Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

gourmia

Editor Roundtable Podcast: Forget Delivery Bots, Amazon Wants You to Keep a Robot in Your Garage

Gotta give credit where credit is due: Amazon sure has lots of ideas about how to get more stuff to your house.

While everyone thought Amazon was all about about delivery drones, pickup lockers and IoT-connected order buttons (ok, maybe not), the tech giant’s also been brainstorming about putting a robot in your garage that could go and retrieve your latest package for you.

That’s just one of the topics we tackle in this week’s podcast with the Spoon editorial gang. Other topics include:

You can listen to the podcast below, find it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, or download it directly to your computer.

Gourmia to Debut Pressure Cooker with Built In Refrigeration

Let’s face it: pressure cookers like the Instant Pot do a much better job at cooking proteins (like chicken) than your trusty old Crockpot, in large part because they are able to retain the meat’s moisture better, which generally results in better tasting meals.

However, slow cookers are better at one thing – slow cooking (duh) – which is why many folks continue to use them as a trusty way to do unattended cooking for long stretches of time.

But what if you could chill your meal in your pressure cooker until it’s ready to cook? That’s the idea behind Gourmia’s new CoolCooker, which the company plans to debut at Housewares Show next week. According to the release, the GPCC1960 CoolCooker “allows cooks to put a meal’s ingredients into the unit hours prior to the cooking process beginning, keeping it fresh and cold (at 35°F), just as it would be if it came directly out of the refrigerator.”

In theory, it’s a good idea. Being able to pre-prepare a pressure cooker meal and set and forget it for a few hours until you’re ready to cook certainly adds to the convenience factor.

That said, my first thought when I saw the press release about a cooking appliance with built-in cooling  was “it had better keep the food cool”. After all, sous vide appliance Mellow (before it got a software update to correct the problem) got a brutal review by Wired’s Joe Ray specifically because it wasn’t able to keep food out of the ‘danger zone’.  But, Gourmia goes to great pains – both in the release and in my email conversation with Gourmia founder Heshy Biegeleisen – to point out that the new appliance will keep food at 35°F with its built in refrigeration technology.

My second thought was “it had better manage pressure well.” Because pressure cookers cook with extremely high heat (and, well, pressure), you always should be careful with a pressure cooker, even if modern cookers have mostly made the process foolproof. By enabling unattended pressure cooking, it goes without saying that the thing had better work well.

According to Gourmia, the app allows you to manage pressure remotely: “By combining Gourmia’s state-of-the-art automatic pressure release, auto stir, fully adjustable pressure setting, and remote pressure release technologies with their new cooling innovation, Gourmia is redefining the pressure cooker market.”  In addition to their own assurances, the company also indicated that the product is certified by ETL, a third party safety certification mark, an important indicator that the product is considered safe.

In addition to the CoolCooker pressure cooker, Gourmia also announced a multicooker (with sous vide capability) with food cooling capability. Interestingly, the company first announced a CoolCooker multicooker a year ago, but according to Biegeleisen that product did not ship and ultimately evolved into the new GMCC1970 multicooker debuting next week.

The release of Gourmia’s new CoolCookers looks like it might be part of a growing trend towards built-in refrigeration in cooking appliances. In addition to the CoolCookers and the aformentioned Mellow, there’s the new Suvie multi-zone cooking “robot”, which utilizes a unique water-cooling system powered by a compressor based refrigeration unit.

Both of Gourmia’s new products will work with Alexa and Google home and will be available later this year for a price of $199.

We’ll be covering Housewares Show next week. If you have an interesting new product send us more info via our tip line. 

Gourmia to Roll Out Smart Multicooker, Coffee Brewer, and Dehydrator at CES

This year will be my first time at CES. Based off of what I’ve heard about the gigantic event, I’m expecting to discover new food tech startups, see new smart kitchen appliances in action, and get very sore feet.

I know at least one range of new products I’ll have to check out. Brooklyn-based smart kitchen company Gourmia just announced that it will be unveiling three new countertop appliances at CES: a 7-quart air fryer, which also functions as a rotisserie and dehyradrator; an 11-in-1 deluxe multicooker (similar to the Instant Pot); and a 10-cup coffee grinder and brewer.

