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- Coolest Smart Kitchen Appliances at CES 2024. - February 2, 2024
Appliances aim to cook things quickly for you, but are we losing touch with our food in the process?
I test a lot of Smart Kitchen Appliances and am an active home chef, so I understand the distinction between a beneficial breakthrough and a gimmick. I don’t want a remote for my icemaker; instead, I want it to know when I want ice, what type of ice I want, and how much I need in my glass.
This is the problem with so many smart kitchen appliances on the market: it adds little to the experience other than connecting the equipment to the internet. I’ve noticed that smart kitchen technology can sometimes detract from what I enjoy most about cooking: the process and the human artistry.
Companies lined up far and wide at CES 2024 to attempt to prove me wrong, and while there are far too many products to mention them all, here are a few that struck out.
Cook faster through Smart Kitchen Appliances
We were all enamored with the slow food movement for a very long time, which urged us to think more carefully about food, our relationship to it, its origin, how we prepared and consumed it, and how we could make the process more deliberate. Several gadgets at CES claimed to utilize AI and lasers (!) to cook our meals at speeds that some might find frightening, so it seems like we’re over that.
With the promise of cutting cooking times by two-thirds, Sharp unveiled a high-speed oven with a grill, convection, an inverter microwave, and “AI cooking,” which reportedly analyzes what you’re cooking and then applies the proper cooking method. Likewise, the Seer Perfecta promises to cook your steak in just one minute. a precise minute. It’s like a two-sided toaster that uses infrared burners to roast meat at temperatures over 1,600 degrees, all for $3,500.
Sevvy unveiled a cooking technology to CES that goes beyond just a gadget, one that it intends to license. It promises to cook food more quickly, more effectively, at lower temperatures, and with less energy by heating it uniformly. It seems to work similarly to a sous vide except that it employs integrated heating instead of sous vide. Rather than using water to heat and circulate, electrical currents are used to travel through food. Without clearly stating why or how, Sevvy asserts that because it cooks food faster than other ways, food prepared this way requires less fat, salt, and sugar, translating to “healthier” cuisine. It’s undoubtedly intriguing, and Sevvy has some teeth—last year, their smart cooker earned them first place.
I would need to witness anything genuinely inventive to rouse any enthusiasm, as there are currently so many branded smart ovens available on the market (the June, the Brava, and the Tovala, to mention a few). Having said that, the Revolution Cooking Macrowave caught my attention because it combines all of my favorite cooking methods into a single, compact countertop box, so doing away with the need for a microwave, air fryer, and toaster oven. Even though it costs $1,800, Revolution already produces a very good range of toaster ovens, so I think it’s worth a look.
Wireless smart thermometers are another revolution in Smart Kitchen Appliances
While there are several wireless smart thermometers available that can help simplify grilling, CES 2024 saw the introduction of several completely smart barbecues. The Current Backyard Electric Grill ($899) is large and has two heat zones to prevent burning your mushrooms. It sears at 700 degrees, which is far higher than typical gas barbecues. It’s interesting that it also cleans itself, and an accompanying app lets you keep an eye on everything.
Since Weber is arguably the most reputable brand in barbecues, when the 2024 Weber Summit grill is released later this year, I want to try it out. It will have to show itself for $3,800, but the infrared broiler is a major selling point.
The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker is the gadget that has me the most excited. I want to get good at smoking, and conventional ways don’t give me the control I want. In addition, the GE smoker allows me to control it from the inside while still enjoying a smoke in the middle of winter. I’ve been fascinated with a device dubbed FirstBuild that came out of GE’s incubation lab twice in the last month. GE made the proper decision to set up an incubator to support its innovation. Sure, the Smart Smoker can cook a large roast and several racks of ribs, but my main purpose here is to cold smoke some lox.
Smart Kitchen Appliances are getting smarter
I’m not very good with air fryers; I can’t see what’s going on inside, so it’s a trust-building exercise using a countertop appliance that I frequently mess up. This is why I’m interested in Chef AI, which seeks to eliminate guesswork by using AI to recognize what you’re attempting to produce and manage the cooking process autonomously. If you can find them, it will reportedly accomplish that for $250, which seems incredibly reasonable at CES. The jury is still out since I was unable to locate the company’s website.
Though it’s undoubtedly not the sexiest gadget, the Secret Kitchen-Hood is nonetheless a revolutionary invention. It claims to use cooling technology to make it more efficient than its bulky brethren, and it is 80% smaller than conventional downdraft hoods. Impressed as well, CES gave it an Innovation Award and sent it home.
These days, practically all major appliance brands provide connected kitchen appliances; nevertheless, few have impressed me with a feature set that is superior to Samsung’s. There’s more to their Bespoke range of household products than just a wifi connection. Samsung unveiled a feature at CES that lets you stream live video directly from the interior of your oven. (Is anyone interested in watching the turkey cook on the big screen with me?) The new AI feature that alerts you when there aren’t enough products in the fridge still impresses me, even though I have my doubts about it.
At the End
The products I saw at CES 2024 were interesting, but they didn’t persuade me to spend thousands of dollars on smart kitchen appliances to completely transform my kitchen. Even though I’m an intelligent tech enthusiast, I’ve never been quick to embrace kitchen technology since, in the end, I still think I can improve it myself.
I find the act of preparing food to be enjoyable rather than a hindrance. Even when sous vide prime rib is cooked to exacting perfection, the aroma of caramelizing meat does not permeate the entire home. Perhaps I’m not interested in having my steak done in sixty seconds. I worry that some of the charm may be lost if smart kitchen technology draws more people into the kitchen, but if so, excellent.
