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BonBowl

The 2020 Kitchen Gift Guide: Bonbowl, BEERMKR, PantryChic and More

There hasn’t been much cause to celebrate during this past year, but maybe the holidays can bring with it a little retail therapy.

If you’re looking to give (or get) the best kitchen gear, than look no further than this list that we’ve put together for you!

JENN

Bonbowl ($149)

My colleagues can attest to the fact that I won’t shut up about the Bonbowl, so it’s only fitting it lands somewhere in this gift guide. As food tech gadgets go, the device is ridiculously simple: it’s an induction cooktop the size of a stove burner and an accompanying bowl you can both cook in and eat from. But you can get a lot of uses out of this simple setup. Since purchasing mine a few months ago, I’ve made single-serving soups and pastas, scrambled eggs, reheated countless leftovers, and made rice krispie treats. Sometimes I use it as a fifth burner for heating sauces when cooking a big meal. Obvious recipients of this device would be a college student (if they ever get to go back to the dorms). That said, I’d buy it for just about anyone who regularly needs to throw a quick meal for one together and hates washing dishes.

Imperfect Foods Gift Box ($24.99)

Fight food waste through holiday gifting. That’s the credo behind online grocer Imperfect Foods’ new holiday snack box. Each box contains a mix of snacks made from “rescued” food — that is, foods that would have otherwise gotten chucked out of the grocery store because of cosmetic imperfections. Some of the included snacks are dried mango considered too “sunburnt” to sell, peppermint- and dark chocolate-covered pretzels that broke into pieces during production, and surplus seasonings. Imperfect Foods says each box saves about nine pounds of food from going to waste. It’s also just a fun way to get your loved ones alert to the world’s 1.3 billion-ton food waste problem. Finally and most importantly, proceeds from the boxes go to Feeding America.

The Personal Rise Garden ($279)

While we’re on the subject of kitchen tech for small spaces, The Personal Rise Garden, a countertop version of Rise Garden’s automated smart farm, just launched and will ship in time for the holidays. Like Rise’s other indoor farms, this one is meant to be used in the average person’s home and doesn’t require agricultural experience or even tech savviness. The accompanying app does most of the work: it calculates temperature, manages the nutrient levels of plants and alerts the user when it’s time to water the garden. The price point is a little high for the average holiday gift, but if you have a loved one who’s a leafy greens devotee and is tired of having to haul ass to the grocery store every other day in the midst of a pandemic, this might be a good investment.

CHRIS

BEERMKR ($499)
I have a full review of the BEERMKR system coming out soon, but here’s all you need to know. I have never attempted to brew beer before. With the BEERMKR, though, I was able to make what is, according to everyone I’ve shared it with, a delicious stout on my first try. BEERMKR’s unique system is simple enough that a N00b like me can use it, but open ended enough that a pro can customize their brew however they like. What’s nice is that it doesn’t require buckets and hoses and bottles, and it doesn’t take a bunch of your time and attention. It just works and is perfect for the BEERLVR in your life.

Photo: Crowd Cow website.

CrowdCow Gift Certificate ($25 – $250)
When the pandemic first hit and we weren’t sure how safe it was to go to grocery stores, I immediately started buying meats through CrowdCow’s online marketplace. It’s been eight months and I’m still buying fish and chicken from CrowdCow’s small farms and fisheries. The service is fast and the quality is top-notch. I highly recommend the halibut!

Philips 3200 LatteGo Superautomatic Espresso Machine ($799)
Look. I’m sorry that I’ve put two very pricey items on my gift guide here. Really. But if you are able to swing it, this superautomatic coffee machine is worth every penny. I saved up and got one for my wife for her birthday+mother’s day towards the beginning of the pandemic. My reasoning? If we’re going to be stuck on lockdown, she may as well start each (Groundhog) day with a delicious cup of coffee. This machine grinds and brews (excellent!) espressos, cappuccinos and straight-up coffee. Plus, the LatteGo system is a super-easy, hose-free way of steaming your choice of milk. And yes, it’s expensive, but given how often it gets used in our house, the cost comes out to about $3.60 a day, which is less than getting a Starbucks latte everyday. And given that this pandemic won’t be over anytime soon, that cost per day will continue to drop.

