Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

sous vide

Anova Launches Sous Vide Line with (RED) to Raise Funds for Global Health

Anova, a maker of smart kitchen appliances, today announced a partnership with (RED) to create a collection of sous vide circulators to help raise money to fight global health crisis such as HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. (RED), an organization founded by U2 frontman Bono and politician-activist Bobby Shriver in 2006 to fight AIDS pandemic, partners with brands like Anova on products to raise money for the Global Fund, the world’s biggest funders of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

The new collection will feature three different versions of the Anova circulator that mirror the company’s current sous vide lineup: Nano ($129), The Precision Cooker ($199) and Precision Cooker Pro ($399). For each purchase of the new Anova RED collection, 5% of the proceeds will go to the Global Fund. Anova and RED have pledged a minimum commitment of $200 thousand.

The new product line is available on Anova’s website and will be available on Amazon starting on September 30th.

To find out more about why Anova decided to team up with RED, I asked Anova CEO Steve Svajian a few questions.

What was the thinking behind having Anova participate in this socially conscious campaign with (RED)?

When entering a partnership, we look at the mission, the values and how we can work together to really make an impact. (RED) disrupted the original model of philanthropy by being the first to rally the corporate sector through (RED) branded products. With sous vide, we changed the way the world cooked.  When the opportunity came up for Anova to partner with (RED), we jumped at the chance to work with an organization that takes such a bold stance on fighting pandemics. 

Why this specific cause?

The COVID-19 pandemic affected communities around the world, hitting the most vulnerable communities the hardest, including those battling illnesses like HIV/AIDS. California was one of the hardest hit states during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a San Francisco-based company, HIV/AIDS advocacy has been a central part of our city’s history. (RED)’s mission to fight pandemics aligns with not only our values but our community’s needs. 

Is this a sign of the company’s evolution?

We started Anova on the principle of accessibility. This partnership with (RED) furthers that principle by being part of the mission to create a stronger  and more accessible global health system for communities around the world. 

Anova Launches its Own Line of Reusable Silicone Bags for Sous Vide Cooking

Anova announced today that it is launching its own line of reusable silicone bags to make sous vide cooking a little less wasteful.

The appropriately named Anova Precision Reusable Silicone Bags are BPA free, have an airtight seal, can withstand temperatures from -40 to 446 degrees Fahrenheit and are dishwasher safe.

Sous vide cooking is a great way to prepare a steak (and other foods), but the food has to be sealed shut when submerged in the water bath to cook. Single-use plastic bags are easy, but wasteful. Vacuum sealers and accompanying bags are expensive, take up space, and also wasteful. And with either of those options, you may not like the idea of having your food wrapped in chemical-y plastic in a warm environment for an hour or so.

This is where silicone bags can come in handy. They are food grade, keep the water our during the cook and can be easily washed and re-used multiple times.

There are other silicone bags on the market. Stasher has been around for a few years making silicone bags that can be used for sous vide. In fact, the Anova store in San Francisco used to sell Stasher bags as an add-on. The Anova bag is different, however, with its roll down top that resembles more of a dry bag that you take camping.

The Anova bag is available on the company’s website and soon for a limited time at Target, selling for $19.99 for a half gallon bag (Stasher bags that size are the same price). So if you’re sous viding and want to do a small part to save the planet, you should consider picking one up.

Eat Just To Launch Vegan Sous Vide Egg Bites in Grocery Stores

Food tech company Eat Just announced today it will expand its retail line of products with the launch of JUST Egg Sous Vide bites, which the company has created in partnership with sous vide food manufacturer Cuisine Solutions.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Cuisine Solutions will produce the Sous Vide bites, which will arrive in the frozen food section of grocery stores in March. Customers will be able to choose from four different varieties, each based on a different geographical region and flavored with plants known to that area. They include America (potato, dill, chives, red and black pepper), India (curry, broccoli, cauliflower, coconut milk, lemongrass), Japan (mushroom, yams, togarashi, soy, tamari), and Mexico (poblanos, chipotle chile powder, black beans, corn, lime). The bites will be sold in boxes of four.  

The other major ingredient, of course, is mung bean protein, which is the key ingredient for all of Eat Just’s plant-based egg products.

