How AI and Kitchen Smart Tech Will Change the Way You Cook

I love cooking, treat it like a game, and find excuses to make complicated or unique dishes. I think creating a menu for a group of people with different allergies and preferences seems like a good time. Until recently, smart cooking tech didn’t appeal to me, because I assumed it was aimed solely at people who felt too clueless in the kitchen to want help from a machine.

But over the past year, I’ve interacted with cooking appliances—from ovens to grills to refrigerators—that don’t just use smart tech, but incorporate AI and machine learning. are While AI can’t eliminate all the drudgery of food preparation or make you love cooking if you don’t already, it can make the process of cooking a sequence easier…not only For beginners, but also for experienced chefs.

AI can help you avoid undercooking (or overcooking) your food.

For many people, the dislike of cooking is based on anxiety. It’s hard to spoil a salad, but making anything you can spoil can be scary—what if you undercook it and give yourself or others food poisoning? What if you overcook it and ruin an expensive cut of meat? I’ve cooked with friends with these common fears—friends who lack the ability to use visual cues to know if a protein is done, or who have trouble believing that it’s done. A little pink is safe.

Tools like combustion-predicting thermometers can alleviate this problem. A smart thermometer probe, Combustion can be used in almost any situation — a grill, pot of boiling water, sous vide, oven or stove. The device has eight sensors along the length of the probe to get inside and outside measurements of whatever you’re cooking. Then, AI and an algorithm are applied to predict when you should remove the food from the heat. This means you don’t have to stand over the stove and wait and watch (the app and probe handle that part). It also means you won’t be overcooking for fear of food safety, which is what it is. 50% of people admit. to do

Dahan specifically changed its algorithm late last year to ensure that food would hit USDA-recommended standards, which go beyond simple temperature limits. For example, although you usually think of chicken as “done” When it measures 165°F.The USDA has established that you can achieve the same food safety by cooking food longer at a Low temperature, as you would using sous vide cooking. A combustion thermometer can determine whether your food is “safe,” depending on the entire cook history of your protein. This can give them the confidence they need to work with protein and, as they see better results, to gain confidence with their cooking. Even as an experienced chef, I love that Combustion does this math for me, so I don’t have to rely on external cues, like how a protein feels to the touch.

There are many other temperature probes with similar features to Combustion’s, including Therma Pro (which I have not experienced) and Meter 2 (That’s what I found influenced by).

AI can help reduce food waste.

When I’m grocery shopping, I often forget what’s already in my fridge or pantry, and that results in a lot of random purchases—especially when I’m short-term. Buying fresh food with expiration dates. Companies are working to solve this problem. Samsung’s latest fridges feature “food AI” and use cameras inside your fridge to tell you what you might need to buy more of. Part of their bespoke line, these fridges come with AI Family Hub+ and AI Vision Inside. It’s not just that the Hub can recognize the fresh foods inside your fridge (up to 33 of them, anyway); It will also offer recipes based on these ingredients.

I haven’t tested Bespoke yet, but the videos of the fridge in action show clear enough images that you should be able to easily identify what’s in your fridge with the app, ie. You’ll never have to wonder if you’re out of butter or eggs when you’re at the supermarket.

AI can help you figure out what to make for dinner.

New technology is moving things forward. AI voice assistants are already embedded in many cooking appliances. You can present the Assistant with a list of ingredients, or a mood, or a desire, or just let it ask you questions, and it will generate meal suggestions for you.

Even if you don’t have a device that can communicate with you, there are plenty of apps to provide in-flight tips. Dish Jane, MealsAI, And Eating exercises All use AI models like Gemini as the core engine to make suggestions based on the language you input, whether it’s a group of ingredients or a request based on your mood.

Using AI while cooking can actually be fun, and save you time.

There are many “smart” ovens on the market from Tovala, Breville and June, but for the past few months I’ve been using the Brava., An expensive toaster oven with a brain. From the graphical interface on the toaster, you search for any ingredient, and it will generate a list of possible recipes. Choose one, and you’ll be guided by inserting a thermometer probe, telling you where to put the food on the tray and where to place the tray. Then you press a button and away you go. The oven will send you a live video of the food cooking, monitor its progress, and automatically turn off the food once it’s done cooking.

The oven relies on light technology rather than the typical heating elements you’d expect in an oven. It only focuses heat where it’s needed, for as long as it’s needed, especially on the exact foods you’re cooking. Instead of heating an entire oven, food is cooked from above and below in a very small space. As a result, cooking times are typically cut in half, sometimes more. Last week I made sweet potato fries with raw potatoes. They were perfectly crisp and baked in eight minutes.

While Brava currently only uses very mild AI behind the scenes, it’s easy to imagine that in the future, machine learning could help companies make more predictions and optimize the data they get back from their devices. which exist. The tech isn’t there yet—I spoke with Brava product manager Zack Selmon, who noted how difficult it is to create a set of parameters to ensure that everyone who makes a recipe gets the same results when they use it. Many of the variables involved may differ from component to component. For the environment, for the cook. For this reason, Brava still employs a human team of chefs alongside its data engineers.

What surprises me about Brava is how much I enjoy thinking about what I’m creating. This suggests that the tedious part of the process, which involves keeping an eye on the dish as it cooks, can be skipped. That oven that cuts cooking time in half or more, even better: you can enjoy the preparation and the results, and not worry about the in-between.

I am excited about the future of the AI ​​kitchen.

As a self-confirmed control freak, I shouldn’t like to surrender to the cooking or preparation process, but it turns out that I do. It saves me time and allows me to focus on the parts of cooking that I really enjoy. I’ve gifted smart thermometers to a few friends, and the devices have also changed mealtimes in their homes. They buy better cuts of meat because they are less afraid of spoilage. They take more risks, and are more confident.

In the future, AI tech will further streamline this process, giving you the ability to manage cooking from your couch or deck while you spend more time with family and friends. No, a gadget won’t turn you into someone who loves to cook, but it can make cooking a lot more manageable.