Why the Smart Kitchen Is So Stupid

Adding an app to an appliance does not necessarily make it better. JL

Joe Ray reports in Wired:

Before making new products for the home chef, manufacturers need to begin with a vision of filling real needs in the kitchen. Could there be a better way to sharpen a knife, or a method for boiling water faster? Maybe. Does that really require an app or a Bluetooth connection? If it does, product makers should find a bunch of good cooks who are kitchen-tech skeptics and convince them of the doodad's utility. If it has an app, they should make sure cooks can still perform all of the appliance’s core functions without pulling out a phone."It's hard enough to make a great appliance, and just adding an app to a basic one isn't the answer."

Connected cookbooks? Alexa-enabled microwaves? None of this stuff will make you a better home cook.The smart-home market is big and booming. Connected products, like those made by Roku, Nest, Sonos, and Amazon have changed the way we live, mostly for the better. But the so called smart kitchen? The app-connected kitchen gadgets, the experimental tiny ovens, the microwaves you can talk to, and the recipe apps? They've failed. While our first whack at the connected home kitchen was interesting and occasionally even fun, for the most part it has flopped like a soufflé.

It's time to wipe down the counter, tighten our apron strings, and start from scratch.
Harsh? Maybe. But most of the smart-kitchen devices I've reviewed in the past few years would not get a passing grade. In fact, for all the kitchen testing I do, none of my favorite kitchen gear is connected.
Despite the influx of tech, my favorite kitchen tools are still my knives, a 25-cent plastic pocket scraper, and an old, wood-handled silicone spoonula from Williams-Sonoma. The item I’m most excited to buy next is one of those old-school wood-and-Plexiglas cookbook holders. There is all sorts of excitement in the food-tech sector—robot delivery, ghost restaurants, restaurant ticketing—but the tech you use in a home kitchen feels like it’s stalling while the rest of the smart home is taking off.
It’s not just me. Most restaurant chefs aren’t bothering either. Over at America’s Test Kitchen, executive tasting and testing editor Lisa McManus also struggles with it. "The idea that you can make a home appliance ‘smart’ and you're done had a lot of problems built in," she says. "It's hard enough to make a great appliance, and just adding an app to a basic one isn't the answer."

Perhaps home cooking just isn't all that ripe for disruption. Look at a successful smart-home product like the Nest, which automates temperature control in your home. Before Nest, nobody ever told me how much they loved their thermostat. The kitchen, though, is capital-F freighted. We chop with our cherished knives, sauté in favorite pans, mix in our moms' beloved KitchenAid mixers. Recipes are gently refined as they are passed down through generations. They make things the way they've always made them because it took forever to arrive at a recipe that good. On top of that, cooking is a skill and a trade that we've been honing in home and professional kitchens for centuries. The French alone have been refining their craft for hundreds of years; nobody in Paris ever thought, "You know what this dish needs? A Bluetooth-enabled tarte tatin pan."

Yet along came the smart-kitchen products. Devices debuted with apps instead of manual controls, forcing cooks to look at their phones instead of the food. It started to feel like tech was being crammed in for tech's sake. Selling ancillary products like subscriptions to meal kits to make in the device felt like a higher priority for companies than helping people make better food. The content—aka the recipes that show you how to put your new machine to good use—often felt wholly inadequate. You might never fully understand the machine and how to integrate it into your cooking routine. You also might stick it in a cupboard and forget about it.

"It's hard enough to make a great appliance, and just adding an app to a basic one isn't the answer."

