Food Printing: the 3D printed food
Tridimensional printing conquers food! The third dimension obtained by the printers that work plastic materials has reached a great success in the last years, but did you know that also the food could be 3D printed?
Hand and rolling pin won’t be used anymore for the food of the future; pasta and biscuits will be printed directly on the dish!
We are talking about food printing, the last digital cooking frontier. It foresees the use of a tridimensional printer and a computer where the recipe’s necessary information and the wanted shape are registered. With few simple touches you set the printer and et voilà… 3D pasta, biscuits, bread and chocolates are ready in few minutes! The best thing? It is possible to chose different shapes and creates your own favourite shape of pasta.
3D rigatoni and spaghetti: 3D printed food
Barilla, the most famous Italian brand for pasta of the world, has already experimented food printing and it is working for three years to design and create 3D pasta.
Barilla, in fact, is working together with TNO, a Duch research centre specialized in researches on food and the cooking of the future. They designed a machine able to shape different types of pasta. Everyone could design and print the most favourite kind of pasta, depending on your own fantasy and creativity.
The idea is to transform, in few years, these prototypes into machines to be sold to the large retailers to use at home, in a restaurant and at the supermarket, revolutionizing the concept of cuisine!
Thingarage, a start-up of Rome, specialized in industrial design that cooperate in the project of the 3D pasta, has already received more than 200 requests for the printer. So, it is clear that people like this idea and that the innovation of 3D food will have a satisfying and quick evolution.
Primo… a dish of 3D pasta printed and cooked!
Gioacchino Acampora, a design keen on 3D printers, and Eugenio Boer, young chef of Milan, went further: they created the first 3D printed dish, cooked directly by the machine only in 4 minutes, completely digital.
It is Primo, durum wheat dough, with the shape of the Vesuvio Volcano accompanied by star decoration made of white mozzarella milk, green allium ursine and red tomatoes. The only thing added by the human hand? A drizzle of oil, a basil leaf and a spoon of tomato sauce.
How is it possible? Chef Boer transformed all the ingredients under a liquid state, closed in vacuum-sealed bags as real inks connected to the machine. When the computer starts the printing, following the design that the chef has set, the ingredients are cooked through the machine and come out, laying on the dish based on the given design.
