Mellow, the robotic sous-chef | Hacker News Reader

Mellow, the robotic sous-chef

cookmellow.com

144 pointscwilson157 comments

$400 is relatively expensive. You can get a 1100 watt Polyscience circulator for that much.

No circulator or water bath I know of requires vacuum sealers; all of them work fine with zips.

Also, not to nitpick, but duck confit only takes 8 hours or so; it's one of the easiest things to do with a water bath.

It looks neat, though. It'll be interesting to see if the cooling feature is useful, or more of a gimmick. That cooling system doesn't look powerful enough to chill down a low-temp cook (you're supposed to ice down anything you don't serve immediately); I assume you use it to delay the start of cooking?

It specifically says in the FAQ that it can't do cook-chill. I was debating trying to work on one that could awhile back but man is it hard to get that kinda cooling power economically, at least given my cursory exploration.

Also, I've never done duck confit sous vide. Maybe I'll try that next. I made some the good old fashioned way a couple months ago and wow.

Must have run into the guy who made it. Three innocuous comments downvoted at once :)

Nope, I'm up voting these, they're helpful. Yours, too.

Low-temp water baths are like duck confit dispensing machines. In particular, you can get by with much, much less fat.

I'm not sure I understand the utility of being able to throw all the ingredients for my dishes into a water bath days ahead of time, since I need to bag the ingredients anyways; why not just keep them in the fridge and dunk them the morning of the cook? Also: it's a little misleading? to suggest that you'll be able to cook lots of different ingredients in a single bath, since the veg will need much higher cooking temps than the proteins.

edit to tone down slightly

I will say that poaching eggs sous vide in the morning is a pain in the ass if you wake up hungry. I end up heating the water on my stove and dumping it in just so it doesn't take an hour, and then it's slower (albeit better and more fool proof) than traditional poaching. I found out the hard way that trying to cook a girl breakfast to impress her doesn't work, no matter how awesome your marinara and poached eggs with salsa verde are, if it takes a freaking hour and a half. That's why I decided that if I built a unit, it would just have a timer. I'd wake up to the water heated, then put the eggs in. The actual poaching is as fast as you can get everything else ready anyway.

Also I am a night owl and often not awake 12 hours before dinner time, so it'd be good in that case.

I was thinking about it for professional use though. Not having to start a 12 hour cook at 7 am for that night's service might be a big win for restaurants. Also I think they'd benefit from better controls, especially if they had a bank of them. Chefs I talked to were encouraging, but realized I probably don't have time to make a product out of it.

Also duck fat is half the fun! After you pull the legs out you get to make yummy stuff with it. I rendered my own and it was actually very cheap.

You still use duck fat, but you only need a 1/5th as much.

I don't SV eggs all that often; it's easier to poach or sunny-side-up them conventionally for me. In particular, I can't fucking stand peeling eggs.

I do mine without any fat; I findthe duck legs render enough by themselves.

With SV eggs, I usually saw off the top of the shell carefully with a knife, and squeeze them out into the plate. It's a fun process!

Oh man, I love the 75°C egg. You don't have to peel it, just crack it. (If you use crappy eggs though, the outer white does stick to the shell.)

75C is a hard-set yolk, right? Blech. :)

No, you don't poach to equilibrium. You leave it in for 11-13 mins. The yolk is runny but the white is a little more firm than you'd get equilibrium poaching at a lower temp.

Hey tptacek,

A lot of our copy is directed at people who're not that familiar with sous-vide and might have very basic questions when browsing. Let me clarify further:

-$400 is expensive, you're right. And we're not making that much of a margin on these right now. That's because Mellow does so much more than just warming water. Whether those features are valuable is another question.

-On the bags, we're probably the only device out there that can routinely cook using open, unsealed bags. Due to the tall, skinny geometric, you can plop food in non-ziploc bags and use those to cook you Mellow. Huge cost saving in the long run, no floating bags, and a much quicker operation all-in-all.

-You're right on the confit (though I like mine cook at 70c@24h), it's just an easy example. A chicken breast or large fillet steak would be a better example of something you wouldn't be able to cook for 8-12 hours with regular sous-vide.

-Well-supposed on the cooling.

Ultimately, Mellow's the product of almost a decade of frustration with sous-vide non-pragmatism. It won't be optimal for everyone, some people will do better with their Polysci's, but for busy home cooks like us, I think it's a hell of a help. Thank you for the chance to debate.

Help me understand how the unsealed bag thing works, again? What kinds of bags are we talking about for what kinds of prep?

(Sorry that I sound ready to debate; I shouldn't be. This is a neat looking device and you should be commended for bringing it to market.)

Please don't apologize, I'm happy to be challenged on these things. It's the way I learn to explain them.