All the devices are connected and can be controlled by the Gourmia mobile app, called Mia. They’re also compatible with Alexa or Google Home. Users can say either “Alexa, ask Mia,” or “Hey Google, ask Mia” to remotely manage cook times or change modes using their voice. The whole “asking a voice assistant to ask another service” thing is definitely annoying and might be more trouble than its worth when you could just do it on your phone, but hopefully Gourmia will find a way to get around it soon.

On the surface, none of these products seem particularly groundbreaking: after all, Gourmia’s lineup already features several IoT-enabled air fryers, multicookers and coffee grinder/brewers, which are already voice compatible. I’ll have to stop by their booth at CES to see if Gourmia’s newest appliances can sweep me off my (tired) feet.

Podcast: What Caught Our Eye at the Housewares Show

The International Housewares Show is big. Very big. More than 60,000 professionals from all corners of the world convened in Chicago last week to check out the latest and greatest products coming soon to a home near you (or to your home).

Whether you attended in person, or missed it this year, we’ve got you covered. Mike Wolf and I walked the show floor to find the best bits of connected kitchen tech.

In this podcast, we talk about how the whole smart home industry is maturing, the prevalence of connected devices, and the very cool things we came across (precision heated plates and baby bottles!).

Guided Cooking Trend Continues Momentum In 2018

Two years ago at the Housewares Show in Chicago, I saw the emergence of a new trend called guided cooking. At the show, companies like Cuciniale, Oliso and Hestan Cue showed off early efforts to combine sensors, software, precision heating and content in an orchestrated experience that guides home cooks through the creation of a meal.

As I said of my effort to make salmon with the Hestan Cue, using a guided cooking system for the first time was something of a revelation:

“…this combination of the pan, burner and app and the guidance system they had built that really led me to see the possibilities around this new category. I am not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I cooked one of the tastiest pieces of salmon I’ve ever had in about 20 minutes. The experience was enabled through technology, but the technology didn’t take me out of the experience of cooking. Further, I can see as I gain more confidence using a system like this, I can choose to “dial down” the guidance needed from the system to the point I am largely doing most of the cooking by myself (though I don’t know if I’d ever get rid of the automated temperature control, mostly because I’m lazy and it gives me instant “chef intuition).”

Fast forward a couple of years and the guided cooking trend continues to gain momentum. A number of companies talked up new guided cooking platforms at CES in January, from big appliance makers like Whirlpool and LG to big tech platform providers like Google and Amazon.

And at the Housewares show in Chicago this week, guided cooking was everywhere. Hestan Cue, now shipping, was on display this week in the Smart Home pavilion. iCuisine, a startup that utilizes a modular sensor to connect to everyday kitchen tools to a guided cooking app, had its own take on step-by-step cooking instruction. Vorwerk’s Thermomix showed off their all-in-one multicooker with built-in guidance and talked about the company’s online recipe platform, the Cookidoo.

Over at the Gourmia booth, the prolific maker of low-cost connected cooking devices showed off a variety of connected devices, including a Thermomix-like multicooker with built-in cooking guidance. The company’s head of product told me the Gourmia multicooker will eventually act as a smart kitchen hub that enables cross-device cooking orchestration with other Gourmia appliances. As I left the booth, celebrity chef Cat Cora was performing a cooking demo in the booth and talking about the concept of smart recipes.

Gourmia’s Thermomix clone (currently only available in Europe)

Chefman, another maker of low-cost connected cooking appliances, showed off its sous vide cooking app with newly integrated guided cooking capabilities at the show, and a company spokesperson told me the company plans to add guided cooking to all of their connected cooking appliances this year.

Meanwhile at SXSW (which annoyingly was at the same time as the Housewares Show this year), Innit announced the release of Google Assistant functionality within the Innit app they first demoed at CES. With Google Assistant, a home cook can navigate the Innit app’s guided cooking features via voice. According to company COO Josh Sigel, the release marks the first third party app which is completely controllable via Google Assistant.

