Smart devices are all about consumer convenience. At their best, they save us time and simplify our routines. The ideal smart home is stocked with electronic products that know our preferences, anticipate our needs and even plan our grocery lists. You can install remote door locks, sensors to find your keys, and thermostats to keep your environment comfortable. Now, the IoT market is increasingly taking a step toward making our lives easier in another important place: the kitchen. Move over Julia Childs! These new products, or updated versions of our existing products, are connecting our kitchens like never before.
The Sous Vide Machines: It’s difficult to even describe this newfangled device that promises to bring Michelin quality restaurant technology to your cooking. It goes like this: you put your food in a sealed bag, set the time and temperature and voila- your sous vide immersion heater gently boils your food to the desired temperature and keeps it there. As an added bonus, you even get a visual picture of the doneness to make sure your food comes out celebrity chef approved every time.
The new digital thermometers: If you get tired of boiled food, try the new food thermometer that’s wired – to avoid being crisped in the oven or grill. It plugs into a phone or tablet and provides temperature graphs and instant readouts.
Crock-Pot upgrades: We’ve all used the original version of the slow cooker and tossed the ingredients into a pot, set the temperature and left. Now, the process is even more convenient. You can set the controls from your smart phone to start or stop cooking, adjust the temperature and set alerts.
Smart Coffee Pots: Probably the most popular of the smart cooking devices is, of course, the smart coffee pot that will think for you in the early hours, when you literally need the coffee itself to function. Convenience, customization, and app control are available whether you prefer drip coffee, pods, or cold brew. And now, the smartest of these vital devices supports home automation and voice assistant features instead of just relying on a dedicated app. This way, you can speak to your home assistant of choice and order up a cup of perfectly brewed java anytime you feel like it.
As our kitchen and home get smarter, we get closer to a world where we can communicate with all our devices, but more importantly, they can communicate with each other, too. Imagine a world where your bed senses that you got a bad night’s sleep and tells your coffee pot to make that java a little stronger this morning. We aren’t there yet, but we might not be too far off, either.
