Notes on baking at the South Pole.
Arrival was a shock. Inside the station, I unzipped my engorged duffel, retrieving my precious scale and cookie cutters. I filled my drawers, tacked up photos of my husband, two children, and dog, and pulled out the recipe book I’d assembled—marzipan cake, ginger-prune upside-down cake, walnut tart. My father was a chef, and I grew up in a rarefied food world. I’m as obsessed with ingredients as I am with the subtleties of flavor and texture. Taste is a form of knowledge that’s nearly impossible to unlearn, and, whatever challenges the job might pose, I hadn’t planned to try. I’d witnessed the baked goods served at McMurdo, the main American station in Antarctica, where I’d had to wait three weeks before being flown to the Pole proper: dense chocolate-chip scones, confetti cake from a mix, Jell-O. These sorts of undoubtedly popular items aren’t in my repertoire, but neither, honestly, was the daily bread I was now responsible for producing, in addition to a morning pastry, a lunch cookie, and an evening dessert.
I had a day off to adjust to the altitude before my first shift. I felt fine, maybe because I was born at eight thousand feet above sea level in Aspen, Colorado, where my father opened his first restaurant, or maybe because we’d all been offered the high-altitude medication Diamox before departure. Either way, I was practically levitating with excitement. Most rooms at the Pole are singles. They’re pretty much identical—large enough to hold a bed, a bureau, and a desk. I’m six feet tall, and the tiny quarters made for a snug fit. But, after three weeks of sharing a windowless room with four other people at McMurdo, the austere space might as well have been the Carlyle. What surprised me most was how ordinary the station was—grubby lounges with the feel of college dorms, a media room stuffed with DVDs and a dejected couch, a craft room with deranged projects scattered about, a laundry room, a sauna, and a store where I could buy stamps, T-shirts with the United States Antarctic Program logo, toothpaste, and stale candy.
The next day, I began the six-day-week, eleven-hour-day, thirteen-dollars-an-hour existence that would nearly defeat me in the course of three months. (Room, board, and transport from the U.S. were included.) Although the initial population at the station was sixty or so, it soon ballooned to a fairly steady hundred and fifty, a lopsided mix of scientists (maybe fifteen per cent) and support staff known as “ops,” as in “operations” (everyone else). I worked under the blazing midnight sun from 6 P.M. to 5 A.M., the “mid-rat” shift. “Mid-rat” is short for “midnight-ration”—Navy language inherited by the U.S.A.P. “Ration,” not meal; “galley,” not kitchen; “berth,” not room.
The weary overwinter baker whom I was relieving departed on day three, and from then on, for that first austral summer—November through early February—I was alone every night, the butter thumping against the wall of the bowl in the massive Hobart mixer while I stared out at the flags marking each signatory to the Antarctic Treaty as they bucked in the wind. Headphones in, chef’s jacket on a hook as I peeled down to a tank top, beanie covering my gray-streaked hair, I poked at focaccia, balled cookie dough, frosted cakes, carved up brownies, and cut lemon squares against the background rabble of the tipsy, Catan-obsessed scientists who liked to hang out in the dining room abutting the kitchen.
Sometimes I took long walks on the plateau with a station friend, a carpenter. One night, short on time and exhausted from a twelve-mile walk in the mild fifteen-below air, I pawed through the pantry for something easy to bake, cringing at the boxes of Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake Mix and generic no-bake cheesecake. Thinking that I might risk cheating my way into a cherry pie, I picked up a box of Gold Medal Deluxe Instant Pie Crust. As I pulled it off the shelf, the lettering on the flap caught my eye: BEST IF USED BY 14APR01. I was holding pre-9/11 pie-crust mix?
I learned to joke about the canned cherries from the Carter Administration, but more often I told people that my ingredients were from the Obama Administration—which was closer to the truth. I had no choice but to use cartons of expired frozen-egg product and petroleum-scented flour (it, like the ice cream, was stored next to the fuel drums) and, eventually, even the decades-old cherries, but I drew the line at eating Obama-era chicken. Actually, I didn’t eat much of anything. Mostly, I survived on ramen that I discovered, along with other snack foods—sleeves of Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Nature Valley granola bars—in a cabinet under the steam table. My monkey suit (black chef’s pants and a white chef’s coat) grew looser by the day.
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Comments
By mitchbob 2026-03-0919:12 The few times I've baked there, it's been a pretty good experience. There's a full height proving cabinet, yeast works really well at altitude, the ovens have steam injectors, there are good mixers, a commercial fryer. In many ways much easier than baking at home, but probably not a patch on a good bakery.
We almost ran out of sugar in 2021 and Rothera sent us a bag of Tate and Lyle in break-glass-in-emerhency box on one of the early transit flights the following summer. That's still hanging in the galley. Cream also goes pretty quickly, and forget about eggs. But you only need "egg product" anyway.
The foods that tend to be avoided are pasta and beans, or really anything which has to be boiled. There's a massive pressure cooker but it's a pain to use and clean. It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C. Espresso is fine as its pressurised anyway.
> It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C.
