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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Next-Gen Cooking

CES 2021: LG InstaView Range Adds Air Sous Vide Capability

In advance of CES 2021, LG announced yesterday the latest version of its InstaView range, which now comes with Air Sous Vide Technology.

According to the press announcement, LG’s new Air Sous Vide mode allows users to replicate the low-and-slow cooking of sous vide without the water bath. Food is placed inside vacuum sealed bags and the oven can maintain temperatures between 100 – 205 degrees F for up to 48 hours without water.

LG’s new feature immediately brings Anova’s steam combi-oven, which launched this past fall, to mind. Unlike LG’s, Anova’s oven is countertop rather than built in, but it does promise sous-vide type cooking without the water bath. The difference, however, is that Anova uses steam to create the sous-vide environment and doesn’t require food to be sealed in a bag. I look forward to some adventurous soul using both and comparing the results (paging Joe Ray!).

The new LG range sports a number of features carried over from previous models. There’s the knock-knock feature, which turns the glass front panel transparent so you can see what’s inside (though this feature seems more handy on a fridge). In addition to air sous vide, the LG oven also does air frying.

This being a smart appliance, there are also a number of software technology integrations baked into the new LG range including Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, which allow for voice control and monitoring. Additionally, LG has a number of guided recipe partnerships with services such as SideChef, Innit, Drop and Tovala that provide appropriate oven controls. There is also scan to cook functionality allowing users to heat frozen meals from brands such as Nestlé and Kraft Heinz.

CES 2021 will be virtual, so we won’t get quite the same hands on with appliances that we have had in previous years. Still, it will be interesting to see if features like air sous vide become common among this crop of kitchen appliances.

HakkoBako is Making Connected Fermentation Chambers for Pros and Home Foodies

While fermented food has long made up an important and tasty part of our diets, this food powered by healthy microorganisms is finding newfound interest nowadays everywhere from the high-end restaurant to the home hobbyist to the food science lab.

However, even as this century old process enters the modern day zeitgeist, there hasn’t been much innovation in the tools in recent decades that help chefs or home cooks try their hand at fermentation. Oftentimes, chefs just use a variety of mason jars and crocks to ferment their food, or just repurpose other equipment, like combi-ovens or dehydrators, to act as makeshift fermenters.

All of which got Hong Kong-based food entrepreneur Tommy Leung asking why there wasn’t more modern equipment to empower the professional or home chef when it came to fermentation. Leung saw an opportunity to create a modern piece of equipment that would enable chefs to have multiple fermentation projects in process at once, where they could manage their fermented food with precise monitoring tools while not turning their kitchens into something resembling an eighteenth-century apothecary’s lab.

The result is HakkoBako, an IoT-connected fermentation chamber for professional food producers. The HakkoBako will have both an app as well as a touchscreen on the front of the device where users can start projects, control temperature and humidity for their fermentation food, and monitor their food with precise data logs of temperature via the app. The chamber, which will have both warming and refrigeration modes, will also have an internal camera to monitor the state of projects. Users will be able to enter and save recipes on the system.

Tommy Leung in front of a HakkoBako chamber

“HakkoBako is building a fermentation chamber that lets chefs create unique and proprietary foods and flavours,” Leung told The Spoon via email. “We are using technology to make the fermentation process easier, faster and with more consistent results.”

According to Leung, the company has developed multiple prototypes that are currently being used by chefs and food developers. They’ve also started to work with a contract manufacturer in China, but the pandemic has made in-person visits to the manufacturer difficult and has put them a little behind schedule on production of the professional unit.

He also told The Spoon via email that they have plans for a home fermentation chamber that they are hoping to launch in the spring of 2021. Targeted at a price point of roughly $200 (versus around $5,000 for the commercial version), the home HakkoBako will allow users to make things like yogurt or kimchi.

Long term, the company also has plans for a fermentation lab that would be a destination for other food innovators. According to a deck Leung provided to the Spoon, the lab will “will provide support, novel ingredients and techniques with on-going testing, recording and development of the chefs recipes.”

This U.K. Team Created a Multigenerational Kitchen That Adapts to the Needs of Any Age

For senior citizens, one of the biggest challenges of independent living is getting around in the kitchen. Decreased mobility can make it hard to access what you need to make a meal, while everyday occurrences, like slippery surfaces, become potentially perilous.

