2026-2027 NASA HUNCH Culinary Challenge

2026-2027 Theme: Mediterranean Entree (no breakfast, dips, or breads)

The Astronaut Culinary Challenge develops food items for the Astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Each year there is a new theme given out to the schools where the students create new dishes taking into account food processing procedure and nutritional requirements so that their items will meet the standards of the NASA Johnson Space Center Food Lab.

Schools in the US and abroad bring dishes into their local NASA or partner center for a taste competition with different food industry professionals and personnel. After these preliminary culinary competitions, those with the highest scores from across the world are invited to Johnson Space Center for a final competition where their work will be judged by NASA Food Lab personnel, industry professionals, ISS program office, and Astronauts for quality, taste, their work on the research paper, and presentation video. The winning entree will be processed by the Johnson Space Center Food Lab and sent up to the station for the astronauts to enjoy.

New for this year - All team teachers/mentors will have to take a sanitization and food safety course through the American Culinary Federation (ACF). Teachers/Mentors will then train the students on these areas to ensure proper sanitization and food safety. This will be a new area in scoring for both preliminary competitions and the Finals. (This is to ensure that ALL students that are handling food items are doing this per standards.) AS SOON AS I GET Links to the training I will pass that information along to all of the teachers who have registered for the program