Look at the part in our video where Catarina (catv here) walks you through the use-case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiNmTI51GPw&t=1m17s

If you notice, the bag she puts inside Mellow is a HDPE bag for vacuum sealing, unsealed. There's a jump cut or whatchamacallit, but that's how we cook using Mellow. Regular non-ziploc sous-vide bags, open.

Did that help at all?

Yep, that makes sense.

You are taking all the questions like a champ. Congrats on that.

All very polite, smart and yet giving real answers without slipping off when there is a problem/concern/issue/doubt/whatever.

Cheers.

Thank you, trying to be as present as possible. I'm humbled by the reception in HN, I never dreamed of posting about my own product here. Making a billion dollars seemed more likely than this, somehow.

On the questions: I understand the skepticism. We moved very far from what's normal; Mellow isn't an MVP by any means, so I was expecting hard questions on the use case. The fact that people take the trouble of questioning what we're doing instead of just brushing us aside is a big deal for me.

Let me know if you have any questions yourself on sous-vide, Mellow, development or whatever else might go through your mind. I do palm-readings on Fridays.

IANAchef but the video has the user selecting a "medium rare chicken breast". Is that a thing? =D

Yes. Longer consistent cook times allow you to pasteurize at lower temperatures, so you can serve chicken at a lower temperature than you would in a conventional oven. (I'm not saying you'd want to do that; I don't like pink chicken.)

Chicken is unfortunately one of the less effective things to cook this way. At the times/temps I'm comfortable with, breasts get mushy. Legs, on the other hand, "pink out"; the proteins from inside the bones leach into the flesh and give a bloody appearance which I can't get past.

Thanks! I think most people equate "medium rare chicken" with food poisoning, so it was interesting to see that used in the video. Never knew that you could actually cook it safely that way.

Medium rare chicken is like medium rare pork. If you can get over your upbringing enough times to get used to it, you can never go back. It me took 3-4 times for each, and the only reason I stuck with it was that my snobbery overpowered my mother's education.

But really, sous-vide, medium rare chicken breast has a taste and texture you'd never think chicken breast could have. Same with pork, it's a revelation on all the things you miss out in the world due to prejudice and bad information.

EDIT: I've never gotten mushy breasts tptacek, how long are you cooking those things for? I do 1.5 hours@57-60C or so.

60C is really very low for a chicken breast.

It's an acquired taste, for sure. 63C is still worlds away from what most people consider a normal chicken breast.

i disagree. having grown up eating hockey puck pork chops and dry chicken, medium rare pork is delicious while medium rare chicken is just gross and unappetizing.

a good thoroughly cooked, yet juicy and delicious roast chicken is still one of the most basic, yet difficult, dishes to prepare.

Living in Japan it's much more acceptable to eat pink or even raw chicken here. I will vouch for it being much easier to cook a nice juicy (and tastier) piece of chicken when you don't need to worry about under cooking it.

I think the laws are different in Japan, in the United Kingdom at least, it's entirely legal to sell chicken which contains Escherichia coli, which causes food poisoning, where as meat such as Beef is not allowed to be sold with the bacterium.

That certainly has an effect on my thinking, it's not that I don't like a more rare presented chicken, it's that we're conditioned to think of it causing illness because of the laws around it's distribution.

Mushy breasts?

Wow, $400 is expensive for a water bath these days?

My Clifton dual bath cost nearly $1500 when I got it 5-6 years ago. I love that this stuff is becoming more mainstream.

Tell me about it! The warm glow of being an early adopter...

10 years ago Whirlpool introduced the Polara, a range that could also refrigerate the oven cavity until a timer expired or it was commanded to cook over the internet. It was a huge flop.

http://insights-2-ignite.com/2013/05/06/3-appliance-flops/

Obviously a refrigerated oven is a pretty complicated device - more than a cooled/heated water bath. The Polara had it's share of technical problems, but Whirlpool thought they were on to a new trend with this "smart" oven.

I'm a sous-vide enthusiast myself (Dorkfood DSV FTW), but by no means do I consider SV cooking a time saver. It's not going to make my day any more easy by kicking off a cook cycle from the office before I head home. In fact, part of the point of SV prep is that you can hold the cooked food for hours before finishing. Why do I need to precisely time the start if the end doesn't matter? Okay, perhaps eggs ready when I wake would be nice. But I could also kick it off before I go to bed and they would still be at a creamy 144F when morning comes.

The other problem is that you still need to prep ahead of time. Is a busy family going to handle breakfast and dinner prep before going off to work and school? American families barely make it through breakfast as it is.

It's a nice looking product and I wish them well. But the use cases escape me a little.