At the same time, kitchens also present challenges and dangers for the young ones, too. Whether it’s high countertops or a drawer full of sharp knives, small children need to be constantly monitored when they are in the kitchen.

But what if you have a home where inhabitants of these opposite ends of the age spectrum both live?

That’s the scenario designer Johnny Grey and Professor Peter Gore, an expert on ageing, wanted to answer when they started working on a concept for a multigenerational kitchen in 2017. The two noticed that more generations were living under one roof in their country and elsewhere in the world, so they started to think about how a kitchen space could serve the diverse needs of multiple generations and age groups.

With support from the U.K.’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing, they set about envisioning a kitchen that would factor in all the various needs and adapt to those needs depending on who was using it. The first thing they did was interview families to identify what types of challenges they would face.

“Rather than focussing on why people have problems, we focused on the problems people have,” said Gore. “This gave us the insight that we needed to move to the design stage.”

After the research phase, the group set about building a prototype with funding from a national consortium of universities.

Some of the features the kitchen concept includes are:

Cook anywhere surfaces. The prototype incorporates induction heating and cordless power (like that developed by the Wireless Power Consortium) technology in a number of surfaces. While those not familiar with induction heating may think this sounds dangerous, it’s much safer than gas or electric since the cooking surface doesn’t get hot.

Adjustable height countertops. The prototype has multiple adaptable height countertops. This idea of adaptable or personalized space is one I’ve noticed getting traction in recent years, and it really makes sense for a multigenerational kitchen.

Smart assistants. The prototype makes use of smart voice assistants such as the Amazon Alexa, but gives the assistants some operating context by giving specific control permissions depending on who is accessing what.

The combination of cutting edge features with warmer design featured like soft-edged counters and memory-era wallpaper resulted in a kitchen prototype that designer Grey felt was both welcoming and functional.

“The furniture is very flexible and it’s responsive -- it can behave in a way which works well for you and your family,” said Grey. “It’s about a living space, much more than just a kitchen.”

Despite the fact that more generations living under one roof has continued to increase, like many industries, the home design space is often too fixated on building towards the needs of a single generation in mind. Grey and Gore hope this prototype can influence more home designers and builders to build with multiple generations in minds.

“You can often find examples of homes that are designed and built with a specific age group in mind such as homes for older people, or apartments targeted at young professionals,” said Gore. “We think there is potential to shift design and construction away from thinking about building properties for just one or two generations toward building for multigenerational homes.”

You can take a look at the building of the prototype and hear from Gore and Grey in the video below.

The four generation kitchen prototype - enhancing home life through kitchen design

Moley’s Robotic Kitchen Goes on Sale

Moley’s robotic kitchen first burst onto the scene in 2015, wowing audiences at CES Asia with its science fiction-levels of cooking automation. Now after more than five years of development, the Moley is finally going on sale. But the kitchen of tomorrow is not going to be cheap.

It’s probably best to set the stage first. Getting a Moley requires a lot more work than just bolting a robotic arm above your existing stove. It’s an entirely integrated system of appliances, cupboards, a touchscreen, storage containers, pots, pans, utensils, a protective screen and yes, two articulating arms with robotic hands. The Moley basically takes up one entire wall of a kitchen.

Once it’s installed, or more accurately, built, into your kitchen, there’s a little bit of set up for a person to do. Ingredients needs to go into special containers and identified in the system so the robot knows where to retrieve them. Utensils and pots are placed in special storage areas that slide out of view when not in use. But once all that’s done, the digital smarts and robot take over.

Using the built-in touchscreen, the user selects from one of 5,000 (and growing) recipes. A clear, protective screen drops down and the two robotic arms slide out from their storage on a rail up above to start grabbing the pots, pans and utensils it needs. The robot can fill a pot with water in the sink, turn on the induction burner and then, using sensors and cameras, retrieve all the ingredients it needs to make the dish. Moley will even let you know when you’re running low on a particular ingredient.

The robotic arm’s movements even have some pedigree. Tim Anderson, a former BBC Master Chef winner, “trained” the robot’s movements by recording his techniques in 3D, which were then translated into specific algorithms for the machine. It’s not hard to imagine Moley enlisting other chefs down the road and offering different downloads so you could have “Nigella Lawson,” or “Marcus Samuelsson” cooking your meals.