Yours truly got the opportunity to try all four flavors recently. The flavor variety — which is executed well — is probably the biggest draw, as the ingredients are a welcome change from the usual cheese-tomato-spinach-or-basil mix that’s in most sous vide egg bites out there. Also, if you’re like me and constantly forget to cook breakfast, they’re a very easy plant-based solution. (Personal fave flavor: Mexico.)

The bites can be heated in a toaster, microwave, or conventional oven.

Eat Just hasn’t yet said which retail stores the product will debut at come March, nor how much each box will cost. (Those interested in getting those details can get updates here.)

Alongside the continuing evolution of its plant-based products, Eat Just has also hit a couple major milestones where its cell-based protein business is concerned. At the beginning of December, the company got the world’s first-ever regulatory approval to sell cultured meat, specifically in Singapore. The company followed that news up with the first actual sale of its GOOD cultured chicken bites at an upscale restaurant in the city-state.

Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick has suggested in the past that the company will continue developing both plant- and cell-based lines of business, rather than focusing solely on one approach over another.

Pret A Manger and Cuisine Solutions Launch a Sous Vide Ghost Kitchen in NYC

Cuisine Solutions, which manufactures and distributes sous vide food products, announced this week via an email that it has teamed up with cafe chain Pret A Manger to open what it’s calling a “dark assembly kitchen” (DAK) in New York City. 

Dubbed CS DAK, the ghost kitchen-like operation will offer multiple food concepts for delivery through the major third-party delivery platforms as well as via the CS DAK website. 

Since all food available through CS DAK will be sous vide cuisine from Cuisine Solution’s product inventory, the assembly process for orders will be minimal. Fully cooked food will arrive at a Pret A Manger location in Midtown Manhattan, which will serve as the official first facility for this operation. Pret A Manger staff at that location will assemble the menu items and package them for delivery. There is no from-scratch cooking involved in the process.

CS DAK will offer four different concepts to start:

  • Cocina Oscura and Mediterranean: Build-your-own Mexican or Mediterranean bowls, salads, and wraps
  • Poultry in Motion: Sous Vide Egg Bites and chicken dishes
  • Bodega: A high-end take on the ready-made meal
  • The Cutting Edge: A variety of high-end international dishes

Cuisine Solutions said in today’s press release that customer can expect Asian, Italian, and BBQ-based sous vide concepts to join the above list in the future. 

The launch of CS DAK is another example of existing restaurants licensing virtual concepts as a way to create some additional revenue as the restaurant industry continues to struggle with indoor dining closures and restrictions. This idea became more widespread towards the end of 2020. Wow Bao, for example, licenses its own menu to other restaurants, which can assemble food items from their own kitchens and send them out for delivery. Also noteworthy in this space is Odermark, which raised $120 million for its NextBite platform that pairs restaurants with delivery-only brands to help them increase revenues. At a recent Spoon virtual event, Ordermark’s CEO Alex Canter referenced one NextBite client that had incorporated five of those virtual concepts into their restaurant and were doing “10 to 15 times more revenue through those brands” than via their own.

For its part, the CK DAK concept will be available for delivery for Manhattanites starting this Thursday, January 7. The concept will likely launch at additional Pret A Manger locations in the near future.

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.

IXON Food Technology Claims to Keeps Meat Fresh For Two Years

This week, Hong Kong-based IXON Food Technology announced its proprietary method of food preservation that allows meat to be shelf-stable for a guaranteed minimum of two years. The company will use this technology to produce packaged sirloin steaks and pork chops.

The company’s preservation technology is called “ASAP”, which stands for advanced sous-vide aseptic packaging. Other methods of preservation, like canning, for example, put food through high heat for sterilization. In this process, some of the flavors of the food get lost. IXON’s technology sterilizes food at a moderate temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which allows the food to keep both flavor and moisture. This process also excludes preservatives and chemicals which are commonly found in other preserved and packaged foods.

The company explains its technology in this video:

Advanced sous-vide aseptic packaging (ASAP) - How does it work?

If the company’s technology works as advertised that would also mean that meat could be stored and shipped without energy-consuming freezers, and that people could stock up on meats without filling up their fridges and freezers at home.

