Comment by compumike | Hacker News Reader

Comment by compumike | Hacker News Reader

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There's a market developing here within the "temperature controlled smart cooking" world, with the number of different engineering approaches growing rapidly. Y Combinator alone has funded three companies in this space already!

Pantelligent (YC W13) - $199 - https://www.pantelligent.com/ - smart frying pan plus smartphone app. Recipes are smart software & give you instructions to adjust on the fly to provide perfect results every time. Works for any dish you can cook in a frying pan (steak, salmon, eggs, veggies, ...).

Cinder (YC W15) - $499 - https://cindercooks.com/ - electric grill style countertop appliance with smart recipes on smartphone.

Nomiku (YC W15) - $249 / $199 pre-order - http://www.nomiku.com/ - sous-vide water bath immersion circulator

June Oven - $2995 / $1495 pre-order - https://juneoven.com/ - countertop electric oven style

Consumers have a wide range of options and that's pretty amazing, because fundamentally, the technology (temperature controlled cooking) works great and it's something I believe a lot of people are going to want to have in their home. It's like "process control 101" -- time and temperature -- finally made it to the kitchen.

(Disclosure: I'm an engineer & co-founder of Pantelligent. Words can not convey just how delicious a Pantelligent-cooked salmon or steak is. Paul Graham said, "This pan made the best salmon I've ever cooked. In fact, better than I've had in almost any restaurant." If you're skeptical, check out some of our hands-on reviews; we were recently on NBC TODAY Show, CBS This Morning, and Popular Science's "Top 10 Inventions of 2015". And if you're still skeptical and live in the SF Bay Area, email visit @ pantelligent.com and we'll see if we can schedule a visit to our Sunnyvale warehouse so you can try it out for yourself!)

With the exception of the immersion circulator, I don't understand these devices. Can you help me understand?

I'm an experienced cook, so (again, with the exception of the immersion circulator) I'm not in the target market for these devices. I'm having trouble understanding the target market though. I was thinking that it was for inexperienced people who want to cook at home. When I play that scenario through my head, it doesn't completely work.

Take your salmon example: getting the pan to a good temperature and cooking the fish to the ideal temperature is not easy, so I can see how an inexperienced person could easily benefit from real-time temperature feedback. What I'm having trouble figuring out though, is that after gaining experience from cooking fish a few times, what's the benefit of the real-time temperature feedback? I guess the thing I'm wrestling with is that as one becomes more experienced, the value of these smart devices seems to rapidly diminish.

I don't intend this to be negative or harsh, so I hope it doesn't come across that way. I'm genuinely interested in the thinking behind this smart device trend. Hope you can share.

I'm exactly the target market for this. I never learned how to cook meat growing up (I got by with sandwiches and salads and the like), but now as an adult I find myself in situations like the following:

Last week my significant other and I decided to cook dinner together (for a change; usually we don't). We were both interested in salmon, but neither of us knew how to cook it, so we ended up doing something else.

My status quo options are: (1) don't cook salmon, (2) cook salmon and most likely screw it up—hardly the best way to start an evening together, or (3) take cooking classes.

An appliance that unlocks option (4) cook salmon and have it most likely turn out delicious on the first try? Yes. I will eagerly pay money for that.

Even assuming over time I no longer need the device, the reality is that I'd much rather pay this one-time upfront cost than expend a bunch of time trying and failing or taking classes in order to develop a skill I'm not passionate about.

> My status quo options are: (1) don't cook salmon, (2) cook salmon and most likely screw it up—hardly the best way to start an evening together, or (3) take cooking classes.

If you have even basic cooking skills outside of salmon, you've missed several options, like "look up recipes/directions for preparing and cooking salmon" (going to cooking classes is more extreme than is necessary.)

And an appliance isn't going to make you not have to do that, because while the actual application of heat is an important part of turning salmon (or anything else) into quality food (ignoring raw preparations), so is preparation, and the appliance isn't going to do that for you. And if you can look up and follow prep instructions, you can probably look up instructions that include both prep and cooking, as most recipes do.

Why is getting it right on the first try the only acceptable outcome? If you try, fail a few times, and eventually learn it will still be dramatically cheaper than buying any of these machines. And once you learn it will become a transferable skill -- you won't be tied to only being able to prepare your food when you're home with your specialized device.

