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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

connected cooking

CookingPal’s Multo Now Available for Commercial Sale for $999

CookingPal announced today that its Multo multi-function countertop cooking device is now available for purchase.

Similar to a Thermomix, the Multo is a standalone unit capable of performing a number of different cooking related tasks. The Multo is a scale, it blends, kneads, cooks, steams, stirs and more. It’s comprised of two main parts, the actual hardware device and an accompanying tablet computer that guides the user through a recipe and controls the device.

CookingPal sent me a review unit to test out, and it’s a pretty slick device. The hardware is attractive, solidly built and easy to set up. The tablet offers up a number of recipes users can choose from, and once selected, it tells you how to prep your ingredients based on the number of servings you want and then walks you through each step of making that meal.

As you work your way through the recipe, the Multo acts like a scale, so you weigh ingredients as you add them, and turns on the necessary function needed at the time. So when I made mac-and-cheese, for example, after I added water and pasta (and secured the lid for safety), I would hit start on the tablet and the Multo would stir and heat the pasta for the proper amount of time. It also told me when to affix the steam tray to cook the chicken, and mixed the sauce ingredients. At each step of the way, I just tapped a button and the Multo would do its thing.

I also used the Multo to make almond milk, and knead bread dough. And while the bread required that I still proof the dough and cook it in an oven, the Multo lived up to its promise. I could do just about everything with the device itself — no extra pots or pans needed. Clean up was also easy as the mixing bowl comes apart easily for hand washing.

The Multo seems best suited for people who live in small spaces with less kitchen space. While the device takes up less room than a large microwave, it really can replace a number of different appliances that could take up precious counter and cabinet space (cooktop, blender, food processor, steamer, etc.). The Multo’s software is also, thankfully, easy to connect to WiFi and pair with the device, and the UI is straightforward enough to where you don’t get lost.

All that functionality doesn’t come cheap, however. The Multo sells for an MSRP of $999, and will come with 100 recipes built-in right out of the gate (5 recipes will be added each week). For those in the market for such a multi-function device, the Multo could be a multo bene purchase.

Traeger Launches Apple Watch App to Monitor and Control Your Grilling

Traeger Grills announced this week the launch of its first Apple Watch app, which allows users to both monitor and control the cooking on its WiFire compatible connected grills.

In the press announcement, Traeger said its Apple Watch app is the first of its kind in the industry. That may or may not be true, but regardless of its place in history, it’s easy to see the utility this type of app could bring to the grilling experience. Smoking a brisket or ribs takes long hours, and the freedom of controlling the grill from your wrist anywhere you are (even when you’re out, away from your home) would definitely come in handy.

Features of the new Traeger Apple Watch app include:

  • Real-time grill temperature monitoring and control even if you’re away from your house
  • Probe temperature setting and monitoring
  • A timer to notify cooks when to sauce, check or pull the food
  • Pellet-level monitoring, to know when to re-load the hopper
  • “Super Smoke Mode,” which lets users blast their food with 100 percent hardwood smoke between 165 and 225 degrees

The WiFire grills were already pretty convenient for rookie grillers like myself. With the connected phone app, I was able to make pretty great ribs and briskets without ever having done so before. This is totally a first-world problem, but moving that monitoring from the iPhone to the Apple Watch means that I don’t need to carry my phone around to check on my grilling.

Even though it may not feel like it for most of the country, spring is around the corner, which means that grilling season is not that far off. And backyard barbecues are definitely getting high-tech upgrades. Smart oven maker, June was recently acquired by Weber and its connected cooking OS has been integrated into a new line of Weber gas grills.

Even though our BBQ parties will probably still need to be socially distant this summer, with connected tech, being away from your grill won’t be a problem.



CES 2020: Julia is an All-in-One, Self-Cleaning Guided Cooking Machine

CookingPal debuted Julia, its connected countertop cooking device, at CES yesterday — though to call it simply a cooking device is a bit of an understatement. Julia is akin to a Thermomix, with 10 culinary functions that include weigh, chop, knead, mix, cook and steam. The device also comes with its own guided cooking system.

The brains of Julia is its Smart Kitchen Hub, which is an accompanying tablet with an 8.9 inch screen that offers step-by-step guided video recipes, recipe adjustment based on the number of people eating or preferences, and a built-in camera and computer vision to recognize food and suggest recipes. If you’re missing something, you can order ingredients for delivery straight from the device.

The Smart Kitchen Hub has a touchscreen as well as a large jog dial to control it. If your hands are too greasy or gummy from food prep, the Hub will respond to voice control as well.

