Could Food Waste Become The Next Big Thing In Cooking Because To Fungi?
Chef who shifted to chemistry Vayu Hill-Maini’s passion is employing fungi to transform food waste into delectable gourmet delicacies.
One of his partners is Rasmus Munk, head chef and co-owner of Copenhagen’s Alchemist, a two-star Michelin restaurant that serves a dessert inspired by Hill-Maini: orange-colored Neurospora mold growing on rice.
For the past two years, Hill-Maini has collaborated with a group of chefs at Pocantico Hills, New York’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a two-star Michelin restaurant, to create delectable morsels from Neurospora mold cultivated on grains and pulses, including the pulp leftover from oat milk production. Soon, you might be offered at Blue Hill a moldy bread side dish and a patty of grain covered in orange neurospora. The orange neurospora is cultivated on rice bread, which, when fried, tastes and smells like a toasted cheese sandwich.
For Hill-Maini, a Miller postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, that is just the beginning. He has dedicated himself to learning everything he can about Neurospora intermedia, a common fungus that is traditionally used in Indonesia to make a food called oncom (pronounced ahn’ cham) from soy pulp, while working in the lab of Jay Keasling, UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. This is so that it can be broadly adapted to Western food waste and Western palates.
“We have a really ineffective food system. It’s not just eggshells in your trash—roughly one-third of all food produced in the United States is wasted. It’s industrial-sized, according to Hill-Maini. What becomes of every grain used in the brewing process, every oat that isn’t used to make oat milk, and every soybean that isn’t used to make soy milk? It is discarded.
He claimed that when fermented oncom was first presented to him by an Indonesian fellow chef, it “hit him that this food is a beautiful example of how we can take waste, ferment it, and make human food from it.” Therefore, let’s take a lesson from this instance, thoroughly examine this procedure, and perhaps derive some more general guidance on how to address the problem of food waste.
Blue Hill decided to establish an incubator and tissue culture hood in its test kitchen this summer in order to go deeper into the realm of fungal foods, spurred on by Hill-Maini’s ardent advocacy of the advantages of Neurospora. Previously, Hill-Maini’s lab at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, California, close to UC Berkeley, received a variety of substrates via FedEx from Blue Hill’s chef in charge of special projects, Andrew Luzmore. There, Neurospora magically changed the substrates for research. Though Luzmore has sampled numerous Neurospora experiments, the one produced with stale rice bread is his personal favorite.
It tastes really good. Luzmore stated, “It tastes and looks like you toasted and grated cheddar onto bread.” It provides a pretty clear view of what may be accomplished with this.
While people from various cultures have long used foods made from fungus, such as miso made from soybeans by the koji mold (Aspergillus oryzae), milk curds changed into blue cheese by Penicillium mold, and grain turned into alcohol by yeast, oncom is special in that it is made from food waste. Created centuries ago by indigenous Javanese, it seems to be the only food for humans that is fermented only by Neurospora mold. Not for long, though.
A study by Hill-Maini regarding the genetic makeup of the Neurospora intermedia strains that convert soy milk waste into oncom, as well as the ways in which the fungus modify 30 distinct types of plant waste chemically, will be made available online in the journal Nature Microbiology on August 29.
“Molds and fungi have probably gained more attention in the past few years due to their positive effects on health and the environment, but much less is known about the molecular processes that these fungi carry out to turn ingredients into food,” the speaker stated. “I believe that our discovery broadens our understanding of these opportunities and increases the potential of these fungi for planetary sustainability and health.”
A wholesome snack within thirty-six hours
There are two types of oncom in West Java: black oncom, which is cultivated on the leftover pressings from producing peanut oil, and red oncom, which is produced by fermenting soy pulp remaining from creating tofu. They are utilized in similar ways: as fried snacks, in stir-fries, and as stuffing for dumplings made of rice.
One of the remarkable things about these moldy mixtures, according to Hill-Maini, is that the fungus turns indigestible plant material—polysaccharides, which come from the cell walls of plants and include pectin and cellulose—into palatable, nourishing food in approximately 36 hours.
He remarked, “The fungus eats those things readily and makes more of itself and this food as a result, increasing the protein content.” “There has been a real change in the nutritional value. The flavor profile has changed, as you can see. A few of the unpleasant tastes connected to soybeans vanish. And lastly, significant levels of some advantageous metabolites are created.