Being able to come home from work with a protein ready to sear (Polyscience and hopefully soon Searzall represent) is definitely helpful. Also, have you held an egg overnight at 144f? That works well?

Yeah, bad example. Eggs may not work that well at that duration.

(and the Searzall is pretty damn sexy)

Proteins aside, auto retrograding potatoes is really nice. It's one of those techniques that makes a huge difference, but you'd never use on a regular day.

Starch retrogradation is neat, but you can do it with a normal circulator really easily. (I'm partial to the IiF 7 minute risotto trick).

What's the win with potatoes while I'm at work? I haven't done potatoes in the circulator successfully yet.

The win is doing it automatically. Maybe you use a technique I'm not privy to, but having to cook the potatoes, then cool them, then cook them again isn't a weekday activity for me.

Being able to go 'beep-boop' and having the cycle done for me makes a big difference; I just grab them out of the bag, toss them into a sauté or blender afterwards and I'm done in 5.

One more thing: have you read about the 6-minute risotto? It's up there with the 5-minute abs:

http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2010/12/6-minute-r...

I read the IiF article, and maybe I'm just a newbie with sous vide, but I don't get how you parcook the rice. Based on this thread and other articles, I'm guessing you soak the rice in water first, at room temp, and then stick it in a bag in the water bath?

No, you cook the rice at ~150f or so, then cool it, then cook it a second time in boiling stock on a stovetop.

So that first time, the rice is dry? I would not have thought to try that at all.

Actually, in the IiF technique, no: you bundle the rice in cheesecloth and cook it in direct contact with the water (this is one of the rare cases (other than eggs) where you deliberately expose the heating medium to the food).

What is auto retrograding potatoes?

Retrograding potatoes means raising them to a temperature where the starches are liberated from their initial structural networks, and then allowed to cool so that they recrystallize in a stabler network. Autoretrogradation means having a process that does this without needing human intervention somewhere in the middle.

An example of something you can do with a retrograded potato is tossing it into a stand mixer and beating the hell out of it without them turning gluey, which happens the starches get mechanically freed up and then crosslink.

Hey joezdeco,

I'm one of Mellow's founders/designers.

I'd debate that "the end doesn't matter"; I've eaten a lot of drastically overcooked sous-vide over the past years. But still, overcooking is not the point, peace of mind is the point.

Take 10 seconds to put something in a bag and plop it inside Mellow. Act on the notification when you want to, tell Mellow to have it ready whenever's convenient, and you're sure to com back to very well cooked ingredients. It's not prep, it's 10 seconds.

It's a shift from the regular way you cook dinner, and it's not ready for middle america yet. But we're getting there. We need the help of guys like you to try it out and call out the bullshit, and help us make it better.

I'm still not following. It's definitely still prep. You're just doing the prep a day or two earlier. But you can do that with any water bath by prepping, stashing in zips, and sticking them in the fridge.

I think I see the value of being able to start a cook at 2PM as opposed to sticking to things that can run all day.

Most of the things that work really well in a water bath also hold really well for a day at temperature. I think you're right to feature white meat chicken in your marketing copy, because that's one protein that is iffy at long temps, but I can't think of much besides that (and eggs) that I'd worry about holding at temp a few extra hours.

I wouldn't let a fillet steak (or a hanger, for that matter) in a water bath for 12 hours, either. Or consider chicken thighs: We cook the best thighs in the world by taking them through a temperature curve. When we have the time, we cook them at 57C for 12-18 hours, and finish them at 63C for 1-2 hours. The end result is silky, sublime, but still firm.

On prep: It's not prep if you don't to put yourself up to it. It's not a chore, it's 10 seconds while the coffee machine heats up. Our idea is that reducing the need to do things, the friction, you'll end up doing them more often.

Thanks - I've been looking for a good prep method for chicken thighs. I'll give that one a go.

Let me know how you like the results - ze@fnvlabs.com . I'd be happy to dig out my notebooks and check the times/temperatures for you, too.

Are you using bone-in thighs or do you bone them out first?

I just wanted to point out on the prep part and American families.

The time invested in prep for a device like this is hardly different that prepping a meal and throwing it in a crock pot before work. Crock pots are fantastically popular cooking devices found in almost every American's (middle america especially) kitchen and used on a regular basis.

Personally I have no experience with sous-vide nor am I very familiar to it. Watching he video I was intrigued but a little confused at what and how I could use a sous-vide cooker.

However connecting it and the process of using it to the very familiar crock pot I use at home instantly helped me to recognize the potential use of a device like this.

Thank you bullfight, the comparison between sous-vide and crockpots is very adequate. I'd say sous-vide is crock-potting taken to the extreme.

Sorry if the video wasn't very friendly for people unfamiliar with sous-vide.