Listen. It’s a super complex piece of high-technology and perhaps the best way to grok it is to see it in action in this in-depth launch video that Moley put out this week:

Moley Robotics First Product Launch 2020

The Moley kitchen is also a hybrid of sorts. If you prefer to do the cooking, you can keep the robot in its closet and do all the work yourself. Though, at these prices, I imagine you’d want to put that robot to work.

Moley is targeting both residential and commercial kitchens with its launch. Make that, very expensive residential kitchens. A base Moley kitchen without the robotic arms will cost you £128,000 (~ $173,000 USD) and a unit with the robotic arms will cost £248,000 (~ $335,000 USD).

Moley CEO and Founder, Mark Oleynik, told The Spoon in a phone interview this week that the first customer will be receiving their Moley robotic kitchen next year. (No further details were offered).

Oleynik also put the high price of the Moley into some perspective by likening it to a dishwasher. When those were first introduced, they were expensive and most people didn’t think they were necessary. Now dishwashers are affordable, mainstream and play a key role in our kitchen lives.

Oleynik also envisions a future where his robotic kitchen can help the elderly age in place. With just a few taps on a screen, people of any age can have a homecooked, fresh meal prepared on the spot. It’s the same vision Sony has for its take on the future of kitchen robotics.

Samsung is also working on an articulating arm-based kitchen robot, and Oleynik welcomes the competition with a philosophy that a rising tide lifts all robotic kitchen boats.

The Moley is available for purchase now, and if any Spoon reader does get one, may we recommend pairing it with the WineCab Wine Wall robotic sommelier for the ultimate in futuristic dining.

Kickstarter: Cakewalk Brings Edible 3D Printing to Your Home

Damn those adorable bakers on The Great British Baking Show! They make piping and decorating cakes look so easy. But anytime I fill up a piping bag to add decorative lines or write out “Happy Birthday” on a cake or tart, it winds up looking like a crime scene.

But perhaps I can make up for my lack of manual precision with some automation. Cakewalk is a kit that launched on Kickstarter today, which promises to let you 3D print elegant, edible, designs and writings on your home baked goods.

How much it costs and what you get depends on the level you back. At the low end, €49 (~$57 USD) gets you just the core extruder. At €89 (~$104 USD) you get the complete kit, which includes the extruder as well as the motor that you assemble and attach to your own 3D printer. On the high end, €459 (~$537 USD) gets you a 3D printer with the Cakewalk already assembled.

According to the campaign page, the Cakewalk has been tested and works with chocolate, meringue, vegetable puree, ketchup, guacamole and honey. Simply stir up the ingredients, add them to the Cakewalk tube (that you attached to your 3D printer) and print out your designs.

The printer works with existing 3D printing software, and the parts can be easily added to and removed from an existing 3D printers, so there is no need to buy an additional 3D printer just for food.

We’ve actually written about Marine Coré-Baillais, the creator of Cakewalk, before. She was CEO of French 3D-printing company Sculpteo before going to culinary school to become a pastry chef. As Spoon Founder, Mike Wolf, wrote at the time:

I asked Baillais why she decided to tackle 3D food printing after working at a big 3D printing services startup focused on enterprise applications. She told me it was in part due the frustration that had built up over the past decade at the relative lack of interest from the food industry in using 3D printing.

As of today, Cakewalk has already raised $5,000 of its $11,752 campaign goal. The company says it will ship Cakewalks to backers in December of this year. In the meantime, you can finish up this season of The Great British Baking Show for even more inspiration.

June’s Third-Gen Oven Goes on Pre-Sale with New Heat Controls and Premium Memberships

June announced today the third generation of its eponymous countertop smart oven. The latest version of the June Oven features more control over the heating elements, new cook modes, enhanced food detection and membership options.

One of the biggest changes June has made to its oven is that each of the six heating elements can now be controlled individually. This improves upon the second-gen version, where heat elements were controlled in three groups. The new individual controls allow for new types of automated cook programs like a virtual rotisserie. Instead of putting something like a whole chicken on a spit and rotating it, the heating elements alternate around the chicken. These more precise heating controls, in conjunction with an in-oven camera, also allow for zone cooking through focused heating elements.

Additional hardware improvements also include guard rails on the top heating elements and new convection fan motors that reduce vibration and sound. There’s also a new chipset to improve connectivity.

On the software side, June has added new cook programs like the aforementioned virtual rotisserie as well as a stone fired pizza setting (there’s an optional pizza and grill kit that can be purchased). The company now bills the device as a 12-in-1 appliance (up from a 7-in-1).

