It’s hard to make it home for the holidays when you’re in a space station orbiting almost 250 miles above the Earth. Luckily, NASA shared one of its Thanksgiving-appropriate recipes so everyone can eat and celebrate like an outer space pilgrim. That’s right, you can now make “Out of This World Cornbread Dressing” at home.
In a Facebook live broadcast on Monday, NASA food scientist Vickie Kloeris and intern Ryan Dowdy explained that astronauts aboard the International Space Station have a wealth of dining options available to them. Kloeris explained that NASA sends up “200 different foods and beverages,” and astronauts pick and choose what they want.
For Thanksgiving, though, they’ve got a few choice options — all freeze-dried, of course. Sliced smoked turkey is the main course, naturally, and Kloeris and Dowdy suggested green beans and mushrooms as a side, with cherry blueberry cobbler for dessert. (It’s not exactly, uh, bursting with flavor, so there will probably be hot sauce involved.)
The star of the show, though, and the dish that NASA’s wants you to make at home, was cornbread dressing. In a blog post, NASA gave away the secret recipe. You can check out the entire ingredients list and the instructions on NASA’s website, but it looks mighty tasty, and pretty doable, provided you have a food processor.
Of course, making the cornbread dressing on Earth is only half of the process. NASA’s recipe has one extra instruction for “spaceflight preparation:”
Baked dressing is transferred to metal tray and freeze-dried accordingly. One serving of cornbread dressing shall weigh approximately 145 g prior to freeze-drying and 50 g after freeze-drying.
Since everything in space is freeze-dried and packaged to last, Thanksgiving in space doesn’t require slaving over a hot stove all day before the meal.
“They don’t do cooking, per se,” Kloeris explained. “All they really do is add water, and warm things up.”