All: For some reason, more than one user went through this thread downvoting everything. Abuses like that cause accounts to lose voting privileges.

When you notice substantive and civil comments which have been unfairly faded out by downvotes, please give them a corrective upvote. This doesn't mean you agree with the comment, only that it didn't deserve to be faded. Usually, one or two upvotes is all it takes to get back to par, so each user can make a big difference here. For example, all of the abusively downvoted comments in this thread have now been restored by corrective upvotes. (I just contributed a few, but most were already there.)

HN has long had this self-correcting mechanism, but it's more important since we recently made some downvotes more powerful (cf. sama's recent post about this), so we're asking everyone to do it consciously when they see a need.

I'm sorry to hear that, dang. If you think my presence here is harming more than helping, I'd be happy to stop posting.

By no means! You're doing great.

What temperature-safe bags are out there?

I did some digging into this a few months ago and couldn't find anything conclusive. All I found were blogs, quotes, etc by wannabe scientists.

Of note:

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/

Nearly all plastics (even the BPA-free ones) leach estrogenic activity chemicals

• http://pprc.org/index.php/2013/networking/p2-rapid/do-plasti...

Basically said that there is little evidence in either direction

• http://www.codlo.com/faq.html#.Ux5Ly-ddWlg and http://www.chow.com/food-news/107898/cooking-sous-vide-in-pl... and http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Author-says-use-of-plasti...

Says that bags made from polyethylene (PE) are safe while bags made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are not.

• http://www.beyondsalmon.com/2010/08/cooking-in-plastic-how-s...

SC Johnson (Ziplock manufacturer) themselves do not recommend cooking w/ their bags. Note their bags are made w/ the supposedly safe (per the links in the previous bullet) polyethylene (PE)

Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.

Hey jadence,

The bottom line: No one knows how safe HDPE sous-vide is in the long run. There's nothing conclusive out there, though what little evidence there is points to it being safe. Nathan seems so think so, too: http://modernistcuisine.com/2013/01/why-cook-sous-vide/

In the end you have to make a personal call. For me, the risk of undiscovered effects is vastly outweighed by the awesome food I serve.

I respect your concern, even if I don't share it, and I'm hoping to solve it soon enough, too. Be on the look out for a new product from us in the coming year.

I don't know a lot about sous-vide, I am more of a wood fire and smoking kinda person, but what would prevent you from using a stainless steel canister? That would eliminate the risks from plastic. Perhaps, a ceramic would also work?

You still need to put the food in something that keeps it out of direct contact with the water while not leaving enough space for air to insulate the food.

I see. So a hard sided container won't trasfer heat properly? Sounds like I need to talk to a friend in polymers to really get a grasp on the right approach because I can't really think of a non-polymer material that would meet the flexibility requirement.

In general it seems like sous-vide would result in food similiar to a braise but without the browny bits and the pan sauce? (saying it that way makes it sound unappetising but I understand it is quiet nice) That said, I think while it doesn't have the asthetic of a wood fired smoker, a device like the op's could replace the slow cooker.

Noooooooo. Food is not similar to a braise. The point of low-temp cooking (sous vide is low temp under a hard vacuum) is that the cook locks in a perfect temperature for the food and the water bath never exceeds that temperature. In practice, you aim never to exceed the temperature at which the protein expels all the water from the food; think: absolutely perfectly cooked steak --- or, more magically, think a short rib, cooked to the doneness of a perfect steak, but with all the collagen converted to gelatin as if in a braise; it's the best of both worlds. Because a short rib cooked to the temperature of a perfect steak in an oven would be tough as nails, it's something you can really only achieve in a water bath.

There are other tricks too; you can simultaneously cook a dozen eggs to perfect running or "walking" yolk, without paying any attention; you can cook veg to a temperature between the breakdown of pectin and cellulose; you can heat-temper carnaroli or arborio rice and set the starches, so that you can make bulletproof risotto in a pan by dumping all the liquid in at once.

It's a pretty nifty tool.

Sounds neat I will definitely do some research on it. Smoking is a similar process but without a fancy rig you can't get control very precise (+/- 30°f is what I can achieve over an 8 hour smoke. pros can do much better). The idea is similar, low temperature forea long time, until the meat hits the desired temperature.

I've been cooking sous-vide for years and somehow missed the risotto trick - thanks for that!

It's worth noting that sous-vide can also cook meats that are somewhere between "a right pain" and "almost impossible" to cook another way. In particular, sous-vide and a bit of time transforms mutton into one of the tastiest, cheapest meals imaginable. I had real trouble going back to lamb after a few months of sous-vide mutton.

Can you elaborate a bit on the risotto? I've never gotten a clear answer on how that's supposed to work.