Many of the connected-kitchen products feel like distinct steps backward. The Tasty One Top, a countertop burner that allows you to control the temperature of your pan to the degree, seems like a nice way to become a more capable cook. While there are rudimentary controls on the burner itself, it’s clearly designed to be controlled through the app, which also provides step-by-step videos to guide you through recipes. Yet I was unable to sear a steak in the way the video showed—the burner was clearly too small. How does that happen? Other smart-kitchen apps, like one made by SideChef, are supposed to make cooking easier by breaking it down into easy steps. But the recipes within them are often vague or confusing. One pasta recipe I tried in the SideChef app failed to mention the step when you "cook the pasta."
These examples bring up a key problem for smart-product manufacturers: content creation. Tried-and-true tools, like Dutch ovens and chef’s knives, don’t require new recipes; your favorite cookbooks and magazines are full of recipes that put them to use. But many connected gadgets—such as the immersion circulators used for sous vide cooking, temperature-controlled pans, and even some newfangled rice cookers—differ enough from old-school appliances that the product makers need to provide a mini-cookbook's worth of unimpeachable recipes that have been tested over and over again before the product is released, so we completely understand how to cook with it. Yet many manufacturers punt here and provide only skimpy or whimsical offerings. It can be nice to feature complex recipes that home cooks might enjoy once or twice (Tasty's croquembouche comes to mind), but nobody is going to use the appliance long term without a good understanding of how it fits into their arsenal. Cookbooks for these new products often don't exist yet, and home cooks need to know how to nail a fried egg, pork chops, or weeknight tomato sauce.
The most frustrating part of the "connected kitchen" has to do with the apps themselves. Appliances look sleek with no buttons and knobs, but those are very effective ways to turn things on and off and adjust settings. If you have to control your cooking device with an app, you pay for the perceived convenience with your time. For example, if you want to use an app to adjust the temperature of an appliance, you have to (1) grab your phone, (2) face/thumb/passcode your way in, (3) ignore the text messages and push notifications and 4) ignore the news, (5) remember why you pulled out your phone, (6) swipe to (6.5) open the app, (7) swipe to adjust the temperature, and (8) try not to wonder what will happen to your buttonless product if the Kickstarter-backed company that makes it goes under and stops updating the app. The old-fashioned way? Twist the knob on the appliance itself and get on with your dinner.
If I made the smart-kitchen product-design rules, dictum number one would be, All key functions of an appliance must be able to be controlled on the appliance itself. App control is fine as an option, and secondary functions could be app-only, but you need to be able to control a stove on the stove itself.

The smart-home market is big and booming. Connected products, like those made by Roku, Nest, Sonos, and Amazon have changed the way we live, mostly for the better. But the so called smart kitchen? The app-connected kitchen gadgets, the experimental tiny ovens, the microwaves you can talk to, and the recipe apps? They've failed. While our first whack at the connected home kitchen was interesting and occasionally even fun, for the most part it has flopped like a soufflé.

It's time to wipe down the counter, tighten our apron strings, and start from scratch.
Harsh? Maybe. But most of the smart-kitchen devices I've reviewed in the past few years would not get a passing grade. In fact, for all the kitchen testing I do, none of my favorite kitchen gear is connected.
Despite the influx of tech, my favorite kitchen tools are still my knives, a 25-cent plastic pocket scraper, and an old, wood-handled silicone spoonula from Williams-Sonoma. The item I’m most excited to buy next is one of those old-school wood-and-Plexiglas cookbook holders. There is all sorts of excitement in the food-tech sector—robot delivery, ghost restaurants, restaurant ticketing—but the tech you use in a home kitchen feels like it’s stalling while the rest of the smart home is taking off.
It’s not just me. Most restaurant chefs aren’t bothering either. Over at America’s Test Kitchen, executive tasting and testing editor Lisa McManus also struggles with it. "The idea that you can make a home appliance ‘smart’ and you're done had a lot of problems built in," she says. "It's hard enough to make a great appliance, and just adding an app to a basic one isn't the answer."

