NEiS Cooking Tutorial 2023: Engineering meets Commercial Kitchen

On the way to the kitchen of the Dining Hall, the scent of curry and garlic fills the air. Behind the scenes of the Dining Hall, where the staff of Studierendenwerk normally cook, 22 students from various departments of the university are bustling about. Entering the kitchen, one's hit by sultry air. The pots are clanging, there is a hectic, slightly chaotic hustle and bustle, but the mood is good and after a short time the work goes hand in hand. 

Cooking is done in four teams of four students, each supervised by an assistant cook (who are also students of the university). The three-course meal consists of oven vegetables with hummus, a lentil stew with chili, and an apple porridge for dessert. After cooking, the students clean up and eat together.

Annalena Bode, a trained cook and sixth-semester student in Mechanical Engineering, is now responsible for student safety and heads the cooking campaign. She says that the recipes of the Verbraucherzentrale (Consumer's Advice Centre NRW) are not designed for large kitchens, so today she has to improvise, even though she herself has only been in the Dining Hall kitchen once before. For example, the kidney bean can is converted into a measuring cup.

The idea of the cooking tutorial originates from the NEiS project (Sustainable Nutrition in Everyday Student Life), a joint project with the Verbraucherzentrale NRW, which is supervised by Professor Iris Groß from the Department of EMT. One of its goals is to revive student life after the restrictions of the corona pandemic.

The kitchen as a machine

When asked what connection Annalena sees between cooking and mechanical engineering, she replies that there are more similarities than one might expect: "Both are about optimizing processes. I see the kitchen as a machine, the cooks have to work and function in time harmony - just like the adjusting screws of a machine."

According to Annalena, the cooking tutorial was a first test to see whether such actions are well received by the students. The initial fear that no one would sign up was not confirmed. The course was full within half an hour. More cooking tutorials are planned in the future. The Studierendenwerk supports the event.

NEiS (Nachhaltige Ernährung im Studienalltag - Sustainable Nutrition in Everyday Student Life) is a project of the Consumer Advice Center North Rhine-Westphalia in cooperation with partner universities and student unions at three locations in NRW. It is funded by the Ministry for the Environment, Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Consumer Protection of North Rhine-Westphalia. The aim is to make students aware of the connection between their eating habits in everyday student life and sustainability.

Text: Juliane Orth