The premise is amylopectin retrogradation. Heat a starch to the point where it breaks up and liberates its network of amylopectin. Cool it, and the starch crystallizes in a much stronger structure. Heat it again, or (in the case of, say, potatoes) beat the hell out of them in a blender, and they'll retain their structure; they become somewhat bulletproof.

Retrograded arborio is stable enough that you can dump boiling liquid onto it, stir it, reduce the liquid, and end up with perfect risotto --- rather than carefully tempering the rice with small amounts of slowly stirred liquid. Hence: 7 minute risotto.

It turns out you can also simply hydrate risotto rice (soak it in cold liquid for a couple hours) and do the same thing to it, but it doesn't hold long term the way the retrograded risotto does.

These ideas are due to Ideas in Food, a really amazing blog. The authors have published a couple of books; their first (I think it's just "Ideas In Food") is one of my favorite cooking books.

Thanks for the reply zemvpferreira.

How are you planning to solve the concern of plastic leaching while maintaining the benefits of sous-vide?

Ah, there's a question I'm going to sneak away from. I shouldn't have hinted, sorry for being a tease, but it's just not ready for show-and-tell yet :)

Fair enough.

For the interim what do you and Mellow recommend customers use for a "temperature-safe bag" (per instructions on your website)?

On food-safe bags; we can't make a better recommendation than what the manufacturers make themselves. Personally, I've used ziploc when I've been able to afford it.

Dave Arnold talked to (IIRC) someone from SCJ and below boiling, the Ziplock freezer bags supposedly won't leach plasticizers or anything like that.

Thanks for the reply tptacek!

I tracked down Dave Arnold's report to 9:28 here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cooking-issues-episode-1...

In summary: SC Johnson (SJC) told Grant Achatz and others chefs not to use their bags for sous-vide so Dave Arnold contacted SJC and asked specifically about using the bags for sous-vide and explained why he believes the practice is safe. The SJC representative replied with "Ziplock brand bags are designed to withheld being held in high temperature water including being used up to 82 degree Celsius for up to 72 hours." (quote at 12:05 of podcast)

I'd feel better if there was a specific statement about the safety of the food being held in the bag rather than an implication that since the bags withstand the bath the food isn't tainted.

Cooking Issues is so great. If any of this thread interests any of you, you should be listening to Cooking Issues.

Thanks for the recommendation! Looks like it's time to prune my podcast list so I can make room...

Right now I'm very intrigued by sous-vide but am too paranoid about the plastics to make the jump.

FYI, immersion circulators are fairly common in restaurant kitchens, since it's so much easier to get predictable results with them compared to traditional means of cooking meat. So if you dine out, it wouldn't be surprising if you're already unwittingly exposing yourself to the plastics risk.

Thanks for the heads up, pcl.

I was already aware but it's a great point and one of the many reasons I try to limit how often I dine out.

Awesome dinner out tonight with a great sous vide duck breast or a 1 in a billion chance I will die from the plastic in the bag in which it was cooked? I choose duck.

Would vacuum sealed glass jars work?

For some foods, yes, perfectly.

Most important comment on this thread.

I've been debating trying to make a sous vide machine that can chill and uses a smartphone/tablet for control for two years. I ultimately decided it just wasn't worth it because the only application I could think of for the chilling was egg poaching, and even sous vide I prefer to gradient poach rather than equilibrium. (75C for 12 mins gets a firmer white with a runny yolk than I could at equilibrium).

But I can't wait to see what they and their community come up with. The UI on a smartphone at least has to be better than the current state of the art. And I'd love to hear how they're cooling the water.

Hey matt,

I knew other smart people out there had the same idea, great to meet you. Mellow comes out of the frustrations of having the knowledge and equipment to cook great food, and never using it because of lack of energy. We started with the problem and ended up with this technology.

Feel free to reach out to ze@fnvlabs.com, or even preorder a unit and join the gang. (shameless)

I will reach out! I really can't wait to see what sort of uses you come up with. Every now and then I get annoyed by a 36 hour cook, because I'm rarely awake 12 hours before dinner time. But I'm sure you guys will come up with better uses for the cooling than that even.

I'm excited to ship units and what more creative cooks come up with, I'm boring, I only think about products these days.

You might want to talk to professional chefs about a pro version. They'd love to not have to have someone come in at 6 a.m. to start a 12 hour cook for that night's service, at least the ones I talked to.

Your payment form is not secure, even though it makes a submission over SSL, the fact that it is hosted on a non-SSL page exposes it to Man in the Middle attacks. An attacker may, for example, change the iframe URL to something controlled by the attacker but looks like the payment form on your site, and trick users into giving them their credit card details.