MIKE

Misen Carbon Steel Pans ($55)

Like many, In recent years I’ve started to move away from chemical heavy non-stick surfaces and rely more heavily on things like my Lodge cast iron skillet. The only problem is the thing weighs more than Thor’s hammer and requires an oven mitt to move around once hot. Enter carbon steel. Carbon steel has been one of those pro kitchen secrets that has started to make its way into the consumer kitchen, and now it’s one of the fastest growing categories for consumer cookware. The growing popularity is due in part because carbon steel offers most of the same benefits of cast iron (durability, high heat tolerance) without its downsides. So when Misen, which got its start as an Instagram purveyor of knives, recently launched their line of carbon steel and I picked up the 10 and 12” bundle. They work great. You still need to season them, but if you or your loved one is looking for a new set of go-to pans, I’d try them out. 

The PantryChic Smart Storage System ($350)

Do you have a hyper organized type on your gift list who wears out their label maker organizing everything into little containers and bins? You might want to consider buying them the PantryChic smart storage system. Sure, the system allows you to store food into interchangeable bins and then dispense using exact measurements with the built-in scale, the container system is BPA-free and airtight, and it all works with the Chefling smart kitchen app to manage food inventory. But you can also feel good buying the product from a founder who has worked long and hard to get the product to market: PantryChic was invented by Nicole Lee who, together with her husband, showed off a prototype at the first Smart Kitchen Summit back in 2015. After half a decade of persistence, they finally started shipping the product last month. You can find the on  PantryChic’s website or on Amazon.  

Stasher Bags

Like everyone else, I’m cooking more at home during the pandemic, and that has meant firing up my sous vide circulator at least once or twice a week. While many are still using plastic bags – either in the form of Ziploc or vacuum seal bags – a couple years ago I started using reusable silicon bags for all of my sous vide. The category got its start when Kat Nouri launched Stasher bags back in 2016 and a couple years later got an investment by Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. The bags aren’t cheap – the half gallon bag (which I use) costs $20 – but you won’t have to keep buying Ziplocs or a vacuum sealer and don’t have to feel bad about putting more plastic into the waste stream. If you’re just getting started or buying for a sous vide fanatic in your family, start at least with a half-gallon or go up to the stand up mega bag, which holds almost up to a gallon. 

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.

The Food Tech Show: Steam Ovens, Sustainable Packaging & Paying With Your Face

The Anova Precision Oven was first announced at The Spoon’s own Smart Kitchen Summit in 2016 and now it’s finally shipping. Chris and Mike strategize about how to convince their significant others to fit yet another countertop appliance in the kitchen.

Other stories discuss on this week’s show:

As always, you can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also download it direct to your device or just click play below.

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BonBowl Looks Like a Pretty Great Personal Induction Cooker

It’s been a long time since I was single and living alone, but I remember a particular hassle from that time was cooking for myself. Aside from not being a very good cook, recipes often made too much food for one person, took too long to create, and the clean up was a pain.

Too bad the BonBowl didn’t exist back then. The BonBowl is a new personal induction cooking system that promises to help people whip up fresh-cooked meals without a lot of complications.

The BonBowl has two parts, the induction cooktop base and a specially designed bowl that fits on top of it that cooks and is also the serving dish. BonBowl is compact enough to stay on a kitchen counter, and the bowl is big enough to serve a generous-sized meal for one. Because it uses induction, there isn’t a hot surface to be wary of, and it plugs into a standard outlet. The bowl is also dishwasher safe, making cleanup easy.

Because consumers in the U.S. might not be familiar with induction cooking, the BonBowl website (there isn’t a mobile app yet) also features a number of recipes for guidance. All of the recipes feature five ingredients or less that you can find at most stores and take less than 15 minutes to cook.

BonBowl’s launch is coming at a time when the global pandemic has re-shaped our eating habits and more people have been forced to eat at home. While restaurants are re-opening, people are still wary about dining there. Restaurant delivery is an option, but it has ethical complications (it’s also expensive!). Having a personal cooker like a BonBowl could come in handy, especially if there’s a second wave of coronavirus on its way.

There has been some renewed interest in innovative at-home cooking appliances. Earlier this week, Tovala announced that it raised $20 million for its connected oven and meal service. The oven itself has a scan-to-cook feature that allows for easy meal preparation.

BonBowl is bootstrapped and was founded by Mike Kobida, a veteran product designer whose previous company, Spectrom3D was acquired by MakerBot in 2015. Kobida currently has three patents pending on the BonBowl.

Single people, or anyone interested in compact cooking appliances, can pre-order the BonBowl right now for $129, and it will ship throughout the U.S. on July 21.