All of that sounds great, but what we don’t know is how well this technology actually works, and what types of independent verification has been done. Also unknown is what type of company IXON is. Is it looking to license out its technology to other meat providers, or is it building its own meat brand?

IXON Food Technologies joins other companies in the quests to preserve foods and combat food waste. Apeel, producers of a natural food-safe coating that extends the life of produce, raised $250 million earlier this year. And StixFresh created a sticker that is placed on produce to extend its shelf life. IXON Food Technologies appears the be the only company focusing on meat specifically but stated on their website that they plan on expanding to include additional food products in the future.

With a month left to go, Ixon Food Technology’s Kickstarter campaign has raised nearly $36,000, blowing past its goal of roughly $13,000. Early backers can actually receive two 16-oz beef sirloin steaks or pork chops for a pledge of $49 USD. The company is currently applying for patents and trademarks for its technology in the United States, Europe, and China.

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.

Mellow Turns to Equity Crowdfunding to Raise $1M in Seed Funding

The saga of Mellow, the company behind the eponymous sous vide cooking machine, continues, as it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise $1.07 million dollars in seed funding.

The Mellow, for those who may not remember, was a combination cooler/sous vide cooker. The hook with the Mellow was that you could put food in a water chamber in the morning and the machine would keep it cold until it was time to cook, so you could have dinner ready for you when you got home.

The product started as a self-hosted crowdfunding project back in 2014. But a series of delays, the departure of Mellow’s original CEO, and a brutal review in WIRED that called out the machine as “too risky” because it didn’t actually keep food at a food safe cold temperature seemed to spell the end of the device and the company.

But Mellow found a new owner, kept going and successfully crowdfunded a second iteration of its device last year called the Mellow Duo. The company raised more than $200,000 on Kickstarter for the Duo, which will feature two water reservoirs so people can cook multiple items to different temperatures at the same time.

In a Kickstarter update on April 6, Mellow said that the Duo was significantly delayed because of the coronavirus, a common issue for crowdfunded projects. So perhaps Mellow is turning to equity crowdfunding to help keep the lights on until it can ship. Mellow launched the equity crowdfunding campaign on SeedInvest, looking to raise a seed round of slightly more than $1 million.

The minimum investment is $1,000 and as part of its pitch, the company released some interesting information. According to Mellow, “Over 6,400 Mellow V1 units have been activated, with the average household using it to cook 1.7+ times per week.” That’s…. not a ton of devices in use or a sizeable market to build on.

Mellow is conducting this campaign at a time when more companies are turning to equity crowdfunding. GoSun, GOffee, Winc, Small Robot Company and Miso Robotics have all shunned traditional VCs in favor of potential everyday investors over the past year. Bypassing institutional investment does mean there is less pressure on companies to scale, but they also give up the institutional knowledge and connections VCs bring.

Of course, any investment carries risk, but it seems like Mellow is trying to raise money at a time when the home consumer sous vide hardware has been largely commodotized and the market itself seems fairly limited in size. ChefSteps laid off staff and dropped product lines before being acquired by Breville. Nomiku shut down completely. And Anova is looking to expand beyond sous vide into a forthcoming smart oven.

Of course, part of the problem with home sous vide cooking was the amount of time it takes to make your meal. First you have to bring a water bath up to temperature and then once you put your food in, you have to that up to the right temperature, which can take more than an hour. Then, if you’re cooking something like steak, you have to sear it.

The Mellow promises to do most of that (sans searing) automatically for you behind the scenes, so you can set it and forget it. Assuming they fixed the cold storage issue, we wonder how big that use case is as most people don’t typically know what they want to eat for dinner until a few hours before they actually eat.

Will Mellow’s saga continue? For now, that’s up to the crowd.

With Consumers in Quarantine, Connected Cooking Companies Spring Into Action With Tailored Content

With a good chunk of the world’s population currently in quarantine, most of us are cooking at home a lot more nowadays.

Along with all this home cooking has come a massive spike in demand for information for culinary how-to, ranging from recipe suggestions to tutorials on how to do everything from making rice to baking bread. While many are simply searching Google for recipes, others are settling in to learn cooking skills to help them learn to get food on the table.

