Converting food waste into culinary delights

A chef-turned-chemist uses fungi to turn food waste into Michelin star-worthy dishes

Spotted: The extent of food waste worldwide is a critical global issue. Around 20 per cent of food is discarded while a third of humanity experiences food insecurity. It’s essential that the food industry adapts to be more resilient and look for methods to reduce waste. Now, a UC Berkeley professor Vayu Hill-Maini hopes to unlock the potential of fungi to create a more sustainable food system.

Fungi and moulds are known to have many health and environmental benefits but less is known about the molecular processes that these fungi carry out to transform byproducts into edible food items. In Indonesia, Neurospora mould is already used to turn soy pulp, a byproduct from making tofu, into a nutritious fermented food product called Oncom.

Hill-Maini is keen to use this method to change attitudes and behaviours around food waste: “Our food system is very inefficient. A third or so of all food that’s produced in the US alone is wasted, and it isn’t just eggshells in your trash. It’s on an industrial scale.”

From a lab at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in California, Hill-Maini has already run many Neurospora experiments stating that it can be grown on 30 different types of agricultural waste from banana peels and almond hulls to sugar cane bagasse and tomato pomace. Working alongside various top chefs, including Rasmus Munk, head chef of the Michelin two-star restaurant Alchemist in Copenhagen, and chefs at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a Michelin two-star restaurant in New York, the process has already produced positive results.

Neurospora food items have featured on the menus of both restaurants. Alchemist’s menu has offered a dessert consisting of a bed of jellied plum wine topped with unsweetened rice custard inoculated with Neurospora that has been left to ferment for 60 hours. This is then topped with a drop of lime syrup made from roasted leftover lime peel. This exposure is hoped to promote the process and influence change.

Written By: Jessica Wallis