Perhaps home cooking just isn't all that ripe for disruption. Look at a successful smart-home product like the Nest, which automates temperature control in your home. Before Nest, nobody ever told me how much they loved their thermostat. The kitchen, though, is capital-F freighted. We chop with our cherished knives, sauté in favorite pans, mix in our moms' beloved KitchenAid mixers. Recipes are gently refined as they are passed down through generations. They make things the way they've always made them because it took forever to arrive at a recipe that good. On top of that, cooking is a skill and a trade that we've been honing in home and professional kitchens for centuries. The French alone have been refining their craft for hundreds of years; nobody in Paris ever thought, "You know what this dish needs? A Bluetooth-enabled tarte tatin pan."

Yet along came the smart-kitchen products. Devices debuted with apps instead of manual controls, forcing cooks to look at their phones instead of the food. It started to feel like tech was being crammed in for tech's sake. Selling ancillary products like subscriptions to meal kits to make in the device felt like a higher priority for companies than helping people make better food. The content—aka the recipes that show you how to put your new machine to good use—often felt wholly inadequate. You might never fully understand the machine and how to integrate it into your cooking routine. You also might stick it in a cupboard and forget about it.

"It's hard enough to make a great appliance, and just adding an app to a basic one isn't the answer."

Many of the connected-kitchen products feel like distinct steps backward. The Tasty One Top, a countertop burner that allows you to control the temperature of your pan to the degree, seems like a nice way to become a more capable cook. While there are rudimentary controls on the burner itself, it’s clearly designed to be controlled through the app, which also provides step-by-step videos to guide you through recipes. Yet I was unable to sear a steak in the way the video showed—the burner was clearly too small. How does that happen? Other smart-kitchen apps, like one made by SideChef, are supposed to make cooking easier by breaking it down into easy steps. But the recipes within them are often vague or confusing. One pasta recipe I tried in the SideChef app failed to mention the step when you "cook the pasta."
These examples bring up a key problem for smart-product manufacturers: content creation. Tried-and-true tools, like Dutch ovens and chef’s knives, don’t require new recipes; your favorite cookbooks and magazines are full of recipes that put them to use. But many connected gadgets—such as the immersion circulators used for sous vide cooking, temperature-controlled pans, and even some newfangled rice cookers—differ enough from old-school appliances that the product makers need to provide a mini-cookbook's worth of unimpeachable recipes that have been tested over and over again before the product is released, so we completely understand how to cook with it. Yet many manufacturers punt here and provide only skimpy or whimsical offerings. It can be nice to feature complex recipes that home cooks might enjoy once or twice (Tasty's croquembouche comes to mind), but nobody is going to use the appliance long term without a good understanding of how it fits into their arsenal. Cookbooks for these new products often don't exist yet, and home cooks need to know how to nail a fried egg, pork chops, or weeknight tomato sauce.
The most frustrating part of the "connected kitchen" has to do with the apps themselves. Appliances look sleek with no buttons and knobs, but those are very effective ways to turn things on and off and adjust settings. If you have to control your cooking device with an app, you pay for the perceived convenience with your time. For example, if you want to use an app to adjust the temperature of an appliance, you have to (1) grab your phone, (2) face/thumb/passcode your way in, (3) ignore the text messages and push notifications and 4) ignore the news, (5) remember why you pulled out your phone, (6) swipe to (6.5) open the app, (7) swipe to adjust the temperature, and (8) try not to wonder what will happen to your buttonless product if the Kickstarter-backed company that makes it goes under and stops updating the app. The old-fashioned way? Twist the knob on the appliance itself and get on with your dinner.
If I made the smart-kitchen product-design rules, dictum number one would be, All key functions of an appliance must be able to be controlled on the appliance itself. App control is fine as an option, and secondary functions could be app-only, but you need to be able to control a stove on the stove itself.

Similarly, voice control feels more like a distraction than a help. Is it really helpful to ask Alexa to turn down the stove if we're already in the kitchen? Amazon put out a voice-enabled microwave this year, and my enduring memory of it is that if you have to go to the microwave to use the microwave, how is talking to a machine better or faster than hitting the popcorn button? Also, how do you feel about sharing your eating habits with Amazon?