That sounds ideal for off-the-boil coffee brewing? At sea level I (and all the speciality coffee shops round here) aim for 91C, and I'll drop that to 88-89C for medium roast and lower if it looks on the dark side. Brew methods: Aeropress and cafetiere.
By joshvm 2026-03-115:46 This is true, and even with black tea where you'd normally want hotter, I don't think anyone really pays attention
Thinking about it, we also had some "fancy" packet ramen from Momofuku. Good example there - those noodles take forever to cook compared to the deep fried ones. You'd have to soak, nuke in the microwave and still wait ages.
Most of the coffee we took down were light roast and how well the beans survived shipping/storage, how well they were roasted mattered much more.
There are a bunch of cafetieres as well, but I don't like the silt even with some of the techniques designed to minimize it.
By 0xbadcafebee 2026-03-0923:322 reply Do they not do soaked beans? Leave them in water for 2 days and they shouldn't need a full boil I wouldn't think? Bonus: chickpea water as an egg substitute in recipes (powdered egg is nasty!). Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
> Do they not do soaked beans? Leave them in water for 2 days and they shouldn't need a full boil I wouldn't think?
We'd definitely have kidney beans in chili and some other dishes, but I got the impression it was a hassle otherwise.
> Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
Friend and I ran a weekly pop-up espresso bar and did a lot of experimenting over the winter. The USAP "house" beans are quite dark, but at least they're roasted within a year or two because coffee is always available and we go through a lot of beans every season. Except the decaf. That stuff is decades old.
People often bring down a big bag from one of the roasters in Christchurch. We personally shipped down a lot of specialty coffee, mostly made V60 and aeropress. The outbuilding where our telescopes live also has a Chemex and an automatic.
By cozzyd 2026-03-102:15 At McMurdo this season the espresso machine at the coffee house broke. Fortunately we had two espresso machines out at LDB, and plenty of C1 and C4 beans
Even if soaked, beans still take hours to cook without a pressure cooker.
I depends the beans and their freshness. If soaked and not 2yo+, it’s less than 1 hour for most of them. 30 min is enough for azuki and chickpeas if soaked 48h.
There’s other tricks: various beans can be found in the form of instant powder or flaskes (1 min watering - no cooking) semolina (5 min watering - no cooking) and pre steamed (no watering - 10/20 min cooking). I bring those to hike on the mountain and use gaz only to make them hot. Mixed with cereals semolina, spices, herbs and oil/nuts its the perfect submit meal.
What's your recipe that uses semolina? I do a lot of outdoor activities and I'm always trying to find new foods to try
By aziaziazi 2026-03-106:58 I cook more with feeling than recipe and I as I hike for multi days I try to vary the meals to avoid getting bored. My typical bag includes multiples zip bag with ingredients and I pick a few to make a meal:
- semolina of wheat, whole wheat, rye, lentils and chickpeas
- flakes-instant smashed potatoes / adzuki beans. Instant quinoa packed with prots but miss carbs.
- sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds
- dried seasoning algae, yeast, zaatar or thyme. Curry powder or other spice mix.
One of my favorite mix is 1/3 lentil semolina, 2/3 wheat semolina, sesame seeds and yeast. Mix together, add water and cover for a few minutes.
Edit: last year I used a food dehydrator to pack some sauces and cooked vegetables. Works great for the ones in think slices.
By adrian_b 2026-03-1014:36 Even without a pressure cooker, you can cook beans faster in a microwave oven.
However, you still need more than a half of hour if you want the beans to be soft, e.g. 45 minutes (after having soaked the beans for a half of day).
I cook all my food in a microwave oven. Except for beans, I have never encountered any vegetable that would need more than 15 minutes. For lentils or chickpeas, around 12 minutes is normally sufficient.
"six-day-week, eleven-hour-day, thirteen-dollars-an-hour"
WTF? I figured the only way you'd get someone to go up there (who's not a researcher) would be to pay well. Crazy...
By xboxnolifes 2026-03-107:43 With room and board covered, I'd think a lot of people would be willing to go for free just for the adventure of it.
Article says room and board, plus cost of transportation, are covered. So that $13/hr goes quite a bit further than it would if a chunk of it was going towards paying for food and rent. (And if you were paying for the cost of the plane flight, then nobody would take the job). Can't calculate the equivalent compensation without knowing where the author lives normally, but it might (VERY rough guess) be the equivalent of $20 to $25 per hour.
By Brybry 2026-03-109:51 Can probably ignore rent savings. In the article the author says she missed her husband, kids, and dog so she still had some of the same costs going on back home.
And Wikipedia says she earned a Ph.D. in 2004 and lives in NYC [1]
Probably safe to say she didn't go for the money.
By giraffe_lady 2026-03-1015:04 I knew some people who did it in the 90s and 2000s. At least then it was comparable to other "extreme" cooking jobs like tugboats, oil rigs, mining camps. Reputation was that pay was generally less than those but the setting more interesting and you were less likely to get raped.
By marssaxman 2026-03-1015:37 Are you kidding? It's Antarctica. Rich people will pay a small fortune just to get a glimpse of the place! For the opportunity to spend a season living there, I'd gladly accept a low-paying job. I'd probably do it for free.
(Alas, I doubt my life will ever work out in such a way that I'll have that opportunity.)