A single-celled fungus called yeast is well known for its transformational powers, turning fruit and grains into alcohol. However, the fungus that produces oncom is distinct; it is a filamentous fungus that grows and spreads like mycorrhizae, which are fungi that live in forest soil and create mushrooms. The oncom fungus is similar to the mold that develops on rotten food; however, it does not generate mushrooms. Filamentous mushrooms, such as the Penicillium mold that yields blue cheese and the koji mold that yields miso, sake, and soy sauce, elevate bland cuisine to a whole new level.
Oncom, on the other hand, is one of the few, if not the only, fungal foods cultivated from food waste. In the new research, Hill-Maini showed that N. intermedia does not produce toxins that can build up in some molds and mushrooms when grown on 30 various types of agricultural waste, such as tomato pomace, sugar cane bagasse, almond hulls, and banana peels.
In addition, he examined the oncom-producing fungi’s genetic makeup. Remarkably, he discovered that N. intermedia is the primary causative agent of red oncom, as it was the predominant fungus in each of the ten West Javan samples.
“It became evident that this fungus is likely dominant and potentially sufficient to produce this food, as it thrived on the cellulose-rich soy milk waste and produced the food in just 36 hours,” stated Hill-Maini.
However, depending on where it was created, a variety of Rhizopus species dominated the fungi in black oncom. It was also teeming with bacteria. Another traditional and well-liked protein source in Java is tempeh, which is made by Rhizopus mold digesting raw soybeans.
He found that there are essentially two types of mold: wild strains that are found all over the world and strains that have been specifically adapted to agricultural waste produced by humans. He further explored the genetics of the Neurospora in red oncom and compared its genes with the genes of Neurospora intermedia strains that are not found in red oncom.
We believe that when people began producing trash or byproducts, there occurred a domestication that led to the emergence of a new niche for Neurospora intermedia. And as a result, the process of creating oncom most likely evolved,” stated Hill-Maini. And it turns out, some strains are more adept at breaking down cellulose. Thus, it appears to follow a special path from trash to treasure in terms of waste.
Is it tasty, though?
Hill-Maini pondered whether the tamed Neurospora strain may render other waste materials appetizing because it breaks down the cellulose in soy and peanut waste into a delicious meal.
“Is it tasty? is the most important factor, especially for me as a chef.” It might be a dead end, he said, even though we can grow it on a variety of different surfaces if it lacks sensory appeal and isn’t well-received outside of a very particular cultural context.
Working with Munk at Alchemist, he introduced Red Oncom to sixty individuals who had never heard of it before and solicited their feedback.
People who had never tried this dish before, Hill-Maini said, “generally assigned it positive attributes—iit was more earthy, nutty, and mushroomy.” “It received ratings above six out of nine consistently.”
He added that everyone enjoyed the Neurospora that the Alchemist’s chefs developed on peanuts, cashews, and pine nuts.
Its taste isn’t as strong as divisive as blue cheese. It has a flavorful, less intense umami earthiness, according to Hill-Maini. However, different substrates impart different aromas; for example, growing on rice husks or apple pomace might produce fruity notes.
As a result, Munk decided to include a Neurospora dessert on the Alchemist menu. It consists of a bed of jellied plum wine covered in an unsweetened rice custard that has been infected with Neurospora, allowed to ferment for 60 hours, and served cold with a drizzle of lime syrup produced from roasted leftover lime peel.
According to Munk, “we noticed that the process altered the flavors and aromas in quite a dramatic way, adding sweet, fruity aromas.” It was astounding to me to taste flavors like pickled fruit and banana all of a sudden without having to add anything other than the fungus itself. Although we had originally intended to create a savory dish, the outcome led us to serve it as a dessert.
In a paper that was published in December of last year in the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, Hill-Maini, Munk, and their colleagues reported on taste tests of oncom and oncom-like foods grown on substrates other than soy. This dessert was one of the edible fermentations of Neurospora that was discussed.
Munk continued, “We as a restaurant can contribute something like this to the scientific community, and I think that is amazing.” “Alchemist’s goal has always been to use food to transform the world, and this project has the potential to do just that. I am eager to use more food industry waste items and discover what additional culinary uses this research may lead to in the future.
