The Science of Cooking on a Research Vessel

One of the most common questions our outreach team got while visiting classrooms was about what we would be eating while living on a research vessel in Antarctica.

And this seems like a pretty logical question when you think about the fact that we will literally be floating on the Southern Ocean among a land of ice for over a month.

Since there won't exactly be any grocery stores around, there is a three man cooking team on board that is in charge of anything and everything to do with food during our expedition.

The three chefs on board the Laurence M. Gould

Their job is so much more than preparing food.

During this four and a half week cruise there will be a total of 4,293 meals eaten!

At any given time there will be between 33 and 53 people on board.

That means these chefs are in charge of planning, ordering, and stocking all food items necessary before the expedition starts, as well as planning and preparing each of the 4,293 meals throughout the cruise.  Not to mention, they have to make each meal nutritious, taste good, meet everyone's dietary requirements, and varied enough so that they aren't serving the same thing all the time.

Doing all that successfully is a real science!

Produce storage in the walk-in cooler

The act of cooking is actually a science as well, since cooking is essentially a series of chemical reactions, i.e. chemistry!

So it appears that our team of researchers are most definitely not the only ones using science on the ship!

Chef  Mike flipping an omelette before breakfast