This sudden hunger for cooking-related guidance has led some tech-forward cooking startups to ramp up the content as they look to both satiate newfound interest in cooking skills while also giving quarantine bound consumers something to do with their time.

Here are a few ways in which kitchen tech startups have ramped up their efforts to serve homebound consumers:

Hestan Cue

While the Hestan Cue already walks users through recipes with step by step instructions, the guided cooking startup has launched Hestan Cue Cooking School, a series of virtual classes to help users of the connected cooking platform build up on their cooking skills during quarantine.

Built with the virtual class platform Teachable, the initial classes cover techniques for cooking beef, eggs and vegetables. The cool thing is that while the classes suggest you use your Cue for certain steps, you can use the classes even if you don’t have the Hestan device.

According to Hestan Smart Cooking managing director John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen, about one third of the Hestan Cue users have signed up for courses.

Anova

Sous vide specialist Anova has always been active in creating cooking content for their user community, and over the past month they’ve gone quarantine cooking focused by creating content to help consumers with everything from making pantry staples to batch cooking. And for the parents with bored kids, Anova suggests enlisting them to help with the brisket.

Thermomix

Thermomix is known for its in-person sales model for the high-end multicooker, but in the age of COVID-19 they’ve gone virtual with a “quarantine kitchen” series of cooking demos and are also allowing potential customers to book online cooking demos with the TM6 sales team.

You can see one of their latest episodes of their quarantine kitchen series below:

SideChef

SideChef is also ramping up its quarantine specific content. In early March they created a quarantine cooking recipe collection. A month later, and with virtual happy hours firmly planted in the stay-at-home zeitgeist, they’ve created a guide for virtual dinner parties.

Instant Pot

The massively popular pressure cooker is famous for leaning on its Facebook community to create content for them. Still, the company seems to have recognized our new shared reality and is letting people know that Instant Pots can help you cook bread while you’re cooped up during quarantine.

Food Network Kitchen

While the Food Network Kitchen app doesn’t seem to have created any tailored content for quarantine bound consumers, they have seen a big jump in usage and consumers look for more ways to cook. Company spokesperson Irika Slavin told me via email that Foodnetwork.com has seen “double digit increases” in page views and the Food Network App, the guided cooking premium offering launched in October, has seen what Slavin describes as a “triple digit increase” in visitors.

ckbk

ckbk is a ‘Spotify for cookbooks’ app that puts pretty much any cookbook or recipe just a click away.

Since ckbk only offers access to existing cookbooks, the company isn’t creating any quarantine specific content, but they do have a good idea of what people are cooking. Company founder Matthew Cockerill told me he’s noticed most of his subscribers, and the world in general, seem to be moving in sync over the past month through what he calls the ‘seven stages of cooking grief.’

“So first of all it was about the prepping – stockpiling durable good – beans and pasta,” said Cockerill. “Then came the “staff of life” basics bread and baking. And after that, I think, there’s a need for some comfort, yes, but also some relief from the monotony. Which is where I think chocolate and dessert cravings are kicking in. It’s either that or alcohol. And in many cases both!”

“Lastly,” he continued, “we’ve also seen a trend of interest in ways to use the new found time which people see stretching out ahead of them, with longer-term projects” like baking bread.

Cockerill told me that new subscriptions are up 250% over pre-COVID times. If you want to cook your way through grief, the company is giving away 30 days free access to their app to help you cook through your pantry items.

Firstchop Abandons D2C Sous Vide Proteins for B2B Microwavable Meals

When Firstchop first launched towards the end of 2017, it was at the center of a couple of different trends then sweeping the food tech world. It was a direct to consumer mail order meal kit, kinda, it only provided vacuum-sealed frozen proteins (that were actually quite tasty). Those proteins were meant to be reheated at home with a sous vide machine wand, the hot kitchen device at the time, which Firstchop gave away as part of a customer’s subscription.

My oh my, how a couple of years can change an industry. Meal kits are still around but most of the growth is at retail, not mail order. And the consumer sous vide market has basically collapsed. Chef Steps laid off a bunch of staff before being acquired by Breville, Nomiku shut down, and Anova is expanding beyond sous vide wands and into a new steam oven.

