Kitchen Technology for Rice, Coffee and Cooking Thermometers - Tool Kit We expect technology in certain places. We even welcome it. Technology in the workplace? A given. At home in the living room? Awesome - more movies to watch, more music to listen to, more games to play. When we're traveling? Also a boon. We gain a wealth of information, and therefore power, as we compare fares, rebook canceled flights and find taxis in strange cities at odd hours. But the kitchen has always been a minefield for technology. People have been talking about "the kitchen of tomorrow" since before the Eisenhower administration, and I suspect they always will. That's because the act of cooking holds different meanings for different people. It's science, on the one hand, but also an act of tradition, artisanship and an even intentional imprecision that runs counter to the way most technology accomplishes things, in exact, measured ways. No doubt, there have been some hits when it comes to tech in the kitchen, but they are few and far between. The microwave oven seems to have secured its place on the countertop, but other appliances are not all that different from their predecessors of 50 or even 75 years ago. The last great innovation was the addition of a chilled water dispenser on the refrigerator. Recently I looked at three products that try to bring the digital age to the kitchen: a rice cooker, an iPhone-linked thermometer and a coffee maker that wants to put a Starbucks on your countertop. Are they more than just gimmicks? Do they improve the overall kitchen experience? Here is how they fared. RICE COOKER The necessary equipment for cooking rice is simple: a pot, some water, some rice. But in Asia, where rice cooking is generally done on a daily basis, the rice cooker has evolved into an extremely high-tech machine. On the top shelf sits the NP-HTC10 rice cooker ($400) from the Japanese manufacturer Zojirushi. While the simplest rice cooker is basically a small slow cooker, this model adds three features that are supposed to make rice cooking easier and better. The first is a microprocessor using fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is a mathematical concept developed in the 1960s and "70s that tried to account for "degrees of truth," as opposed to true/false outcomes. The idea got a lot of attention in the ensuing years as one of the underpinnings for artificial intelligence and even deconstructionist literary theory, but these days those who are not mathematicians or computer scientists mostly hear about it in the context of consumer products, like rice cookers. With fuzzy logic, the Zojirushi's microprocessor can analyze the cooking conditions in the rice cooker and make on-the-fly adjustments. If the rice is cooking too quickly or too slowly, the heating element can be adjusted. Other parameters can be tweaked for short-grain, sushi-grade rice or medium-grain brown rice. The second bit of technology added to the Zojirushi is induction heating. There is no heating element to speak of; the whole bowl is the heating element. Using induction, the Zojirushi can provide even heat to the entire cooking area. The last piece of tech is pressurized cooking. The Zojirushi uses pressure to cook rice at higher temperatures, which can make for fluffier rice, and fluffy rice is huge in rice-cooker land. The end result? The Zojirushi made me feel as if I were an assistant to a great sushi chef. My rice came out perfect, every time. Nothing overcooked, nothing sticking. And thanks to the fuzzy logic, not only was my rice cooked perfectly, but the Zojirushi could keep it warm and soft for at least 24 hours. It's a small pleasure, to be sure, but a pleasure nonetheless (and since I'm the parent of a baby and a 6-year-old, rice is a big deal in our house). It's also a pleasure that can be had for far less than $400. While induction heating and pressurized cooking are nice, the main advantages of microprocessor-controlled cooking can be found in rice cookers by other manufacturers, like Panasonic's SR-DE103, for around $100. Even Zojirushi makes a model that is priced near $100. THERMOMETER The second product that is meant to bring the latest technology to the kitchen is iDevice's iGrill, an $80 wireless thermometer that can link up with a smartphone to display cooking temperatures. In theory, this is mildly useful; roasts or pork shoulders can cook while you do other things around the house, and your smartphone will alert you when your food is approaching the target temperature. But that is not terribly different from what a lot of standard remote thermometers can do, and they can cost as little as $20. The smartphone connects to iGrill through an iGrill app, which includes some added features like the ability to plot the food's temperature change on a graph (which can then be downloaded as a PDF or Excel-ready file, though who really does that?). In my test, the app was clunky, and it was not always clear that I still had a connection to the probe inserted into my food. For roughly the same money, I would rather have a Thermapen ($90), an instant-read thermometer that comes with a certification form verifying its accuracy to within a tenth of a degree. The Thermapen is simple to use - just unfold the probe and stick it into whatever you want to measure the temperature of - and is so accurate that I could see different temperature readings as the probe moved toward the center of my pork roast. COFFEE MAKER The last product I tested was arguably the most extravagant. Actually, it isn't even arguable; the Jura Impressa J9 is a $2,900 fully automatic espresso maker. Fully automatic means that water, coffee beans and milk go into various compartments of the J9 and the machine takes care of the rest. Select your drink and the J9 grinds (coffee snobs take note: it's a proper conical-burr grinder), tamps and brews the coffee, while also heating or steaming milk, if that's required. A full-color display shows a variety of coffee drinks you can select. The machine periodically rinses itself, so all you have to do is empty the bin of coffee grounds and clean the drip tray. It's a magnificent machine that turns any owner into a barista. But let's break this down for a second. The machine is $2,900. That $2,900 will buy you about 966 tall lattes at Starbucks. And that's not counting coffee beans, milk or sugar. But who am I kidding? If you're making these kinds of calculations, you're probably not the person who is thinking about buying a $3,000 espresso maker. That person is probably trying to figure out if will fit in the Gulfstream G550.