Of course, like any new trend, there will be hits and misses as products roll out. Early reviews of the Tasty One Top have been somewhat subpar, while my experiences with some of the early Amazon video cooking skills have been hobbled by lack of YouTube integration and the early stage of cooking capabilities in their Alexa skill API.

All that said, I think we can expect lots more in the guided cooking space as 2018 unfolds. I saw a slew of products in Chicago under embargo that are slated for later this year that offer new approaches to guided cooking, and there will no doubt more guided cooking products being developed in stealth that should see the light of day at IFA and Smart Kitchen Summit.

Bottom line: what started as a trend a couple years ago is fast becoming a central theme for appliance makers big and small, making 2018 a big big year for guided cooking.

Anova Opens Pre-Orders For The Sub-$100 Nano

This week, Anova opened up pre-orders for their Nano, the company’s first sub-$100 sous vide circulator.

The device, which ships in October, is 25% smaller and a full pound lighter than the company’s Wi-Fi Precision Cooker. Perhaps more importantly, the Nano comes in about $70 less than the company’s flagship product. The full price for the Nano is $99, (if you move fast, you can preorder the Nano for $69), marking the first time Anova has dropped below the $100 mark.

The new lower-priced machine comes at a time when the sous vide market is getting more competitive. ChefSteps has been doing well with the Joule (and recently released a lower-cost version of their own), and low priced competitors like Gourmia have attracted budget conscious consumers. With the Nano and its $99 price tag, Anova hopes it can attract value customers looking for a low-priced sous vide circulator.

Later this year the company will ship its second generation Pro circulator for $299.  The company’s Precision Oven, a combi-oven that the company announced last year at the Smart Kitchen Summit, was originally expected to ship this summer, but the ship date has been bumped back to summer 2018.

Want to see Anova CEO Steve Svajian speak about building a smart kitchen company? Come to the Smart Kitchen Summit.  Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

Gourmia Is Putting A Camera On A Connected Air Fryer

The International Home + Housewares Show starts this weekend, and we know we’re going to see lots of announcements around the smart kitchen. Gourmia is one of the first, announcing this week that they’ve added a camera to the brand’s line of connected air fryers.

Gourmia is a well-known brand in the small appliance world and has been working to brand itself as a premier IoT name in the kitchen. They’ve gotten into the smart sous vide machine game and added connectivity to their air fryers and pressure cookers. Now they are putting cameras inside their air fryers to give consumers a front row seat to watch their food get crispy.

We’ve seen cameras play a bigger role in the smart kitchen over the past few years, whether it’s inside the June Oven, a unique tabletop smart oven that knows how long to cook something using machine learning and interior cameras, or fridges that allow you to see what’s inside without opening the door. But are cameras really changing the game in the kitchen, or are they just bells and whistles to drive up price points and make cooking a little more fun?

Maybe it’s a bit of both. In some instances, cameras are working in cooperation with powerful AI software engines to remove the guesswork from cooking, like with the June Oven. In other cases, the camera is a bonus feature that maybe adds a bit of convenience to your day by letting you see if you need milk while you’re at the grocery store.

The Cook Cam might seem like a fun, unique feature to some consumers and it’s clear Gourmia is out to lead the way in adding connectivity to small appliances.

Gourmia founder Heshy Biegeleisen commented,

“During 2017, we intend to enable over 100 sku’s with IoT, all of which can be controlled with just one app. The addition of the built-in Cook Cam in our IoT product line is a major introduction. Gourmia is proud to be leading the way in bringing smart kitchens into the home.”

In the case of the Gourmia Air Fryers, the Cook Cam allows users to see via the smartphone app each stage of the cooking process. If you’re an anxious chef, says Gourmia, you’re able to keep better track of where your food is in the cooking process and prevent overcooking. The Gourmia app will also let you upload your pictures to Instagram, in case taking pictures with your phone and uploading them has become too arduous.

