Traeger Grill, Kenwood Cooking Chef XL, DeLonghi PrimaDonna Soul make you the kitchen expert
Appliances from fridges to BBQs are starting to ship with Wi-Fi and make you the expert.
What started as simply adding a smart speaker into the kitchen to convert ounces to grams while following a recipe has quickly taken a whole new turn.
Appliances from fridges to BBQs are starting to ship with Wi-Fi and even have companion apps. Some brands are simply following the new trend while others are changing the way we use them for the better.
Traeger Grill with WiFIRE
Smoking meat and low and slow cooking has grown in popularity throughout the pandemic. The art of cooking the perfect brisket is normally left to pitmasters and American BBQ houses.
Traeger pellet grills has made anyone an expert with their connected range. Named “WiFIRE”, Traeger has added temperature meters and controls to their pellet grills that allow you to use their companion app to set and forget your cooking.
Following one of the many recipes in the Traeger app lets you set the correct temperature for your grill. With the supplied temperature monitoring the progress you receive a notification when your dish is ready.
Far from just being a meat machine, the Traeger app has recipes for desserts such as cookies and pie which will keep all members of the household happy.
In our experience, the WiFIRE technology brought peace of mind to the burden of cooking a large cut of meat and doing it justice. The probe let us check the internal temperature from our phone instead of lifting the hood and losing heat.
As a nervous cook I did this many times and eventually trusted the app to notify me when our food was ready. When entertaining, this system lets you be with the guests and not be staring at temperature readings. The Traeger grills with WiFIRE start at $1,599.
Kenwood Cooking Chef XL
We have recently been testing the Kenwood Cooking Chef XL when preparing desserts. What looks like a typical mixer actually is so much more, and the 4.3 inch touchscreen is the first giveaway. The Cooking Chef XL can weigh, mix and even heat contents up to 180 degrees.
The touchscreen lets you navigate a menu for preset functions like making a sponge cake or simply kneading dough. The companion app provides access to 100s of sweet and savoury recipes which at each step will send the commands to your Cooking Chef XL. You simply add ingredients along the way.
We used it to make risotto and panna cotta with better than expected results. The Kenwood Cooking Chef XL retails at $1,798.
DeLonghi PrimaDonna Soul
The closure of cafes during the pandemic brought a growing need in the home. A good coffee machine became an investment for many households.
The DeLonghi PrimaDonna Soul is an easy to manage all-in-one coffee machine which uses bean adapt technology to adjust grind settings to suit your choice of beans. Unfortunately, this tool can only be managed in the companion app.
DeLonghi has long had the ability to use a companion app for its high-end coffee machines but you could normally do all of the functions without it.
The bean adapt technology works brilliantly. The coffee is certainly different when the machine is aware of which beans you’re using.
The companion app you use to make your coffee is more of a gimmick. Firstly, when the machine wakes up in the morning it needs to rinse, something you don’t want your cup there for.
Remotely turning on your machine and initiating your first coffee requires you to be at the machine in person regardless. Fortunately, the machine without the gimmick is still an excellent cafe for the home. The PrimaDonna Soul sells for $1,999.
Companion apps make you feel like a wizard when they add value, but they sometimes are more of a burden.
Be aware that connected devices in the home are potential cyber security risks.
Nevertheless, we loved how these connected kitchen appliances made us instant experts.
Geoff Quattromani is the host of the Technology Uncorked podcast and contributor to The Australian. Continue the conversation with Geoff on Twitter at @GQuattromani.
Why that Valentine’s Day gift might head back to the shop
Australians returned more than $11m in gifts, or 88,600 items, in the fortnight after Christmas and it could be down to people cashing in what they can to make ends meet, a data collector says.
CEO still MIA as Richard White is back with a vengeance
WiseTech says it is progressing with its search for a new chief, as Richard White wastes no time settling into his new $1m a year consulting role at the company he took some brief leave from.