Ajay Narain, Co-Founder of Firstchop told me by phone this week that he saw the the big sous vide collapse coming. “We knew by the end of 2018 that the D2C was dead and the luster of sous vide was gone,” Narain said.

“Sous vide really caught fire and then collapsed,” Narain said. “Unrealistic expecations were built around what sous vide could do. People thought it would be great for all of these different use cases, but it has a lot of limitations.”

So in January of 2019, Firstchop decided to abandon almost everything it started out doing. It was getting out of the direct to consumer business and out of the consumer sous vide game. Firstchop pivoted into refrigerated prepared meals sold through office vending machines. The company added veggies and carbs to its proteins and each meal is re-heated with a microwave.

Narain said that during an initial customer pilot of its new meals at the beginning of 2019, Firstchop sold three times as much product in the first month than it had the entire previous year of selling D2C.

Since that initial test, Firstchop has been developing its products and the company officially launched its menu of meals today, which include Chicken Tikka Masala, Korean Barbecue Beef, Grilled Chicken Breast, and Chicken Chili Verde. The company is in talks to sell its meals through different large foodservice companies that operate vending services for various companies.

Firstchop hasn’t completely abandoned its sous vide roots however. Narain said that the sous vide cooking just moved from the consumer to the back end, and that’s how all of its meals are prepared. “At a manufacturing level, sous vide cooking process on the backend is essential,” Narain said. “It delivers moistnenss and tenderness, and the microwave is like magic.”

What’s almost more impressive is that Firstchop has held on this long just by bootstrapping. While it survived the consumer sous vide implosion, we’ll have to see if this latest pivot will be Firstchop’s last.

Scott Heimendinger Leaves Modernist to Launch New Cooking Tech Startup: “We Haven’t Conquered Improving the Kitchen”

Longtime cooking technology entrepreneur Scott Heimendinger announced today he was leaving Modernist Cuisine to launch a new startup where he will develop kitchen technology.

Heimendinger made the announcement about leaving his employer of the last four years via tweet:

I decided to catch up with Heimendinger to discuss his plans post-Modernist Cuisine. While the founder of Sansaire and kitchen tech hired gun is keeping his plans under wraps for the near future, he did give me some hints about the general direction and also shared his thoughts on the need for innovation in the kitchen tech space.

Answers have been edited for brevity.

You’re starting something in kitchen tech. Is it hardware?

Yes.

Can talk about the idea or do you need to protect the IP first?

Like so many products, protecting IP is necessary to ward off competitors.  I will be really vague about what it is. I still need to invent my way through the idea. Once I do and the patents are filed and my attorney says it’s ok, I can’t wait to scream from the mountaintops about it.

Is it cooking equipment?

It’s in the kitchen. It’s something that you will use in the kitchen. A physical product that you can use in the kitchen that will improve your experience of cooking.

Is this an idea that came to you in the middle of the night or over years?

It’s a little of both. For better or worse, I get flashes of ideas over time. Most of them are silly or throw away. Every now and then there is an idea that sticks in my head. When I knew I was feeling the gravitational pull of wanting to go entrepreneurial again, I asked ‘What will be something I want to do and something that is feasible for me to do?’

You can rule out tons of stuff because it’s a cool idea, but it requires a ton of money. Or, it’s a cool idea or there’s no way to defend from competition. Eventually I ran out of reasons to rule out the idea.  It was a pretty deliberate process to convince myself this idea was worth taking a leap for.

Did you learn anything from Sansaire experience?

Sure hope so (laughs).  As you know, the end of my story in consumer sous vide was not the happiest story.  I walked away from Sansaire and the company shuttered. 

What Sansaire did do is help me understand why people are serial entrepreneurs. There are all these things you have to figure out.
It’s a big scary monster. It’s in the dark. But once you shine a flashlight on it and look it in the eye, you realize it’s hard but not scary.

The biggest thing I have now compared to when I started Sansaire is the confidence of having done it once and knowing what to expect.

Have you gotten funding?

No, and I hope I can bring this idea to life without outside funding. When I was at Sansaire, we did a Kickstarter and that’s how the business got going. But at some point, we tried to raise money because we were outgunned by bigger players with more money.