But adding connectivity to all of our devices is causing some to raise concerns about cyber intrusion and privacy. And putting cameras inside appliances adds another layer of privacy issues – the New Food Economy lays out the downside in a recent piece. Are companies adding cameras and connectivity to spy on us and ultimately sell us more stuff? Probably. The big wow factor of the IoT, after all, is less about efficiency and connection and more about all the data that these connections will generate. The NFE piece points out that privacy policies for these devices often give the manufacturer “broad latitude” to capture whatever information they’re capable of collecting.

“let’s not pretend that the cameras creeping into our kitchen are about social sharing and perfectly cooked meals. There’s much more to it, and the companies behind the smart kitchen revolution aren’t actually that stupid.”
– New Food Economy

Should we be worried about this? Possibly – and at the very least, we should be having these discussions and paying attention.

Cinder Grill Now Shipping As Precision Cooking Market Heats Up

The long-anticipated Cinder grill is finally making its way to customers.

Earlier this month the company announced on Facebook that production units will be shipping to those who pre-purchased the Cinder. The grill, which uses two aluminum cooking plates with embedded temperature sensing in an enclosed (but not airtight) cooking chamber, has been available for preorder for the past year at a price of $399, $100 below the MSRP of $499. The company expects to have all US preorders delivered by the end of February and Canadian preorders shipped by the end of March.

Shipping product marks the end of a long journey for CEO Eric Norman and Cinder, which have been working on the grill for five years. The company filed patents in 2012 and 2013 for precision cooking techniques, and has been working to bring the product to production ever since.

As the company neared production at the end of last year, they experienced slight production delays due to the complicated nature of the grill, which Norman explained in a recent blog post:

“…we analyzed the build rate using data from a sophisticated measurement system and discovered the rate of production was far below our goal. Factory estimates were off because Cinder is an order of magnitude more complicated than any electric grill ever produced. The accuracy and testing requirements of Cinder are high, requiring different part suppliers to coordinate in unfamiliar ways. This was the cost of going for super high-quality while shooting for a reasonable cost. Sometimes logistics or communication were not smooth, requiring more time and effort than expected.”

Cinder now joins a growing group of companies bringing precision cooking products to the consumer market. At this year’s big tech show in Vegas, leading sous vide circulator company Anova announced a refreshed lineup and showed off a demo model of its precision oven, FirstBuild announced a new version of the Paragon with guided cooking capabilities, while upstart Gourmia continued their aggressive rollout of products.

With all of this action, there’s no doubt precision cooking will have an interesting 2017.

Gourmia Launches Wi-Fi Air Fryer And New Sous Vide Machine

Sometimes the coolest part about IoT devices has little to do with the internet connectivity. Such is the case with Gourmia’s newest product launch – an air fryer that uses air instead of oil to create a crispy and tasty food experience.

Gourmia actually launched two new connected products – a sous vide “immersion pod” – aka a sous vide machine with Wi-Fi built in and a companion iOS / Android app. The sous vide machine features a large clip on the side to affix it to the pot of water as well as a small touchscreen for at-device control of temperature and power. Gourmia is working with home chef turned author Jason Logsdon, known for using techniques such as sous vide, blow torches and whipping siphons to prepare recipes in the mobile apps to use with the device. Gourmia already has a sous vide machine with a sub $100 price, but with added Wi-Fi, the introductory price for this one is around $120. It is still cheaper than current leading competitors like the ChefSteps Joule and Anova’s sous vide machine.

But the more interesting new product from Gourmia is the Cook Center & Air Fryer, which uses a combination of convection and radiant cooking to circulate hot air via halogen heating and deliver food prepped in different styles. The Gourmia Air Fryer claims to reduce cooking time by 60% and produces “perfectly crisp exteriors with moist tender interiors.” The appliance offers 20 different cooking styles, including frying and sauteing using air heat, as well as regular stir fry, steam, roast, grill, broil, bake, rotisserie, and kebabs. You can also use it to make pizza and to defrost food – making you wonder why you even need that microwave anymore.

The introductory price for the Gourmia Cook Center & Air Fryer is $150 – a decent buy considering the functionality and versatility.