Astronauts aboard the International Space Station recently feasted on a spicy Jamaican rice and beans with coconut milk entrée cooked up by a team of culinary students from Phoebus High School in Hampton, Virginia.
The Phoebus team’s dish won the 2015 High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware, or HUNCH, Culinary Challenge. They had to compete against six other high school culinary teams last year during a visit to the Space Food Systems Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The spicy concoction launched to the ISS this past April aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
“We wanted to thank the HUNCH team for being able to develop such a great recipe and get it on the space station,” says Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra in a video message to the students. “We just want to let you know that we really enjoy it and congratulations again.”
Kopra, along with flight engineers Jeff Williams and Tim Peake, filmed themselves tasting the entrée.
Bottles of ketchup and spicy brown mustard, and a package of dried cranberries are clearly visible in the background. A bottle of what appears to be Sriracha hot sauce pokes out of a plastic storage bag. Astronaut Jeff Williams lets a spoonful of the rice and beans float in front of him for a second.
“Thank you. Tastes great,” says European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake.
A red pepper risotto created by high school students from Passaic County Technical Institute in Wayne, New Jersey, won the 2016 HUNCH Culinary Challenge. It will be processed for flight and enjoyed by astronauts aboard the space station next year.