The fix is simple, make your whole site https and redirect all http traffic over to https. There are cheap SSL certificates out there (as low as $99 a year) and its pretty easy to setup.

Forwarding this to our web guy right now, thank you.

Happy to say we should be fully secure now, all the traffic is going through SSL-hosted pages. I can't thank you enough for bringing this to our attention.

Could I ask you one more favor? Would you check to see if we're as safe as possible now?

The timed refrigerator -> cooking -> {refrigerator / warm} cycle alone makes this a really, really nice idea.

The thin clear container and large volume of water is going to be a bit rough on power consumption for that use-case though.

I don't think it can go back to refrigerator once it's cooked as it's too hard to recool that volume of warm water.

You also have to do it very quickly due to anaerobic pathogens like Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes. I don't think it's possible for something that fits comfortably in a kitchen and runs on a 120v line.

Too true! The most we can do is auto-retrograde starches and cool baths that are cooking at 60C upwards down to 54C to a sort of "holding temperature". Very fun to play with.

That's kind of neat that you can drop it down to a lower holding temp. I hadn't thought of that. I'd be curious to hear how different foods hold up in that case.

What if you flushed the container with cold water? Seems easy enough to rig it to a cold water line and have a hose going into the sink to dump the hot water.

I don't think cold water out of a tap is cold enough. I don't know the exact times, but it's generally recommended to use enough ice in ice water that it won't totally melt before the food gets below 40F. But you could do some sort of chilled reservoir. Then you're doubling the size though.

I figured it wasn't cold enough. The idea would be to dump the latent heat in the water. So at least you start from room temperature water and chill it from there. I'm guessing this still wouldn't get cold fast enough, but I don't know how fast "fast enough" is.

Yeah, I wouldn't risk it. It's hard to get much cooling power within home kitchen constraints. Really kinda sucks.

Douglas Baldwin has a little on it at http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html

You could probably find it from one of his sources if you cared enough. It made my brain hurt.

This is really easy to experiment with. Hard boil a few eggs (using convetional boiling water in a pan) and then see how quickly you can cool that egg.

They hold onto heat for a surprisingly long time.

That may be the case for some theoretical level of foodborne pathogen... but in reality we're all leaving our chinese food / pizza out until it gets cold on the counter, then putting it into the fridge and eating it a few days later for lunch. We're dumping hot soups into containers and putting them in the fridge. We're eating anything that doesn't have mold on it regardless of the sell-by-date. Cooking, I think I've managed to genuinely give myself food poisoning only once, trying to refrigerate a gallon and a half of chicken noodle soup. This happens far more often with takeout, an accepted cultural institution.

If the water can be rapidly adjusted in temperature (through a cold water hookup or otherwise), this represents a major safety improvement in the production of the 'leftovers' genre of our cuisine over the status quo, as well as the few dishes we have that are cooked and eaten cold.

Hey mapt,

The water bath's double-walled, so that power consumption isn't heinous. We're looking at nonofficial steady-state heat losses/gains of 15-30 Watt at the most common temperatures.

Fantastic.

I do have a suggestion on the thermodynamically disfavored process of changing the water temperature rapidly though. Could you simply hook up one or two other reservoirs? Drain the 'cold' tank to one of those, preheat the other, then pump the other in and suddenly you're cooking.

Or just accept hot/cold faucets with a once-through system for rapid changeovers, followed by precision temp control on recirculation.

Founder/designer/actor here, glad to see HN pick Mellow up! I tried to post it myself to little success earlier. Let me know if I can clarify anything.

A small detail: Centigrade!!!

Only old people and Americans use whatever that other temperature unit is, for the rest of us '195 F' means absolutely nothing. Is it what a warm day feels like in 1957? Or boiling water? Or just below the boil, a simmer?

In your web page just put what the temperature is in normal Centigrade units underneath. We will then be able to relate to what it does properly - temperature is a huge thing in cooking as I am sure you know.

I know you aren't selling to The Rest Of The World yet, but a lot of people from The Rest Of The World go to the United States and it is only a small amount of text that is asked for.

As an owner of a $2k+ Thermomix (which can do sous-vide in a very confined and limited fashion) this interests me and $400 doesn't seem outrageous if it can become a regular tool in the kitchen. I do wonder how much is covered by a slow-cooker though.

Going on the TM, my concerns would be cleaning (doesn't seem like a big issue) and how much of a meal it can actually do.

With the Thermomix, we found it went from gimmick to regularly used device quickly enough - marinades, sauces, pureed baby food, mashed potato, etc. Besides weigh, heat, blend, etc it can also work to a set temperature (though with broader increments) and I eventually tried some steak sous-vide. Vacuum sealed bag, into the basket (to prevent the blades from rupturing the bag) and away it went. It worked OK though the steak obviously needed to be seared at the end. That left me rinsing the TM and still having to wash the pan/griddle, etc.

