This article was taken from the March 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
The future of home cooking started four years ago with a burnt risotto. "You have to stir it for about 20 minutes," mechanical engineer Alexis Wiasmitinow says. "I did a quick email check, came back, and it was burned. I needed a device that stirred and controlled the heat for me. It's the engineer's way: looking for overkill solutions to simple problems."
EveryCook is Wiasmitinow's answer. A sensor-based, internet-enabled cooking device, its app suggests recipes and gives a list of ingredients.
Then, after some basic preparation (EveryCook can't peel "yet", but it can chop), just drop in the components in the dictated order.
Fiddling with quantities has been designed out: a progress bar fills up until you hit the required amount of an ingredient. "As soon as it has all it needs, it sets the heat and time, and starts cooking."
Wiasmitinow, who is 35 and lives in Winterthur near Zurich, has designed six versions. The current iteration is the production prototype and combines a pressure cooker, a stirrer and stainless-steel cutting disks, all housed in an aluminium body. He aims to sell it for 1,600 Swiss francs (£1,100) -- priced to compete against the £864 Kenwood Cooking Chef. "The Kenwood is a classic," he says. "But it's not intelligent."
Eventually, Wiasmitinow hopes to network your whole kitchen. "We want to connect the stove and the pans and whatever is in your kitchen, so that cooking a steak is as controllable as risotto."
Jamie and Nigella would be horrified.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