So much this. The fear of failure in cooking is a bit like the fear of failure in maths ("I'm just bad at maths") or fearing technology ("I'd never be good at computers!").

I do get it. It feels extremely wasteful to throw out a ruined meal. Many people are taught from very young that the stove is 'dangerous' and that hot pans are something to be feared. It's potentially really really embarrassing to ruin a meal for guests, etc.

It's a fear of experimentation though, which is a shame.

FWIW I'm a kitchen gadget nut as much as the next person - this could be a really good tool for convenience, not criticizing it at all in that way.

On the other hand, there's nothing cooler than having friends over for dinner and being able to say "yeah, I've never tried making this before, but it turned out great". Fortune favours the bold.

Have you considered option (5) look up salmon recipes and follow the directions? There are lots of sites online dedicated to hosting recipes. Some of them have decent video and pictures so you can see what they're doing. Here's a salmon recipe I tried just last week: http://www.marthastewart.com/1033633/roasted-salmon-kale-and....

If you plan ahead and are willing to spend a few dollars you could also get a cookbook. I'd recommend How to Cook Everything and America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook. How to Cook Everything has lots of recipes and does a good job explaining cooking terms. The America's Test Kitchen book explains the reasons for why they do things a certain way and also lists common problems and their causes so you can avoid them or correct them without guesswork in the future.

A struggle I had cooking was that so many of the recipes are pretty lousy, most distressingly including no pictures.

One of the things I really like about Blue Apron and Plated are how easy to follow their instructions are and the inclusion of 7 pictures (6 steps plus the finished dish).

For example, here is a really tasty, easy-to-cook "go to" salmon recipe: https://dusyefwqqyfwe.cloudfront.net/public_uploads/recipe/r...

(Plated seems to have started making its recipes harder to find/access)

And yummy "go to" pork and beef meals from Blue Apron:

https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-pork-roast-with-sma...

https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-steaks-with-sauteed...

I haven't tried Blue Apron or Plated but looking at those links the thing that appeals most to me is that it explains the timing. I tend to have trouble getting everything finished at about the same time without something being overcooked.

Try a cookbook like Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast. Practical recipes+instructions on when to prep/cook/prepare other parts of a meal. There's also a couple chapters in the beginning that go over basic kitchen skills and what to stock in your home (oils, herbs, equipment) which can be useful.

Cooking For Engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/) used to be one of my big favorites in that planning aspect but I haven't seen an update in years, sadly.

My current favorite place to get recipes/cooking knowledge - but requires basic cooking skills in the first place - is anything from Kenji from Serious Eats. Usually all my questions and thoughts will be addressed in some of the super-in-depth guides, like the sous vide steak one and the chocolate chip cookie one. http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab

>neither of us knew how to cook it //

TBH I'd YouTube something like this - bet there is at least 1000 videos of cooking salmon. Or look it up in a recipe book.

If you get a device aren't you going to look up how to use it? Well you could just look up how to use a frying pan or grill.

>I'd much rather pay this one-time upfront cost than expend a bunch of time trying and failing or taking classes in order to develop a skill I'm not passionate about //

Fair enough: to my mind the hardest part of cooking a meal is ensuring everything is ready at the right time and fresh and hot for serving. None of these devices appear to help with that(?). Want some boiled potatoes with that salmon then you're going to have to learn how long they take and synchronise the cooking, unless they have a saucepan version that links with the other one to boil your spuds.

> bet there is at least 1000 videos of cooking salmon

That's the problem. And another reason why I like Plated and Blue Apron which narrow the noise dramatically (both offer both video how-tos and easy-to-follow recipes).

https://www.youtube.com/user/ThePlated

https://www.blueapron.com/cookbook

But you won't learn anything this way. Buy a copy of The Joy of Cooking, get some decent non-stick pots and pansresist the temptation to turn the heat up too high and practice. Yes, you'll have a bunch of failed meals along the way and you'll feel incompetent when that happens and you have to throw the food out and get take-out instead. This is OK.

Honestly, it's not that hard. You probably have a friend who can cook, get them to teach you some stuff.

