Antarctica: A guide To Her Food and Cooking

Antarctica is sometimes known as the world’s most desolate continent seeing as it is often forgotten when one thinks of human history. Undiscovered by any form of civilization until only 200 years ago, this enormous mass of land is the only continent on Earth that has never seen war, and is not truly owned by any country.

Let us take a look at the challenges of cooking and in a makeshift kitchen during the long, white nights at the bottom of the world.

The first thing that comes to mind about Antarctica obviously not the food, it is the cold and that is because both the North Pole and the South Pole don’t get any direct sunlight. The Sun is always low, even in the middle of summer. In winter, the Sun is far below the horizon that it doesn’t come up at all for months at a time.

If you are going to spend any time there and you have accepted the cold conditions for what it is, the food should be the second most important thing that you should take note of. It doesn’t have a cuisine as such, because it isn’t populated except by visitors who stay for a few months or not usually more than a year, there are no farms, nothing vegetable that you can eat grows there and the wildlife is protected so you can’t eat that.

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Although there aren’t any recipes that are passed down, no celebrity chefs, no restaurants you can go to for a 3-course dinner and no stalls or markets of foodstuff to buy from. Food is however important in Antarctica because it’s cold. Salads, fruity treats of the summer are forgotten about in favor of thick soups, stews, and high-fat dishes to replace the energy you lose just trying to keep warm.

All food is delivered during the summer when there is a resupply. In order for the food to last for a whole year, a large percentage of the food is frozen, or tinned. Fresh vegetables are a rarity and you might need to go without it for the first few weeks although ships that come into a station will typically deliver the fruit and vegetables but these have already been on a ship for several weeks and cannot be considered fresh. Their staple comprises of bread, dry meat, and fat.

They have hydroponics in hothouse conditions to grow a few fresh vegetables like lettuce and tomatoes. They use this to augment the winter food supplies.

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