Cinder (YC W15) – Smart Countertop Grill
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Feel free to ask me any questions here about Cinder or the magic of cooking more generally.
If so how do you justify the price difference?
I love the idea, but I just got an anova for ~200 and felt like that was just at the edge of a reasonable price for me. Not having to bring water up to temperature/have a giant pot sitting around would be nice, but just not sure if it is worth the extra 300.
EDIT: a tiny amount of reading later: I see that another advantage is that you can do both the low tempature 'sous vide' style work and then sear with the same machine. That is a nice value add.
I personally got an anova largely because of chefsteps. I would highly recommend sending them one if they will take it.
Good luck!
Or specifically, is the heating method induction? And how do you determine the temperature from that? (If induction, is it deduced from resistance?)
Preventing overshoot is a matter of the control method. We have a model of the system and use a predictive control algorithm to cut off heating just when we need to in order to hit the target without overshoot.
thanks!
Our current specification for the cooking volume is 10" x 10" x 2.5", enough space to comfortably fit two sizable steaks. Our cooker will have a single hinge, but the mechanism will keep the plates aligned in the XY plane at any distance within the cooking volume.
As far as contact with the grill and the food, the upper half will have an optimal amount of counter-balance. The key is to offset the weight of the upper half to prevent food from getting crushed/squeezed dry, but still have enough weight to ensure the upper plate still makes enough contact for heat to conduct into the food. We are also planning to have 2-axis tilt on our upper cook plate, which should allow for better contact with foods that aren't sliced parallel to the cook plates (such as chicken breast, fish, etc).
Our cooking volume has [removable] side walls surrounding the plates. While it does not form an air-tight seal, it does reduce the amount of convection from the surrounding environment that would normally reach the cook plates, thus greatly reducing heat leakage and also allowing our sensors to get a much more accurate picture of what's going on. (our CTO/control systems engineer @InternetofJim can speak more on that). From our tests so far, cooking at low temperatures (135F) uses relatively low levels of power, well below 100W.
Hope that answers some of your questions, and we welcome any thoughts/comments on our design!
Induction is the best kind of burner for traditional cooking, but it's not capable of either the evenness or the accuracy required. Even a copper pan can have as much as a 30-50 degree differential across the surface, regardless of how you heat it. And medium rare is a 5 degree range, caramelization is just 8 degrees for that nice sweetness, and eggs change with literally every degree. So those degrees count.
It could be cultural, I'm coming from an Australian perspective.
Hmm. Then I think I would've gone with "ember." Though I still like "cinder" well enough, despite its burnt connotations (and this: http://libcinder.org).
In any event, it looks like a really interesting product -- makes me think of a sous-vide-like approach, only brought to the surface of a pan. (Which, of course, is much more challenging, since you need to do more than simply hold a vat of water at a constant temperature.)
Take a look at his Turkey brining experiment for a good example of applying his science background (an MIT guy) to food. http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/the-food-lab-the-truth-ab...
I just did. He didn't try everything. For chicken breasts (or, better, duck breasts) you can brine with soy sauce, then slow cook, then sear, and the results are amazing.
And if you use a tenderizer before brining, it's even better. (Tenderizer: best $20 I ever spent).
Also, please consider making all measures defaultable to standard metric measures. I have some appliances (e.g., the Polyscience Sous Vide Professional) that support metric measures, but where I have to choose it every time. Very annoying and seems to be not uncommon in stuff form the US.
Internally, it's all metric, and we'll have that choice in the app.
The knob lets you have full manual control of temperature, but is not a good way to share recipes or learn how to cook something you don't do every day. So you want to make a quick panini or egg, the knob is great. On the other hand, we don't want to be like your microwave, with tons of features hidden behind scrolling text prompts and a keypad.
On the other hand, an app interface lets you have a different UI for each food type, so you can ask for a medium rare steak or light brown caramelized onions.
Once you've used the app to set things up, you'll be hands-on in the kitchen, so the next few steps can be controlled from the knob or the app.
$500 is a tough sell though if you can get roughly the same thing with a sous vide for <$200.
Caramelization, browning, and similar reactions are what produce the really great, complex, flavors in the best food. It's not just about searing steak -- we can take apples and convert them into apple pie filling with no added sugar. We can make butternut squash sweet and eggplant creamy. We can perfectly brown cheese without burning it, so you can have a grilled cheese where the cheese inside is browned, like the stuff that sticks to the grill.
We have a test chef who is coming up with new ways to use this all the time, and we're going to share them through the app so everyone can play.
It's exactly the information I'm looking for, and I suspect I'm in your target audience. ;)
I'd be very interested in hearing more comparisons between your device's caramelization abilities and e.g. pressure-cooker caramelization with or without added alkaline agents. My experiments doing temp-controlled caramelization in ambient air (rather than the hydrating environment of a pressure cooker) have had mixed results.
Will you have any physical demos in the bay area?
We do plan to have public demos from time to time (we've already done a few at various meetups and other events -- we're based here in SoMa). If you'd like, email info >>at<< cindercooks.com, and we can add you to our mailing list so you could be notified of these events.
Most food safety sources I've seen cite 40-140 degrees Fahrenheit (or 5-60 degrees Celsius) as the "Danger Zone" in which foods should not be held.
http://sousvide.wikia.com/wiki/Importance_of_temperature_con...
We plan to ship in early 2016. We're doing everything we can to stay on schedule -- we have a pretty experienced team who's shipped products before, and are working with PCH, a company who specializes in manufacturing and logistics (they do all of Apples accessories and Beats, for example).
If you change your mind during the pre-order period, we will give you a refund if desired.
[1]: Specifically, http://smile.amazon.com/Emeril-All-Clad-E83602-Anodized-8-In... (not an affiliate link)
Additional source: I know a lawyer that worked for DuPont. Their job was ensuring that DuPont would never be held accountable for problems caused by Teflon. That was enough evidence for me to throw away all of my teflon pans.
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2007/05/teflon-foreve...
(If you are still deciding how to do it, then if it helps, I can tell you I absolutely never buy any device that requires an internet connection to perform functions that should be local.)
And as far as grease management goes, we will have drainage and trays that collect the run-off (similar to products on the market now). Happy to hear any suggestions or insights