If you still need to prepare/cook your sides, I wonder how much time has truly been saved? I've had reasonable success with the slow-cooker too: one-pot dish so cleaning is easy, sides aren't much of an issue, etc.

I imagine that the value in Mellow will come once the community strengthens and people work out a set of go-to recipes that minimise other mess and prep.

We've learned a lot from using TM ourselves. I'd encourage to try cooking proper sous-vide somehow; the TM version doesn't do it much justice. The temperature control just isn't there.

You're right that a lot of the value in Mellow is going to come from the community, but it's already massively nice to have a device cook your ingredients to their peak before you step in and finish the process. You're going to have to cook, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

For some definition of robotic... I guess networked crockpot doesn't have the same ring.

Hey andrew,

It fits! I think defining robot as an anthropomorphic thing that moves around is too constricting. Mellow is an electromechanical machine that performs complex actions, based on natural language requests, taking into account its environment and context.

I think that's pretty robotic, but I welcome the debate. Didn't mean to be at all misleading, sorry if it seemed so.

I expect a "robotic sous-chef" to clean and chop ingredients for me, then prepare the food. This is much better described as a smart sous-vide cooker.

I clicked the link imaging a moving robot that chopped/prepped food. It was the sous-chef part that made me think that. I don't think I would have interpreted robotic sous-vide cooker the same way. That being said, I definitely think 'smart sous-vide cooker' is a better description and more useful tag-line.

I understand that, and I'll admit I didn't mind the ambiguity when I was choosing headlines.

Ultimately,what made me choose the "robotic" one was that we're not trying to build a smart sous-vide device, sous-vide is just technology. We're trying to build a quiet servant. And that won out.

I think people expect a robot to be able to move at least part of its body. South Africans excepted [1]

[1] http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2378730

Great looking web site. Perfectly in tune with the product; at least that was my impression. I wish I could eat it.

Thank you! We have a great web designer, I'll pass it along.

Relevant reddit discussion on r/hwstartups: http://www.reddit.com/23mshg/

tl;dr

- Uses the Electric Imp platform for wireless communication

- cannot be used without smartphone/tablet/computer/internet connection

- heats in about 10 minutes

- not to be used for cook -> chill

We also have a thread full of great questions on PH: http://www.producthunt.co/posts/mellow

Best Product Hunt AMA yet.

Thank you! Happy to field questions wherever I find a smart audience.

I think this is the first internet connected kitchen device that I have seen actually make it's use case for having an app or being connected.

I'm really impressed and while not having any prior experience with sous-vide I can really see making it part of my cooking process.

So, I notice that it's quite possible to set on autopilot, but is there an option to have more control, in the case of recipes we find separately?

Is there some sort of way to know if the power went off? If so, does it check the temperature to see if it was just a surge or if it went into the danger zone?

I'm trying to reduce the amount of meat in my diet, personally, and most applications seem to be for meats. Are there significant advantages to getting one for anything short of slow carmelized onions and a few soups?

Yes, yes, and yes. It's worth it for what it does to fish and seafood alone.

You're right though, meats have traditionally been the main focus in sous-vide, but it's by no means limited to them. Pears are amazing, eggs too. Risotto, potatoes, and carrots are insane.

Surprised not to see any positive comments here – this is exciting stuff. The IoT should be changing the kitchen faster than any other room in the house (it's the room with the most gadgets to begin with, with the potential for the most time savings / life improvements). There's not a lot of serious projects in the kitchen yet, and there should be so many more!

Thank you dftf. I blame twitter-fridge and the stupidity of most kitchen gadgets for numbing people to the power of well-designed products in the kitchen.

Most of the groundbreaking stuff has been with us so long that it's become invisible. Who really appreciates have access to cold storage these days?

The first thing that sprung into my mind:

That thing will be a bloody mess to clean.

There's a reason why most kitchen appliances aren't rectangular and don't sport a lot of grilles, if any. And it will have to be cleaned at some point, like anything in a kitchen (or closed rooms, for that matter). Rectangular fluid containers are the worst.

(Other than that, seems to be a fine idea).

We're expecting cleanup to be very easy; mostly a wipe-down every once in a while. But you're right of course, kitchens are messy places and we certainly took that into consideration. The grille is entirely necessary for Mellow to function.

This looks really cool!

I've been interested in getting into sous-vide for a while, but I'm not sure where to start. Could anyone point me to some introductory resources? (websites, maybe cookbooks?)

I'm interested in learning the difference between different equipment setups, and also understanding what works well for sous-vide and what doesn't.