June is also adding membership options in 2021. The press release didn’t offer much detail, but various levels will include features like additional remote controls, exclusive recipes, live videos and more.

The new Junes are available for pre-sale today and will come in three packages that will begin shipping in late November:

  • June Smart Oven Bundle
    Price: $599
    Accessories: Food Thermometer, Nonstick Pan, Stainless Steel Crumb Tray, Wire ShelfOne Year Warranty
  • June Smart Oven Plus Bundle
    Price: $799
    Accessories: Food Thermometer, Nonstick Pan, Roasting Rack, Stainless Steel Crumb Tray, WireShelfTwo Years Warranty and One Year June App Premium Membership
  • June Smart Oven Premium Bundle
    Price: $999
    Accessories: Pizza and Grill Kit (​Enameled Cast Iron Grill/Griddle​ with Pizza Peel),​ Three AirBaskets, Stainless Steel Pro Food Thermometer, Silicone Food Thermometer, Two Nonstick Pans,Two Roasting Racks, Stainless Steel Crumb Tray, Wire Shelf
    Two Years Warranty and ​One Year June App Premium Membership

As I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of my June Oven and use it every day. Having said that, June is not the only smart oven player on the scene, and I’m intrigued by Anova’s countertop combi-oven that features steam cooking and costs $599.

Regardless, advances like the third-gen June continue to make cooking easier for non-cooks like myself.

SKS Exclusive: Middleby Unveils the PizzaBot 5000, Which Assembles a Pizza in Under 1 Minute

Lab2Fab, a division of Middleby Corporation, unveiled its new PizzaBot 5000 pizza-assembling machine at the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

The PizzaBot 5000 (or “PB5K” as L2F President, Shawn Lange called it during today’s presentation), is an enclosed robotic system that will spread sauce and cheese on a pizza crust, as well as slice and dispense pepperoni. From there the pizza is removed from the machine, either by a human or by another robot, and placed in an oven for cooking.

The PB5K doesn’t use cartridges for ingredients. Instead, it has big hoppers for cheese and sauce. Pepperoni is loaded as a whole stick and sliced on demand (you can set the thickness). The entire system is refrigerated to keep food safe.

As demonstrated, the PB5K works with three base ingredients (in this case, sauce, cheese and pepperoni), which it can put together in under one minute. The advantages of the PB5K, according to Lange, is that it can crank out pizzas all day, and uses sensors and some computer vision for precise ingredient dispensing, which reduces food waste and save restaurants money.

If this pitch sounds familiar, that’s because that’s also the value prop from Picnic with its pizza-assembling robot. The difference, however, is that Picnic’s system is modular and linear, so it can add as many ingredients by adding more modules. Plus, Picnic has said that its system can be used for foods other than pizza (think: burritos or Subway-style sandwiches).

While not mentioning Picnic directly, Lange did mention that instead of a linear approach to pizza assembly, Middleby has chosen the “clustered” layout for its machine (it’s contained in one cabinet). This gives the PB5K a smaller footprint, with the machine coming it at around 3 – 4 sq. meters.

The PB5K will go into beta in Q1 of next year. Lange said the price was $70,000 for a machine, though the company is exploring a robot-as-as-service model.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post misstated that the PB5K only worked with pepperoni.

Chocomake’s Countertop Device Lets You Make Your Own Chocolate

One of the more exciting aspects of food tech is its increasing ability to push food production to the edge. Instead of food being created in central factories and shipped around the world, advances in consumer appliances and the internet of things means that you can create more types of food more easily in your own kitchen.

Take chocolate. Between getting all of the proper ingredients, mixing, tempering and cooling, making your own chocolate can be a complicated endeavor. It’s much easier and faster to buy a pre-made chocolate bar from the store.

And while Israeli startup Chocomake may not take all of the work out of making chocolate at home, it promises to get pretty close. The Chocomake (which will soon be changing its name because evidently some other company holds that moniker) is a connected countertop chocolate maker. Choose a recipe from the accompanying app, add the ingredients and Chocomake takes care of all the mixing and tempering. When you’re done, pour your homemade chocolate into your preferred mold to cool and then eat.

