Today, we are going to show you how we, at Kitchen Automatique, are going to improve your stovetop cooking experience.

Heating control is the key to any great cooking. However, heating in stovetop cooking has been quietly annoying people for decades. People don’t notice it because they have been too used to it.

But here’s what really happen whenever heating goes wrong:

1. Ingredients waste: ruining nice ingredients
2. Energy bill cost increases: energy use X2
3. Time wasted: 40 mins in kitchen becomes 1.5 hour
4. More cleaning: wash cookware X2, water & detergent use X2, cooking fume build up X2, oil film formation X2, etc.

We, at Kitchen Automatique, had a similar issue. But now, after 1.5 years of research and development, we are glad to show you why precision temperature control can help solve all these.

‍First of all, precision temperature control is actually already everywhere inside your kitchen. You set oven to exact 350°F when baking. Your fridge is probably set at 5°C–7°C or 34°F — 40°F right now. Because these appliance have a temperature sensor that constantly measure the temperature. So the set temperature are being maintained even after you have the fridge door opened while figuring out what’s for dinner. Once you close the door, you never worry about if the fridge will still keep your food cool or not. Same thing with an oven, you don’t ever think about set temperature will be reached & maintained or not. Now, what if we can control stovetop’s temperature worry free ?

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The answer is YES!

However, stovetop heating control comes with 3 unique challenges. First of all, it is not a enclosed chamber like a refrigerator or an oven where the air temperature are measured. For a stovetop, you are actually controlling the temperature of the cookware’s surface. Therefore, you need direct temperature sensing of the cookware’s surface. Current stovetops either don’t have temperature sensing of the cookware’s metal surface at all (eg. gas stoves)or the temperature sensing is beneath the cooktop’s ceramic glass (eg. most electric or induction cooktops). This results in either no temperature reading or complete inaccurate reading.

Second of all, with an oven, you would set one temperature and a timer for each cooking. But on a stovetop, you are likely to adjust temperature multiple times throughout cooking. This would require the temperature sensing to have fast response whenever the user changes the temperature. Also, you would need a good user interface that shows where the actual temperature of the cookware is relative to the set temperature. Most of refrigerators and ovens lack of these because they don’t constantly change and set multiple temperatures. Therefore, their user interface is very rudimentary — you would only see 1 temperature display and a pair of plus & minus buttons or a dial.

The third thing is the current stovetops that claimed to have temperature control tend to have very bad heating mechanism. Without being too technical, due to their circuit design, they can only use an on and off cycle method to maintain the heating. This results in +/-30 degree temperature difference, which leads to overcooking.‍ This could totally ruin your temperature sensitive food.

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In a nut shell, current stovetops’ problems:

1. Lack of temperature sensing or inaccurate temperature sensing.
2. Poor or no user interface for temperature reading and setting.
3. The heating circuit technology uses an on & off cycle mechanism, which easily leads to temperature overshoots and hence overcooking.‍

Now, let’s look at the Precision Heat Control technology on the Vision Infinity Cooktop

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1. The temperature sensor is spring loaded and sits at the glass level with the sensor’s head protruding above the glass level. When a cookware is being placed on, it springs back down with the sensor’s head firmly touching the bottom of the cookware. This ensures the temperature reading of the cookware’s surface is the most responsive and accurate.

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2. Instead of giant temperature swings and overshoots, our heating would make small gentle pulses to maintain the temperature within +/- 1 degree of the set temperature. Hold it there for as long as you want. Never burn anything. It’s like magic. You have full control over it.

3. A complete new user interface for the cooktop. It is very intuitive. If you have used a smart phone or a smart thermostat like Google Nest Thermostat, you already know how to use this. The Red Arc Progress Bar represents the actual temperature of the cookware. It tries to catch on with the White Oval Rectangle, which represents the set temperature, whenever the user changes the set temperature.

Your life (after precision temperature control)

Imagine this:

Instead of sticking at medium-high heat, your sunny side up eggs would sliding off the pan at 380˚F.

Instead of scorching at medium-low heat, your shallots produces a savory aroma at 300˚F and can hold it there, never burning.

Instead of going into trash can, your first crepes come off in golden color at 400˚F while being perfectly cooked and not sticking.

All your cookware is non-stick from now on because of the synergy of precision temperature and “Leidenfrost effect” which requires the temperature to be in the range of 320°F — 465°F (160 °C — 240°C).

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Dial the temperature into 320°F – 465°F according to the ingredients. Your eggs, salmons and pancakes will slide off the pan, making cleaning extra easy.

Closing

With precision temperature control, professional cooking skill is now in everyone’s hands. Cooking becomes so straightforward and no guesswork, making consistent perfect dish every time.

We believe, for the next decade, a truly innovative kitchen appliance should harnesses all the techniques that top chefs spend their lives perfecting and put that culinary power in the hands of the rest of us — home cooks and amateur chefs — whether you are making dinner for your family or an intermediate chef, trying to hone your skills, or a local volunteer, helping feed your community by the streets.

We’ve strived to not only bring precision temperature control to the stovetop but also to reimagine what a recipe can be because of it. We called them the digital interactive recipes (More on that in our next blog).

Together with our digital interactive recipes, we see a future in which all cooks at any level are empowered by precision temperature to do more than what they are capable of in the kitchen.

Kitchen Automatique

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