I enjoyed the sous-vide section of Cooking for Geeks, (and the rest of the book is great too!) That's enough to get started.

Thanks! I'll check it out.

I'd start by trying it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYGYyZcm6kE

I have to say, this product sounds pretty cool, but for myself, I got really excited about sous vide, even made my own immersion circulator from Scott Heimendinger's plans a few months ago, but when I fried two aquarium pumps due to long times at high temps, I knew I had to get a commercial model. I ended up ordering an Anova, and at $200, it's just at the high end of what I feel I can afford. A $400 machine could easily be twice as good, and I'm still not sure I could convince myself to part with that much.

In addition, the new crop of immersion circulators (Anova, Sansaire, etc.) don't need very much space- they just clamp to an existing pot or whatever. It seems to me the Mellow has a very hard fight for precious counter space on top of the price.

We're designing Mellow to be used every single day, and optimising for that means a constant presence on your countertop.

Our idea is that instead of making sous-vide as cheap and simple as possible, we want to make it as useful and effortless as possible. I hope there's room for both types of product.

I hope you're right. Good luck!

This is exciting - I think the fact that it has cooling built in easily puts it apart from crock pots for convenience - allowing you to go from the fridge to the stove is really cool.

Now I just have to resist getting a peltier module and making one of these before 2015...

Hey Alex,

I'd encourage you to! Can I help in any way? (Mellow's designer)

Thanks! I'll just try to be patient though :) Good luck with the product :D

Thank you. I'm already lucky, look at this page :D

Admittedly, I don't know much about state of the art sous-vide, but I'd be really interested to see a device with two reservoirs that can be held at different temperatures and fill/drain the main water bath.

Hypothetically, this would allow for cook->chill methods, though the overhead may not be worth it except for a small niche of customers.

We actually played around with that idea a year ago at the insistence of a local VC.

Result: wasted a week.

Any plans to open the device up to API access? I know a lot of cheese makers who need a specific series of heating steps and it's currently a major pain in the ass with available SV setups as it all has to be done manually. A way to program it in would be awesome.

It's a definite possibility, but we're 100% focused on delivering the feature-set we promised before.

Shouldn't the title be renamed a bit. I was expecting a rosie the robot type sous-chef robot. This is a smart sous-vide appliance, not a "robot" in the traditional sense.

Is it just me or are a lot of the comments on this post getting greyed out? I thought that was only for flagged/sufficiently downvoted comments? What the heck is going on here..

I am curious since I have never cooked sous-vide. I see pieces of meat being cooked in the video, so does that mean I would have to come home and prepare the side dishes?

For the most part, yes. Vegetable cookery tends to happen at temps north of 175, and protein cookery tends to happen at temps south of 140 or so, so you can't really use the same unattended water bath for both.

I typically do the veg in bulk for the week and ice bath->fridge them, then reheat in the water bath while I'm finishing the meat, but yeah, it wouldn't work to do simultaneously (unless you e.g. wanted traditional-texture braised meat, which works quite well in a veg-temp water bath).

What's this cost? The pre-order button doesn't actually bring up a pre-order screen for me.

$400 is what pops up in mine.

Crap, that's happened for some people and we can't find out why. Could I ask you to try out the direct link? Sorry about that:

https://www.trycelery.com/shop/mellow

Happened to me too, on Chrome 35.0.1916.47 beta. I've seen the same issue with other sites using Celery as well.

Sorry about that, I'm on Celery's case about it. hopefully they'll fix it soon enough.

This bug is not really one. At least not in my situation. I'm using Disconnect chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disconnect/jeoacaf...) to block all sorts of tracking. When the website is whitelisted the pre-order screen works. Not tested, but I assume this could also happen with other ad-blockers.

Looks like a great improvement on the sous vide. Is there a prototype?

Did you watch the video?

Yes.

This is basically a Mr. Coffee.

Pretty much. The video was a trip to walmart + a quick 3-d printed cover.

Already posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622369

Edit: I always love when people get offended by facts.

When a story hasn't yet gotten significant attention, a small number of reposts (2 or 3) is ok. Otherwise, many more good stories would get lost to randomness and churn.

Yes. And some times you guys merge them and the original submitter gets the credit. And some times you just kill the dupes. I was just pointing out that previous thread like so many people do every day here. I wasn't being a dick about it. No need to flog me for it. But what ever. HN has its finicky moments.

I certainly didn't mean to flog you! Was just trying to clarify what sorts of reposts we allow vs. kill as dupes. Merging wasn't an option in this case because the prior submission was too old to make the front page.

Thnx. You were not the flogger. I was referring to the handfull of people that were so pissed about my post they needed to downvote it to nothingness.

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