Chocomake is still in the prototype phase, so a manufactured device wouldn’t even be available for another year or so. Liora Omer, Founder of Chocomake, told me by phone this week that the company is targeting people with dietary restrictions (need lower sugar or vegan options) and foodies who are interested in putting their own spin on chocolate. Though Omer wouldn’t share a specific price, the company will make its money by selling the hardware as well as kits for specific recipes.

But Omer was also quick to point out that Chocomake will be open, so you won’t be locked into a particular ecosystem a la a K-cup. This openness also means that customers will be able to customize chocolate recipes to their liking.

If all this sounds familiar, that’s because CocoTerra is doing much the same thing. It too is a countertop device that lets you make your own chocolate (it too also doesn’t have a specific price yet). Omer said that the biggest difference between Chocomake and CocoTerra is that CocoTerra grinds cocoa nibs (Chocomake does not) and CocoTerra only dispenses into a ring mold (Chocomake’s output can be poured into different molds).

The bigger question looming over both devices, however, is one of convenience. Between direct-to-consumer channels from high-end CPG brands and the increasing ubiquity of online grocery shopping, getting high-end chocolate delivered to your door is easier than ever. Even if Chocomake takes most of the work out of making chocolate, will people still want to do any work to get their choco fix? Especially if it means spending a few hundred bucks on a single-use device that takes up real estate in the kitchen?

Having said that, this type of food production on the edge could be more appealing to small businesses. It’s not hard to see small coffee shop or grocery store chains buying one of these to make their own customized chocolate blend that can be branded and sold in stores.

Or who knows, maybe Chocomake can figure out a way to turn your homemade chocolate into a filament that can be run through a chocolate 3D printer to make something super sweet at home.

Eat Figo Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for All-In-One Sous Vide Device

Eat Figo launched a crowdfunding campaign today for it’s (almost) eponymous countertop Figo sous vide device.

In addition to being a connected sous vide machine you can control with your phone, the Figo is also offers vacuum sealing and cold storage capabilities. The company is looking to raise $20,000 on Indiegogo, with the base model costing super-early backers $139 and the deluxe model (which comes with the vacuum sealer attachment) costing $149. Both models are supposed to ship in March of 2021.

Avid Spoon readers may be thinking to themselves a sous vide machine that keeps food cold until its time to cook? That sounds familiar. That’s because Mellow promised to do much the same thing a while back. But as WIRED found out, the Mellow did not keep food cold enough to keep it safe and that product (and the subsequent attempt at a sequel) died.

What’s different about the Figo, however, is that the food is kept in dry cold storage (as low as 37 degrees) instead of a cold water bath. When it’s time to cook, water is added from a built-in tank and heated. When the cooking is done the water is evacuated from the heating cavity and back into the tank. I don’t know if, scientifically, this makes it easier to keep food at safe temperatures, but that’s certainly different from the Mellow.

The bigger question is whether Figo is two years to late to the sous vide party. While enjoying a bit of a mini-boom back in the 2015 – 2018 timeframe, the consumer sous vide market has subsequently crashed. After layoffs and cuts, ChefSteps sold to Breville, Nomiku shut down, and the aforementioned Mellow is all but gone. Anova is still truckin’, but it too has moved on to its combi steam oven that promises sous vide-like cooking.

Perhaps there still is a market for consumer sous vide machines. As of this writing, Eat Figo has already raised more than $7,000. But even if you love sous vide and you think that this might be the device for you (though you may want to make sure the cooling part works as promised), remember that crowdfunded hardware projects have a spotty record, at best. You don’t want to take a bath by backing a sous vide machine that doesn’t make it through manufacturing.

Set It & Forget It: Creator of The Oliver Cooking Robot Hopes to Usher in the Era of Unattended Cooking

Forget Top Chef. The most interesting contest in the kitchen in recent years has been the battle to become the all-in-one cooking appliance.

Air fryers, smart pressure cookers, slice and dice multicookers and even stand mixers have been throwing elbows in the fight for countertop space and consumer dollars.

But what if an entirely different category of cooker won the hearts and minds of consumers as the indispensable kitchen helper? That’s the hope of Khalid Aboujassoum, founder of Else Labs, who makes a little device called the Oliver.

So what exactly is Oliver?

“It’s a smart cooking robot,” said Aboujassoum in an interview with The Spoon.

The kitchen robot is something we’ve been writing about here at the Spoon since early days and, while we all like to envision science fiction futures with a robotic chef cooking for us every night, the only kitchen robots that have found any success so far are uni-taskers like the Rotimatic.