Try Blue Apron for a week. Without a "smart" pan, you'll probably be able to get pretty good results just following the easy-to-follow recipe. I'm not sure how valuable the "better" results are going to be.

The thing is, "pretty good results" are competing against any number of eateries where we can get "delicious." Cooking together is fun, but scrapping or choking down a failed meal is not.

I've screwed up easy recipes plenty of times in the past. The promise that I can get a good result despite my lack of skill is what's appealing.

I'm overdue in writing a blog post entitled, "Blue Apron saved my marriage." Before Blue Apron I couldn't cook but Blue Apron definitely does a really good job walking you through things. You won't nail it every time but you'll definitely be close, you'll learn, and there is a good community of people making the same meal who can give you tips.

The point that there's an instacommunity because you're all making the same recipe together is pretty awesome. Maybe broadcasting isn't dead? (See: Beats 1.)

Yes, and they've made great use of (Facebook) commenting so that you both get input/tips by other amateurs cooking same dish and Blue Apron gets fantastic, organic-ish exposure.

https://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-pork-roast-with-sma...

It's been a revelation for my family. I went from reluctantly heating up stir-fry to eat on the couch to enthusiastically preparing fresh food, sit-down family dinners.

OK, you'll very likely get terrific results.

I agree that option 4 would explain the attraction of these devices. I guess I remain unconvinced that, while these gadgets may claim to "unlock option 4", they will actually deliver (yet again, excepting the immersion circulator). There's a lot more to cooking than simply getting the temperature right. I'm skeptical that a magic cooking gadget is going to make someone a half-decent cook for the same reason that I don't believe a magic golf club will make me a golfer: the reason I can't hit a golf ball is because my technique is pitiful.

Like I said, I'm not the target for stuff like this, but I am always on the lookout for neat gifts, which is why I'm trying to figure this stuff out.

You've downplayed option 3, but you've clearly got some motivation towards cooking. If I might suggest, have you considered watching/participating in a free cooking demonstration at the supermarket? In the past I've found them to be well done, and they use stuff available at the supermarket, so that lowers one barrier. Also, cooking classes make for a great date night.

Heat up a pan with, put oil/butter (or combi) in it. You want to test the right temperature? A breadcrumb should sizzle/produce little bubbles when thrown into the oil/butter. Butter should just start to be become brown and not bubble anymore. Put the Salmon into the hot pan, bake 2-3 minutes on each side, turn the heat down a little. It is easy to just cut one of the salmon pieces to check if the inside is done, it should seem like it is just not raw anymore. I often take the Salmon out of the pan after the short baking and eithr put it the oven (160degC for 5-10 min) or wrap it in aluminum foil and leave in on the hot induction plate where the pan was first for 5-10 min.

Now that I'm writing this, I have to laugh, one has to keep more in mind than I thought at first :) Most of it is intuitive to me now I realize.

I have to say that I only truly got comfortable with cooking (that is, doing it fast and having everything ready at the same time) after being unemployed for 8 months and doing all the cooking (the comfortableness took less than those 8 months). Having a nice kitchen with the desk at the proper height (and a dishwasher to prevent frustrations afterwards ;)) also helps tremendously.

So, as I set out to answer how simple it is... maybe it is not. But only practice will help and experimentation is fun. Why can't you just laugh and learn from a messed up meal? I started out cooking the way I did analytical chemistry (I have a degree in biochemistry), this prevents errors in the beginning but later on you will drop the precision in favor of your own preferences.

By now I can cook up nice meals in 15-30 minutes using mostly fresh things. And I like doing it. It especially feels good if your kids eat your meals. Perhaps having kids was the biggest motivation to try to vary as much as possible with fresh foods. And skipping a meal is less bad than it sounds ;)

i'd say learning to cook something new together is a far better use of your time than hitting buttons on a screen.

i also think you seriously overestimate how difficult it is to cook salmon. it's incredibly easy.

in fact, this entire comment is a bit of a stretch. hmm...

> My status quo options are

(4) look things up on the Internet. From Youtube to various cooking TV series and blogs, you'd be hard pressed NOT to find a decent salmon cooking tutorial.

