When a new appliance comes into my test kitchen with the word “smart” in its name, I tend to keep it at arm’s length, as manufacturers often do a surprising job of forgetting who might cook with it. A new device, however, dangled a specific form of culinary catnip in front of my nose, and I was unable to resist.
That catnip is cooking by weight. Instead of creating a pile of dirty measuring cups and spoons as you cook, you put your mixing bowl on a scale, then weigh each of the ingredients as you pour them in one by one. Combined with good prep, it allows you to blaze through a meal and keep mess to a minimum.
“Whoa, what’s up with Darth Pot,” my wife Elisabeth asked when she came into the kitchen. On the counter was the Chef iQ Smart Cooker, a matte-black, six-quart electric pressure cooker (aka “multicooker,” a class of devices that includes the Instant Pot) that looks like it could be Lord Vader’s robot pet. The brand’s use of “smart” is justified, particularly when considering how the device, with its companion smartphone app, guide you through the cooking process. By pairing a phone with the Chef iQ, users can choose recipes where each step is demonstrated with a little video and the corresponding temperature or pressure gets automatically teed up on the pressure cooker.
Good guided cooking is a heavy lift that involves three key elements: a product that works when it’s not connected, recipes created just for that appliance by chefs with good palates, and a tech team that can create an app that streamlines the cooking process. A dropped ball on any of these causes things to go poof in a hurry. (For great examples of guided cooking look at the Thermomix or Hestan Cue.)
The app offers helpful guidance, but you can still do quite a bit just using the built-in front display.
Photograph: Chef iQIn my initial testing, I found that the Chef iQ capably ticked many of those boxes.