But according to its inventor, Oliver can do much more than one thing really well.

“It’s a recipe library, meal planner, shopping assistant, and expert chef all in one,” said Aboujassoum,

While you wouldn’t exactly call the Thermomix or other digital powered kitchen multicookers “robots”, these appliances are popular with chefs and home cooks alike because they can do so much. And the thing is, they’re adding more functions all the time. The Thermomix recently added shopping capabilities that allows the user to essentially make meal kits and order them on the fly.

But according the Aboujassoum, the major difference between Oliver and the multicooker is how much they can do during the cooking process.

“They (multicookers) are guided cooking,” he said. “The Oliver can do unattended stovetop cooking.”

What he is talking here about just how much a device can do without the consumer being involved. According to Aboujassoum, Oliver can cook the entire meal while the user goes off to take a nap or watch some TV.

“The user basically browses the recipes, selecting a recipe, loads the ingredients and then walks away,” said Aboujassoum.

This is where it’s worth looking at how the Oliver works. The user preloads the prepped ingredients into dispensing chambers that sit on the lid. Once the user selects the recipe on a connected app and hits cook, the Oliver dispenses ingredients into the single pot cooking chamber where a stirring arm mixes the food.

Ultimately, a conversation about unattended vs guided cooking is one about where and when the consumer gets involved in the cooking process. Multicookers like the Thermomix guide a cook through a meal with step-by-step recipes, and can do pretty much everything including chopping and grinding ingredients.

With the Oliver, the unattended part is true but, because it doesn’t have a built-in blade, the user may need to do a little more up front work to prep ingredients in advance and put into the ingredient chambers.

I do think the concept of a home cooking robot is promising. I’m sure there are many busy folks who would be happy to let a robot do the heavy lifting while they go do chores or relax.

Consumers who want to get their own cooking robot will soon be able to back Oliver via crowdfunding. The device will launch on Indiegogo on September 29th and early backers can get in on the appliance for $530.

For those of you who are wary of backing hardware on crowdfunding sites, you might be assured that folks behind Oliver have been working on the product for a good part of a decade (an early generation prototype of the Oliver was on display at Smart Kitchen Summit 2016) and, according to Aboujassoum, the product is ready to go.

“We could have launched two years ago or three years ago,” said Aboujassoum. “We refuse to sell unfinished product. That’s kind of our story, our strategic execution philosophy. And today we are done with the product.”

Aboujassoum said backers of Oliver should expect to get their cooking robot in June of 2021.

With the Oliver hitting the market and the Nymble on its way as well, 2021 could prove an interesting year for cooking robots. Others, like the Gamma Chef, are still in development and could make an appearance.

So hopefully we’ll know soon if the era of unattended cooking is upon us.

I Cooked With the BonBowl for an Entire Week and Now I’m Attached

I’m simultaneously the best and worst person to write a review of the BonBowl, a newly released personal induction cooker designed to make single-serving meals in about 15 minutes or less. On the one hand, I tend to make a lot of single-serving meals and, like any good Spoon scribe, I’m into kitchen gadgetry. On the other hand, I still tend to do a lot of actual cooking the analogue way and rather enjoy making a colossal mess in order to put a meal together.

Still, I pre-ordered the BonBowl, which arrived a few weeks ago, and decided to spend a week putting it through its paces. 

The device comes in two parts: a cooktop base that plugs into a wall and uses induction heating, and an accompanying bowl from which you can both cook and eat the food. The whole thing currently goes for $149 at the BonBowl website.

Before we get into the food, let’s talk about the setup. That won’t take long, because it’s literally a matter of removing the device from the box and plugging it into a wall. Bonus: I don’t have a ton of counter space in my kitchen. The BonBowl fits nicely into a little corner, where it now lives even when I’m not using it:

As far as what you can cook with it, the BonBowl site offers a range of recipes, including a handful by Trader Joe’s. There’s no app integration (yet), but if you don’t want to drag your computer into the kitchen, a handy card accompanies the device and lists multiple recipes with quick cooking instructions. Think single-serving pasta, mac ‘n’ cheese, or oatmeal.

I picked one of the Trader Joe’s recipes for my inaugural BonBowl meal, a simple tomato soup with gnocchi. The recipe has just four ingredients, and I was also struck by the convenience factor of not having to guess at a single-serving size (which I mess up on a daily basis). The meal took 15 minutes to make.