It all really depends on whether you want to learn how to cook salmon or if you just want it come out tasty on the first try. Smart-pan is as much of an educational tool as RockBand is a guitar playing tutorial.

I have never even thought about salmon as being something that is difficult to cook. You put it on a pan and take it off when you want to eat it.

Yes, you can do stuff that makes it better, but this approach still tastes good.

What people want are results now. It took me a few tries to cook any fish well. Every once in a while I screw up and I chalk it to lessons learned.

The first time I made scallops I was nervous but I knew my gas range and I knew my tools, so it came out perfect (with butter though I should have made herbed butter). The first time I made buttermilk fried chicken using my sous vide they came out tender and seasoned, granted it didn't look all that pretty.

Cooking takes time. It takes practice. I think the novelty of these devices wear off once people realize that their steaks are perfectly medium rare but cheaped out or they don't know how to buy a good cut of meat. The novelty will go away when they practice cooking so much they rely less on technology and more on their own skill.

I see this as two camps. One is helping people cook and get comfortable and have fun with that, and the other is based on the new food science of temperature. This is most commonly known today as sous vide and implemented with an immersion circulator. The food quality really is 10x better, for example you can keep meat proteins below the temperature they seize up and push out moisture, and the experience is something you can't go back to normal cooking from. Because the food doesn't overcook* you have an hour of flexibility, if you love cooking you can use this to try more complex sides and time it right. If you're busy, you can stay calm when your spouse is 30 minutes late. It's like when the DVR came around and you could pause live TV, and no one could go back. Cinder takes advantage of precision temperature cooking to let you do these things, and unlocks other kinds of unattended cooking. You can set onions to a caramelization temperature and walk away, yes you could replicate that yourself if you wanted to hover and stir for 30 minutes, but this is like delegating to a sous chef.

*This is a slight simplification. Food will break down and turn mushy, but nearly everything has an expanded range for being done. Which means ending the tyranny of the clock.

Ideally we could also control the cooktop and at least on older electrical models it should be possible to hook into the circuitry that the knobs are attached to. Without automatic feedback loops such devices are less convenient but still enable better understanding and communication and prevent mistakes. In the salmon example, you might perfect cooking your fish, invite a couple of friends and suddenly fail because you learned to regulate the power output for a single serving, not for a more crowded pan and don't know how to adjust because you don't even know the temperature profile of your perfect fish. Of course one can learn to cook by sound, smell, heat, touch sight and taste and I value poetic recipes but that does not diminish the value of temperature controlled gear.

We watch cooks country sometimes. I frequently wonder how to change the recipe for our high altitude desert climate that differs from theirs. I'm never quite sure I've done it because the recipe's (especially volume based measurements) and descriptions are less precise than a smart gadget could be. I'm never quite sure the carbonara sauce is cooked or raw. This is why I'm interested, and perhaps part of the market. Cooking for me is about replicating conditions and duplicating an experiment.

If you let a device cook for you every time, you're not going to learn anything, so the device's value proposition is safe. I've been taking cars to the mechanic for 15 years and haven't learned a thing about cars while doing so, even though I could have been.

You forgot Meld: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/meld/meld-a-perfect-mea... ($129 pre-order)

To me, it looks the most compelling because it's both the cheapest and most versatile.

I backed both Pantelligent & Meld. But if Meld would have kickstarted first, I wouldn't have backed Pantelligent.

Thanks for your support Bryan!

Meld is certainly interesting; manufacturing is going to be a challenge for them with a lot of moving parts, but in any case, it may work for some soups/stews types of dishes, but it won't be compatible with most of Pantelligent recipes (asparagus, eggs, crepes, pancakes, bacon). And a Meld-style internal temperature probe alone would be significantly worse than Pantelligent for foods like steak and salmon; I know that at first glance it seems like internal temperature is the temperature to measure and optimize for, but you also have to control the external/surface temperature or else it's "unobservable" and will lead to either undercooked or overcooked meats! You can not simply do feedback around the internal temperature. (That's one of the key engineering insights of Pantelligent.)

I don't see how you can possibly just do feedback on the external temperature. How could you possibly guess if the meat is cooked through just based on the surface temperature? You really can't unless you make some assumptions on initial temperature and thickness at minimum.

