Miso is an important sauce in Japanese cuisine and making it right with the appropriate taste is a must. However, it seems astronauts might have to do with a differently tasting miso in space as per the International Space Station (ISS).
Recently, astronauts on board the International Space Station conducted an experiment of making a Japanese miso sauce , thought to be the first food deliberately fermented outside Earth. This was carried out in the hope that it could shed some light into the potential for life in space and also widen the culinary options for astronauts.
What is miso?
Miso is a salty tasting fermented soy bean paste used as a base in soups, sauces and marinades and mostly popular in Japan. While every region in the country has its own recipe, the traditional recipe includes ingredients such as soaked soybeans, water, salt and koji. It usually takes six months to develop its distinct taste, with the flavours intensifying for as long as it is fermented.
A more strong and nutty miso
While the " space miso " had a similar savouriness as to the one prepared on Earth, the flavour of it differed. According to the astronauts who sampled the fermented soybean sauce, it was more strongly roasted and had an elevated nutty flavour.
The experiment begins
Scientist Maggie Coblentz from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) and scientist Joshua Evans from the Technical University of Denmark sent a small container of cooked soybean paster to the ISS in March 2020, where it was left to ferment for 30 days before returning to Earth as miso.
The miso sauce was kept in a container with sensors which closely monitored the temperature, relative humidity, pressure and radiation, as mentioned in the peer-reviewed paper published in the journal iScience recently.
In order to compare the space miso , two other miso batches were fermented on Earth, one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US and the other in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The results revealed
“We didn’t know what to expect — fermentation had never been done before in space,” Evans, the co-lead author of the study, told CNN. He also shared that the space miso was "darker and clearly more jostled" which made sense as it had travelled much more than either of the earth miso.
He explained that the microgravity and increased radiation in space could have impacted how microbes grew and metabolized, and in turn fermented.
“By bringing together microbiology, flavour chemistry, sensory science, and larger social and cultural considerations, our study opens up new directions to explore how life changes when it travels to new environments like space,” Evans said. He also furthered that the research could "enhance astronaut well-being and performance" and "invite new forms of culinary expression, expanding and diversifying culinary and cultural representation in space exploration as the field grows."
Coblentz, another co-author of the study added that the research underlined "the potential for life to exist in space" by showing how a microbial community could develop.
Recently, astronauts on board the International Space Station conducted an experiment of making a Japanese miso sauce , thought to be the first food deliberately fermented outside Earth. This was carried out in the hope that it could shed some light into the potential for life in space and also widen the culinary options for astronauts.
What is miso?
Miso is a salty tasting fermented soy bean paste used as a base in soups, sauces and marinades and mostly popular in Japan. While every region in the country has its own recipe, the traditional recipe includes ingredients such as soaked soybeans, water, salt and koji. It usually takes six months to develop its distinct taste, with the flavours intensifying for as long as it is fermented.
A more strong and nutty miso
While the " space miso " had a similar savouriness as to the one prepared on Earth, the flavour of it differed. According to the astronauts who sampled the fermented soybean sauce, it was more strongly roasted and had an elevated nutty flavour.
The experiment begins
Scientist Maggie Coblentz from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) and scientist Joshua Evans from the Technical University of Denmark sent a small container of cooked soybean paster to the ISS in March 2020, where it was left to ferment for 30 days before returning to Earth as miso.
The miso sauce was kept in a container with sensors which closely monitored the temperature, relative humidity, pressure and radiation, as mentioned in the peer-reviewed paper published in the journal iScience recently.
In order to compare the space miso , two other miso batches were fermented on Earth, one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US and the other in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The results revealed
“We didn’t know what to expect — fermentation had never been done before in space,” Evans, the co-lead author of the study, told CNN. He also shared that the space miso was "darker and clearly more jostled" which made sense as it had travelled much more than either of the earth miso.
He explained that the microgravity and increased radiation in space could have impacted how microbes grew and metabolized, and in turn fermented.
“By bringing together microbiology, flavour chemistry, sensory science, and larger social and cultural considerations, our study opens up new directions to explore how life changes when it travels to new environments like space,” Evans said. He also furthered that the research could "enhance astronaut well-being and performance" and "invite new forms of culinary expression, expanding and diversifying culinary and cultural representation in space exploration as the field grows."
Coblentz, another co-author of the study added that the research underlined "the potential for life to exist in space" by showing how a microbial community could develop.
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