The smart-kitchen market is becoming big and prosperous. The technologies from Amazon, Sonu, Roku, and Nest are changing the way we live. Bringing these technologies, however, in our kitchen and making it so-called smart kitchen is barely worthy.
The application connects kitchen gadgets, tiny experimental ovens, talking microwaves, and apps for the recipe. They may sound great, but in practice, they are not very convenient. They have failed big time in making our lives easier. While the first hit for the connected home kitchen proved to be exciting and fun, but for the most part, it flopped.
Is It A Good Idea to Involve Tech?
Finally, it’s time to wipe the counter, tighten the apron to the start from scratch. It may sound tough, but the truth is, if we review all the kitchen devices from the past, most of them will not even receive passing marks.
Indeed, for all the testing ever done, none of the best kitchen gear was connected to mobile phones. Despite having amazing technologies, kitchen tools like knives are still proven to be more appropriate than those. Devices like Rotimatic flatbread maker is a fully IoT enabled kitchen appliance. It can cook very delicious things for you.
Plastic and wooden handle knife can do almost all of the chopping works in your kitchen and don’t require any other tech. If we talk about the food technology sector, there are a bunch of cool stuff like robot delivery and ghost restaurants. But the idea of using a tech kitchen is not very appealing as it feels like one is not doing any work at all.
Even the restaurant chefs are not bothering to promote them. It has been found that at America’s test kitchen, Lisa McManus, executive tasting and testing editor, struggles with the idea of it. It is quite challenging to make a great appliance, and adding an app to the basic one is not the answer we are looking for.
Cooking is Beyond Technology
Cooking itself is an art that requires a skill. It is tricky to obtain a good recipe that can be passed down the generations and being cooked by people. Being a good cook is more than chopping and mixing the ingredients but it certainly doesn’t require a Bluetooth enabled Tarte Tatin pan. It requires the intelligence and experience of a person to make a perfect recipe and not some talking technology.
Practical Use of The App
Yet the smart kitchen products arrived. The most disturbing scene was when people were forced to look at their mobile phones instead of looking at their food. The apps were connected to the phone instead of having a manual control which made it difficult to have a look at the food. Similarly, rotimatic, a robotic roti maker serves to make puffed rotis. But seeing how costly it is, people may want to cook it themselves instead of using rotimatic. You can read more about this appliance at rotimatic reviews on pcmag to know more about the product.
It is almost like technology is being used intensively more than required. Companies also started giving priorities to make better applications and filling in subscriptions in their software rather than helping people to make better food.
Why Are They Not Useful?
- Instead of making the recipe enjoyable, it aims at how to change the recipes so that it can make the new machine look excellent and useful. It’s challenging to say whether this kitchen tech is intelligent or just stupid.
- Moreover, these machines and applications are quite complicated to understand and put its use in the cooking routine. It’s better to keep it in a cupboard and forget about it.
- Several smart kitchen products are not even useful. Despite having basic controls on the burner, giving an app to control the same thing also providing tutorial videos is a waste of time.
- The countertop burner, which controls the temperature of the pan, proves to be a big failure. Things which can be quickly done by hand does not require to be accessed by the apps as it can make the situation even more complicated.
- Videos and step by step tutorials are generally aimed to make our cooking easier. But the tutorial given in Smart kitchen apps is usually complicated and confusing. The software doesn’t care about the ingredients or the cook; it just needs to make the product look good. This kind of technology is certainly not welcomed.
No Proper Recipe Guidance
Indeed, tested tools like Dutch ovens and chef knives don’t need new recipes. All they need is an artistic person to cook it right. Recipes in your magazines and cookbooks are enough to prepare them deliciously. Whereas connected gadgets like immersion circulators, temperature-controlled pans, and new-fangled rice cookers are different from old age appliances.
The product makers must provide cookbook full of new unimpeachable recipes tried from their appliances. After then, customers can know how to cook from it. Moreover, the recipes they provide are very complicated and occasional. It will be more convenient to see the recipes which can be cooked daily for meals. Nobody can use the device if they don’t have a good understanding of how it fits into their diet.
Machine Demands Efforts
The most infuriating part of the gadget kitchen is its apps. Appliances look flat with mostly no buttons or knobs and can only turn things on and off or adjust the settings. If you have to control a device using your app, you will have to go a long way. First, you’ll have to get your phone, enter the screen lock, ignoring all the push notifications and news, you will have to open the app and swipe to adjust the temperature. The button-less product may start obeying the order one gives from the phone, or it can behave another way which most of us can never guess because, after all, it is just a machine.
In case the company gives an update to the app, we will be surprised by its actions. If we go by the old fashion way, a twist in the knob of the appliance will adjust the temperature. It’s that simple to do it without the help of Smart kitchen tools.
Conclusion
While some home tech like Nest has brought a fortune for us. No one ever thought before that controlling room temperature can be as easy as that. Similarly, when it comes to voice control, Alexa has always been helpful, but for microwaves, it is not very convenient.
The smart kitchen is ultimately a flop, as it is more time consuming and doesn’t give better results. Manufacturers of these appliances should tell the people how to cook basic meals like sausage are sauce using their machines. Otherwise, the Smart kitchen devices will remain impractical as it always has been.