Spora, a food innovation lab recently established by Munk, was first tasked with creating enticing and varied protein sources by upcycling food industry byproducts.
A background in cooking
Hill-Maini was raised in a home where cooking was the main focus. In the 1990s, his mother—who is Indian and was born in Kenya—taught Swedish people how to make Indian spices and cuisine in their Stockholm flat. His father is of Norwegian and Cuban descent.
“I connected with cooking as a way to understand my cultural heritage and where I came from really early on as a child,” he remarked
He moved his passion for cooking to New York City after graduating from high school, where he held low-paying jobs doing food prep at a number of eateries until winning over a boss with his lunchtime sandwiches. He was selected, at the age of eighteen, to remodel the menu of a storied Manhattan sandwich business. The New York Times named one of the best vegetable sandwiches in the city.
After a while, he went back to school and started working as a hired chef, which piqued his interest in the science underlying the chemical changes that cooking may bring about. He was admitted to Harvard University’s graduate program after earning his bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. There he studied biochemistry and completed research for his doctorate on the gut microbiome.
“After that, I felt like returning to the kitchen,” he remarked. “The Miller Fellowship gave me the chance to declare, ‘I’m trained in the culinary arts.'” I’m trained in microbiology and biochemistry. How can I unite them, particularly in light of the sustainability issues we face and the extreme waste and damage our food system causes to the environment?
With the help of a fellowship, he traveled to various restaurants to conduct fermentation classes, such as Blue Hill, Alchemist, and the Basque Culinary Center in Spain.
That gave me the idea to return to Berkeley and reevaluate my studies, said Hill-Maini.
He has been at Blue Hill five times in the last two years, most recently in late June to assist with the opening of the restaurant’s microbiology lab, which Luzmore hopes will be used for experiments by Hill-Maini and other chef-scientists.
Vayu “embodies so much of where we are going as an organization, which is why we have loved working with him,” Luzmore added. After 20 years in business and as a partner of the nonprofit Stone Barns facility, the Blue Hill restaurant is transitioning from being a pillar of the farm-to-table movement to “a new type of research center that treats the study of food and farming as one subject.” In order to recruit researchers like Vayu, we are trying to establish an innovative sandbox.
Hill-Maini will soon have his own space in addition to playing in Blue Hill’s sandbox: a lab with a kitchen at Stanford University, where he has been named assistant professor of bioengineering.
Taste examination
While savoring a burger cooked with leftover oat milk from his Berkeley flat last June, Hill-Maini spoke passionately about the potential provided by Neurospora and the gratitude he owed to the Javanese, who had long since appropriated the fungus for their own purposes. In addition to the popular koji mold, which chefs have been using to alter so many meals in recent years that it has gotten tedious, he added neurospora offers a different kind of fermentation.
He declared, “This is a new tool in the chef’s toolbox.”
Perfectly cooked and like a tiny beef patty, Hill-Maini served the burger on a bed of cashew-avocado sauce along with roasted sweet potatoes and a crisp cucumber-cherry tomato salad dressed with lemon and herbs. Using a fork, he sliced the burger, dipped it into the sauce, and raised it to his lips.
He remarked, “Mmm, look at that—waste to food.” “It has a nice bite, savory flavor, hints of mushrooms, and some playful, fruity scents.”
In addition to making a dent in the food waste stream, he intends to find out how Neurospora generates these flavors and fragrances in future studies.
“The science that I do is a new approach to food preparation and food perception that hopefully leads to solutions that have global applicability,” he declared.
Co-authors of the Nature Microbiology paper with Hill-Maini are Keasling; Alchemist’s Munk, Nabila Rodriguez-Valeron, Mikel Olaizola Garcia, and Diego Prado Vásquez; UC Berkeley’s José Manuel Villalobos-Escobedo; JBEI’s Alexander Rosales and Edward Baidoo; Bogor Agricultural University in Dramaga; Indonesia’s Christofora Hanny Wijaya, Lilis Nuraida, and Isty Damayanti; and the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby. At the Joint Genome Institute at Berkeley Lab, Robert Riley, Anna Lipzen, Guifen He, Mi Yan, Sajeet Haridas, Christopher Daum, Yuko Yoshinaga, Vivian Ng, and Igor V. Grigoriev carried out the genome sequencing.