Here are the Julia’s full specs:

Features – Smart Kitchen Appliance

  • Size: 440 x 310 x 370 mm, with a stainless steel 3L bowl
  • Scale: accurate to 5g
  • Motor: 10 speeds up to of 5200 RPM
  • Heating unit: cooks up to 130 degrees Celsius/265 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Modes: Chop, mix, blend, knead, weigh, boil, emulsify, steam, grind, grate, whisk and cook
  • Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n (2.4GHz, 5GHz)
  • Cleaning and Care: Julia’s bowl is dishwasher safe or can self-clean by adding dish soap and water to the bowl and setting it to mixing mode

The whole point of the Julia is that the device can do most of the work so novice and time-pressed cooks can make actual meals and not just zap food in a microwave. All a user has to do is add ingredients when Julia says to; the machine does the rest. Julia even cleans itself (well, kinda, see specs above).

As mentioned earlier, Julia is similar to the Thermomix, which is wildly popular outside of the U.S. Thermomix released its latest iteration, the TM6, which also features guided cooking and a forthcoming collaboration with Drop for appliance control and grocery ordering. And while the TM6 is $1,500, the Julia, which CookingPal says will ship in Q3 of this year, will retail for less than $1,000.

CookingPal also said in its press announcement that it will be announcing more hardware in the coming months that work with its Smart Hub Platform, including a smart oven and smart pressure cooker.

This post has been updated to more accurately reflect the relationship between Thermomix and Drop.

Suvie’s Refrigerator + Connected Cooking Device Ships, but Retail Price Doubles

Suvie, the crowdfunded refrigerator + four-zone cooking appliance, announced today via email that the company shipped the first of its reward units to early backers. In a world where many Kickstarted projects never see the light of day, this is news in and of itself.

But what caught our eye about the announcement wasn’t just that Suvie is now shipping — it’s how much the device will cost at retail: $1,199. This is basically double the $599 the company originally said it would sell for. We aren’t sure exactly when the Suvie got more expensive, but its price point is important as it squares off against a raft of smart cooking devices that are already on the market, and in some cases, are already on their second generation.

To be fair, we thought $599 seemed remarkably low for what the Suvie does. Aimed at busy families, Suvie offers both an automated cooking appliance as well as a customized meal kit subscription. The hook for Suvie is that you scan the meal’s code, load it into the device before you leave for work and it will stay chilled at food safe temperatures until it is scheduled to cook. At which point, its four-zone heating simultaneously cooks each ingredient (starch, protein, vegetable) in separate compartments at different temperatures so the entire meal is ready when you get home.

But the leap to twelve hundred dollars is a steep one, and indicates either something didn’t go as planned or serious production issues arose along the way. We reached out to Suvie for clarification and will update when we hear back. (UPDATE: See the response from Suvie Co-Founder and CEO, Robin Liss below)

Regardless of why the price jumped, the point is Suvie is now the priciest of its cohort of countertop connected cooking devices. The Brava, which also does multi-zone cooking, is $995, the second-gen June is $599 and the second-gen Tovala is $349.

And that’s just the hardware. Suvie’s meal plans run $10 – $12 per serving. That means the cost to feed a family can get pretty expensive pretty quick. Suvie can make non-meal plan recipes, but they don’t appear to offer the same everything-is-done-at-the-same-time convenience after this article published Liss told me that non-meal plan recipes still finish at the same time. While Brava has meal plans, it cooks ingredients you buy at the store just as easily, and Tovala is expanding beyond its meal plan and becoming more of a platform.

Again, the Suvie does both cooling and cooking, so it’s a bit of a different value proposition. But as we’ve noted before, there is limited space on a kitchen counter. If people have already purchased one of these other devices (plus meal plan), will they pony up to purchase another cooking appliance, especially one built for its own meal subscription?

Update from Suvie Co-Founder and CEO, Robin Liss:

We’re starting to ship Kickstarter units, that’s what the announcement is about, we’re still taking pre-orders for later deliveries. We have amazing Kickstarter backers who have been incredibly supportive, and we’re going to continue to gather their feedback and refine the meals and online experience even more. Since demand has been much larger than we could have ever anticipated, there’s still a pretty long wait time to get a Suvie if you’re not a Kickstarter backer or an early website pre-order customer. However, you can pre-order now and get them before they go on sale in retail.

As for the pricing: We’re a new appliance company, and, throughout the development process, quite a few components and technologies turned out to be more expensive than we anticipated – that’s just the honest bottom line. We were probably too optimistic on the price, and, I’m sorry if it’s disappointed people. This advanced technology has been a bit more costly to produce than we initially anticipated. The Suvie kitchen robot has the components of both a refrigerator, a steamer, a slow cooker, sous vide device and an oven all in one. There’s nothing else like it on the market. The upside of this development process has been that we’ve also rolled out many new features, including a Slow Cook mode that really expands the types of meals Suvie can make. We think the Suvie we’re shipping can do a lot more than the original vision we set out 16 months ago – so we hope our consumers see that benefit as well.