We all know the benefits of cooking at home – if done right, is healthier, cheaper and just tastes better.
Sometimes, life’s craziness gets in the way, and cooking every day for three meals isn’t practical. Other times, cooking isn’t a strength everyone has (and hey, that’s quite ok).
Fortunately there’s another way to eat. A more Back to the Future-ish kinda way.
Meet Natural Machines, a company that launched the first 3D food printer by the name of Foodini, printing a variety of real foods. Foodini prints actual edible food and is here to print you pizza, veggie burgers and cookies all with fresh ingredients...including any shape you want!
Savory or sweet? You can do both and a little bit of everything in between.
This is real folks, on so many levels. Your typical 3D printer uses plastics and metals to make awesome things. While Foodini uses this same technology, replace the plastic with real food ingredients. An open capsule method is used; meaning fresh ingredients are squeezed through reusable, stainless steel capsules that you prepare and place into the printer.
To fill up a capsule, you’d simply blend up your ingredients to a certain consistency to get the right texture. For example, you wouldn’t want tomato sauce to be overly watery and drip freely, just as if it’s too chunky, you’d clog up the nozzle. With future development, this process will become more advanced. Plus, just like anything, you’d get the hang of it after playing around with the ingredients.
The company is looking into pre-packaged capsules with retailers. So, if you want to make homemade ravioli, it would be as simple as going to the grocery store and buying capsules to pop in your Foodini. How wild is that?
The 3D food printer is connected to the Internet with a touchscreen to accompany it.
Simply choose what recipe you want to make from the device or your laptop and Foodini will tell you what to fill the capsules with, printing your food like it’s 2015. Oh wait, it already is.
Just check out these roarin’ spinach quiche dinosaurs!
Foodini shines by making time-consuming processes like pretzels and pasta quick and enjoyable—without the use of preservatives. Of course, nuking a microwave meal for a couple of minutes is quick. But! Why chow down on the pre-packaged stuff when you can print it as fresh as can be?
Smash your face with ready-to-eat items like intricate chocolate sculptures right after they’re produced, and pop breadsticks in the oven once they're printed. The length of time to print your food is dependent on the intricacy and amounts—anywhere from 20 minutes to a few minutes. Not bad.
Natural Machines plans on releasing their kitchen appliance to the mass market the second half of this year. They anticipate the price of Foodini to be around the $1,300 range, available online and with select distributors.
3D-printed pizza, anyone?
Photo by: Natural Machines | Foodini