You are correct. Initial internal temperature and geometry of the food are key inputs. Once you know these, simulation is possible, but it takes some work.

A few years ago I wrote an app called Sous Vide Dash that was initially targeted at professional level kitchens-and later white labeled by PolyScience, the leading provider of professional sous vide equipment. We did full thermodynamic simulation in that app, and modeled both temperature and pasteurization. To my knowledge it's still the only cooking app that has an embedded numerical solver for partial differential equations. In 2012 we won the StarChefs International Chefs Congress Innovator award for our work.

Popping back to the top of the stack, it's a very exciting time for precision cooking. As one of the founders of Meld, I can tell you there is a lot more to come.

This is one reason we chose the form factor that we did for Cinder, because we can automatically measure thickness. We found that's something rather hard for people to do, no one really wants to hold up raw meat to a ruler app on their phone, and yet is crucial to time estimation. Then we ask you what we don't know, so in the app you'd say: Chicken breast. We've also done some cool things to know when it's done, like how a rice cooker clicks off.

There's also Mellow, which seems to be further along than most of the other noted options: https://cookmellow.com ($400 first pre-order run)

I'm a software engineer and I took a total of two cooking courses and with lots of practice, I became a better cook.

$1500 is essentially a weekend cooking class...twice. Learning to cook was by far the most challenging yet the most fun I've ever had. With the exception of the immersion circulator (I own a Polyscience one), none of these things really help. If you want to be a good cook, learn to cook. I never understood the need for "smart" devices when cooking is largely based on experience. Sure, this oven will help me cook medium rare steaks well, but will it taste good? I make medium rare steaks on a frying pan and I can make it consistently well. Cooking is practice, it doesn't require some expensive device.

Big market out there for kitchen gadgets. Most of which don't really help that mucb, but are flashy. A kitchen full of gadgets is more of a vanity thing than anything else.

I'm not sure I'd call a $3,000 counter over a "gadget".

I see no reason to not believe you. You should at least consider that others might differ. Those others might be a small niche big enough to be worth milions.

What is the coating of that pan? It looks like some non-stick thing, which I won't allow in my kitchen. Either cast iron (which this device would never survive my seasoning process), or 18/10 | 18/12 stainless steel.

Also, love the intro video, has a nice punchline.

It looks like some non-stick thing, which I won't allow in my kitchen.

For reasons of style/principle, or because Teflon and aluminium are associated with possible health risks?

I use a mix of steel and non-stick ceramic pans — the latter are much easier to wash up, and also work better for some foods.

Because of the very real health risks, and the fact that generally, Teflon coated and aluminum cookware is of very low quality (no matter the price level, there's some really expensive Teflon stuff out there that is useless, clearly not made by someone who cooks).

I won't use ceramics either as there is no guarantee they won't leech dangerous chemicals.

The only thing I've seen that is suitable for long term use is cast iron, high carbon steel, and some 304 stainless steel variant (18/10, 18/12, etc). Its the only things we've been using for a decades on modern processes that are not known to leech anything dangerous (unless its extremely low grade Chinese stuff that isn't up to spec, which is easy to avoid).

Serious question: have you ever done any blind taste tests? I'm sure your device produces excellent results but I have my doubts about whether it provides any real advantage over someone who knows how to cook.

The key here is that precision, low-temperature cooking allows you to cook more tender and juicy food. Above 140F or so, proteins tend to seize up and drive moisture out. If you haven't tried this kind of cooking, I'd highly recommend seeking out a restaurant that uses sous-vide and trying some. It's so good that I co-founded a company (Cinder) to adopt it for home, mass use.

Not to say that a taste test wouldn't be interesting, but "someone who knows how to cook" is not something that everyone has access to. The intersection of that demographic and one wealthy enough to buy a new $3000 appliance, well, we'll see.

I attended a demo for Frima VarioCooking Center and have since been looking for a temperature-sensing pan for induction cookers (if that is possible). I understand why all those devices are marketed as "smart" but what I'd really like to see is dumb devices that are just sensors and actuators. I hope you also cater to hackers!

There is also Mellow, which I pre-ordered last year. I'm especially excited about using it to cook eggs with perfect soft yolks.

https://cookmellow.com/meet-mellow/

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