravity of Earth) the potatoes formed a perfect crispy crust in around half the usual time. standard centrifuge machine is pictured


The experiments are funded by the European Space Agency and follow comments from a Russian cosmonaut that what he’d really like is ‘fried potatoes’.

Researcher Thodoris Karapantsios began by using a giant centrifuge to cook chips under conditions of hypergravity, which is when the force of gravity is more than that on Earth.

He found that at a force of 3-g, which is three times the gravity of Earth, the potatoes formed a perfect crispy crust in around half the usual time.

While the chips may not have tasted out of this world, they tasted as good as those fried normally.

The professor, from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, said the same effect could be achieved by creating an industrial fryer that spins once a second or a home fryer that rotates twice a second, and he plans to patent a design.

In the meantime, experiments that recreate the weightlessness of space are planned.

Professor Karapantsios suspects that the potatoes will boil rather than fry but said: ‘It will be important to know whether we can fry on Mars or the moon.’

His experiments are described in the journal Food Research International.