One huge plus is that the bowl itself is a non-stick dish with thermal insulation, so it heats the food but doesn’t become too hot to handle. Ever yank a glass bowl that’s been in a microwave out with your bare hands? Between the thermal insulation and induction heating of the device, that scenario doesn’t happen with the BonBowl. Cleanup is a matter of washing the bowl and spoon.

I made a couple other recipes from the BonBowl site, but what I really wanted to discover was whether the BonBowl could accommodate my weekly eating habits without my having to change them very much. For instance, every Sunday I make a huge pot of garlic rice and garbanzo beans, which serves as my go-to meal when I don’t have much time. Normally I reheat portions in a skillet, guessing at the serving size. (I don’t like microwaves and have never owned one.) For that week, I simply chucked the food into the BonBowl, set the time for 10 minutes, and went about my day until the machine beeped. 

One small quirk, if you can even call it that, is that a couple times the machine heated the food so well the meal had to cool for quite a while, though that problem was easily solved by adjusting the timer.

Beans, in fact, are an ideal food for the bowl. Garbanzo, black, pinto, the inimitable Heinz baked beans. I tried them all, and in fact the BonBowl is all I use now for heating beans, sauces, and other simple items. I reheated leftover pasta from a takeout order. I made a rice krispie treat that wouldn’t win awards for presentation but tasted great. I even scrambled an egg.

Less successful was my attempt at making a single-serving portion of a chicken recipe that’s been in my family for generations and is therefore about 150 years old, maybe older. The resulting sad little meal (see above) was probably a combination of a very old recipe, my trying to turn a four-serving dish into a one-serving meal, and the fact that the BonBowl is probably not the ideal gadget for highly experimental kitchen projects.

Which is totally fine, because I don’t think the makers of the BonBowl designed the device for complex recipes loaded with ingredients that have to be combined “just so” in order to create an edible meal.

Rather, the BonBowl seems designed as a way to make simple-but-healthy meals at home quickly and with minimal fuss (or cleanup).

But why, you ask, would I not just buy a hotplate for $30? Being able to cook and eat out of the same dish is one reason. Another is that the induction heating and precision cooking sensors properly cook the food, rather than zapping it to death (microwave) or burning it (hotplate). It’s also safer because rather than an entire hot surface, only the tiny button where the bowl sits heats up.

It’s also versatile. I can’t personally attest to using it in a college dorm room, but it seems ideal for that setting. I can attest to having in the past lived in some NYC apartments with dodgy kitchens, where a BonBowl would have saved a lot of money in takeout fees. These days, the BonBowl is not a necessity, but it’s proven itself a valuable addition to my kitchen and my weekly meal planning.

Kenwood Partners With Drop to Add Scale Function to the Cooking Chef Stand Mixer

You have your smart ovens, coffee makers and fridges, but what about a smart stand mixer?

Now’s your chance.

Last week, Drop announced they’d partnered with Kenwood to build in the Drop Smart Kitchen OS platform into the latest model of the Kenwood Cooking Chef mixer, one of the older stand mixer brands in the world.

Originally invented almost 70 years ago by the company’s namesake, Ken Wood, the Kenwood Chef was an instant hit and over the past few decades the modern version of the multi-function stand mixer has continued to be Kenwood’s biggest seller.

The Kenwood Chef eventually became the Kenwood Cooking Chef with the addition of a built-in induction heating element almost a decade ago, and the modern version has a variety of attachments like pasta cutters and coffee grinders. With the Drop partnership, the focus is on the integration of the Drop scale and guided cooking functionality.

In the video below, the two companies tout the product as “Your Chef that Weighs and Cooks” (emphasis mine):

By adding a scale to a mixer that already has built-in cooking capabilities and variety of attachments, the Cooking Chef puts itself into a growing category of multi-function products that act as the cooking version of a Swiss Army knife. Products like the Thermomix and ChefIQ weigh, cook, and steam food, all things that the Cooking Chef XL can now do as well.

This isn’t the first time that Drop has partnered with Kenwood, a subsidiary of De’Longhi. Last year, the two companies launched the CookEasy+ multicooker, a product the two had started working on in early 2018.

With the addition of the Kenwood Cooking Chef XL, Drop continues to rack up impressive partnerships with some of the biggest players in countertop cooking. The company has been working with Thermomix (announced last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit) and also is working with pressure cooking giant Instant Pot.