I had a very bad experience trying to raise money. It was emotionally taxing, hugely time consuming. And, frankly, if I get to choose, I’d rather focus my time on trying to make good products or make happy customers than do all the things you have to do to fundraise. 

Are you starting this company solo or with partners?

Solo. If I can get away with it, that is how I hope that it will continue to be, at least for a while until it requires more people. 

That is an intentional choice. I have a lot of OCD tendencies, tend to be a perfectionist and very tidy about things. When it’s just me, there’s no one to say “that’s enough”. I get to be the last word on perfection.

Anything you learned from your time at Modernist Cuisine?

When I left previously, there was a project I always wanted to bring to life which was in turn the content of the Modernist Cuisine books into a TV show. Basically Planet Earth for food. I was never able to do that the first time. I got a call when I left Sansaire,  saying hey, ‘Nathan is really interested in doing this. Do you want to come back and make a show?’

Sadly, it hasn’t worked out. For one reason or another we were never able to land it.  I hope someone else in my absence can do it. A TV show that really explains the science of how cooking works in a visual and scientific way is something the world needs, but it was time for me to move on.

So what have I learned? I’ve become a much better engineer. While I’ve been here, not only have I gotten to learn about cinematography. I’ve also become a much better electrical engineer and software engineer. I’ve become much better at a bunch of disciplines.

Did consulting for Anova on their smart oven contribute to getting your entrepreneurial juices flowing?

Yes it did. It reminded me how much I love working on problems where we put ourselves in the mind of the user. I love working with the team at Anova because we’re all focused on how do we make the best design decisions to create the best experience for someone using this product. That turns out to be something I didn’t know I was missing so much. 

There have been some struggles in kitchen hardware. Why are you optimistic?

Part of the reason I’m optimistic is circular logic. I am optimistic because I have to be. I wouldn’t decide to take the plunge into the space again if I weren’t optimistic.  I am making a bunch of assumptions and have to hope they work out.

The most substantive answer to your question is the smart kitchen industry has gone through a phase where being smart meant adding Wi-Fi and a mobile app. In some cases, that was really useful and delivered value to the customer. In other cases, it wasn’t. It was for the sake of doing it, or it was maybe to satisfy an investor.  That makes me sad.

We haven’t conquered improving the kitchen. It is not a solved problem. There are a thousand things that can be done better that could lead to a better experience cooking.

I also think there is a lot of opportunity to make things smart that is not just adding Wi-Fi or an app to it.  There is an opportunity to improve all sorts of things we are doing in the kitchen.

My favorite type of technology in the whole world is technology that is invisible. I have a Samsung Frame TV and when you turn it off, it doesn’t become a big black rectangle, but instead it shows art. It disappears and becomes art. I love that.

What are some things you think are exciting in terms of how cooking can change over the next couple of years in cooking innovation?

It seems like there is sustained excitement and enthusiasm about cooking. For the segment of the population that does cook at home, that seems like it is a lasting part of their identity and it makes me excited that someone wants to do something because they love the craft of it.

Is there any space in cooking that is particularly ripe for innovation?

Think some of my favorite surprises comes out of material science. Cooking is intrinsically linked to the materials we use. Look at how silicone has transformed what we are doing. At the International Housewares Association (IHA) there is this little corner of companies experimenting in materials and it makes me excited because it’s science fiction. 

Thanks for taking time today to talk about what’s next.

You’re welcome.

Podcast: What Does Nomiku’s Demise Mean For Consumer Sous Vide?

Last Friday, Nomiku announced it was closing its doors.

Alongside Anova and Sansaire, the San Francisco based startup founded by Lisa and Abe Fetterman was part of an early class of consumer sous vide startups looking to democratize the high-end cooking technique through technology. Now, nearly a decade after the publication of Modernist Cuisine, only Anova is left standing (after being acquired by Electrolux) while Nomiku and Sansaire are no more. So what does it all mean?

No spoilers here! You’ll have to listen to The Spoon editor podcast to find out.

In addition to discussing the end of Nomiku and the broader meaning of it all, the Spoon editor team also discuss the following stories:

As always, you can listen to this episode of the Food Tech Show on Apple podcasts or Spotify, download directly to your device, or just click play below.