The kitchen is a practical place to get work done. Yet so much of the smart kitchen just feels pointless. Simple as it sounds, manufacturers seem to be forgetting that people in the kitchen are there to cook. That might mean the pleasant meditation of chopping an onion with a sharp knife or unwinding with your partner while you make a salad and share a glass of wine, or it might be Tuesday and you need to get food on the table in a hot minute. Extra time fiddling around on my phone doesn't help make dinner. In fact, it makes it harder.
A couple of smart-kitchen standouts get things right. The Hestan Cue, a countertop induction burner with temperature control, provides excellent and well-tested recipes, along with step-by-step videos to guide you through them. Much of the basic control has to happen through the app, which isn't good, though we're starting to see more of that on-stove control in Hestan's partnership with GE which has stoves in its Café line.
Another favorite is the ThermoWorks Smoke, a high-end thermometer that allows you to track two probes, one to monitor the temperature inside the grill or oven and another to track the internal temperature of the food. All of the key features are on the device itself, but the admittedly pricey Gateway add-on allows you to track these temperatures on your phone and features a very helpful graph of your entire cooking process, so you have a better understanding of what's happening . Finally, while Thermomix, an incredibly useful blender that also cooks, has had a dedicated global following for decades, it's new to the US market. With a built-in screen featuring a custom catalog of recipes with step-by-step instructions, it allows you to learn how it works and start putting it to good use immediately. The company has added Wi-Fi connectability in recent years, but it's the refined quality of the product and exceptional content that make it a standout.
Despite the influx of tech, my favorite kitchen tools are still my knives, a 25-cent plastic pocket scraper, and an old, wood-handled silicone spoonula from Williams-Sonoma. The item I’m most excited to buy next is one of those old-school wood-and-Plexiglas cookbook holders. There is all sorts of excitement in the food-tech sector—robot delivery, ghost restaurants, restaurant ticketing—but the tech you use in a home kitchen feels like it’s stalling while the rest of the smart home is taking off.

It’s not just me. Most restaurant chefs aren’t bothering either. Over at America’s Test Kitchen, executive tasting and testing editor Lisa McManus also struggles with it. "The idea that you can make a home appliance ‘smart’ and you're done had a lot of problems built in," she says. "It's hard enough to make a great appliance, and just adding an app to a basic one isn't the answer."

Before making new products for the home chef, manufacturers need to begin with a vision of filling real needs in the kitchen. Could there be a better way to sharpen a knife, or a method for boiling water faster? Maybe. Does that really require an app or a Bluetooth connection? If it does, product makers should find a bunch of good cooks who are kitchen-tech skeptics (I’ll volunteer my mom) and convince them of the doodad's utility. If it has an app, they should make sure cooks can still perform all of the appliance’s core functions without pulling out a phone. And before going forward, they should test the hell out of it, both with the target market and the skeptics, and see where they get hung up. Let the testers keep the device for a while and see if they're still using it in a month.

If the new product is so different it requires skills people aren't familiar with, manufacturers need to suck it up and sink money into an unexpected expense: a cookbook's worth of excellent, tested recipes, written by professionals. The content should spend a lot of time on the basics. Manufacturers need to show people how to cook a sausage, pull together a simple pan sauce, or make some weeknight marinara in their appliance. They could embrace temperature control and make it their mission to grow their customers into better cooks. Almost all of our most beloved kitchen brands—Cuisinart, Instant Pot, Zojirushi, Bodum, Wüsthof, Lodge, and All-Clad are the go-tos in my kitchen—got that way because they keep error to a minimum and help us make great food.After centuries of slow and steady progress in the kitchen, the recent push to create connected devices has largely been a turn for the worse. In an effort to get clever with our marketing and social media departments, we've lost our way. It's time to roll up our sleeves, get the eggs out, and take another stab at that soufflé.