How do we bring the clean, digital world of cooking shows and online recipes into the messy theater of the modern kitchen? You can’t put your laptop in the dishwasher, now can you?
When we first started exploring the idea of what a digital kitchen could be, we created an all-in-one concept that brought cutting boards into the future. We loved it, but for us it failed a critical test: would people really use it? So we rethought the real life experience of cooking and asked ourselves, “How do we bring a computer into the kitchen in a useful way?”
A digital media hub just for the kitchen
Laptops and netbooks are ill-suited to the wet and wild world of cooking, so we imagined a digital media experience that’s up off the countertop. If you have clean hands, then a touchscreen interface is ideal, so our pedestal-mounted tablet uses capacitive touch to access shared recipes, watch my favorite cooking show, or even look up nutritional info. But what if you could also click along while your hands are covered in flour and raw egg?
The dishwasher-safe remote
Sealed in grippy, durable rubber, the remote controls every function of the media hub while being impervious to food splatter and even submersion. The powerful magnet in its base means I can attach it to a lanyard, the fridge door, or dock it at the base of the media hub (where it also recharges its batteries). Now I can cook along with my favorite cooking show and pause the action while I chop onions. None of this “here’s one I prepared earlier” stuff.
A suite of smart tools
Giving kitchen tools the power to measure and communicate with the hub and each other means task by task guidance. Whether it’s preparing a new recipe from your favorite website or counting calories for a nutrition program, knowing precisely what your food weighs and how much of it there is has a lot of advantages. Use the barcode scanner on the media hub to identify pre-packaged ingredients, empty half the bag onto the cutting board and know exactly how many calories you’ve portioned out for yourself. Baking bread from a friend’s recipe? The hub can pre-heat your oven. Need to know if that chicken breast is cooked all the way through? The smart thermometer gives you both the current and the target temperature. The possibilities for both precision and automation are almost endless — all while supporting the fun of cooking.