Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) next year are going to fine dine on a dish specially created to taste great in space by students from the Passaic County Technical Institute (PCTI) in Wayne, New Jersey.

The culinary team from this school won the second "High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware" (HUNCH) competition against nine other teams at Space Center Houston. This contest challenges high schools from around the United States to cook-up food that tastes great in a zero-gravity environment while meeting all of NASA's nutritional requirements.

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The winning space entrée: a red pepper risotto.

"The combination of the fire roasted pepper puree, the protein filled edamame, the saltiness of the asiago cheese, along with the creaminess of the rice cooked slowly in our housemade vegetable stock is surely going impress and satisfy the perfect image of a risotto," wrote the Passaic team in describing their creation.

"Within our research, while writing our paper and learning about food preparation in space, we determined that a risotto would work best with the rehydration process and microgravity conditions presented upon the astronauts."

The students' entries were graded on taste, texture, aroma and appearance. But the students' meals also had to meet tough NASA nutritional requirements such as low sodium levels. Students had to find ways to add flavor.

The runner-up dishes will be added to a cookbook astronauts can use. Second place went to a butternut-squash puree from Hewitt-Trussville High School in Trussville, Alabama. Third was a brown-rice paella from the Huntsville Center for Technology in Huntsville, Alabama.

PCTI is a vocational public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grades. It consists of 14 schools, one of which is the School of Culinary Arts whose students won the NASA HUNCH culinary contest.

The winner of HUNCH 2015 was a rice-and-beans dish that was sent to the ISS this April. Students from Phoebus High School in Hampton, Virginia created the entrée.

TagsInternational Space Station, Passaic County Technical Institute, Wayne, New Jersey, High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware, red pepper risotto