Categories
Cooking

Turn your home into a mini-Benihana with Partyaki

One of the nice things about Teppanyaki-style Japanese restaurants is that they allow diners to watch their food being cooked together as a group, whether it’s with friends or family.

patent-claimedPartyaki is a patent-pending, teppanyaki-style grill that allows consumers to duplicate the experience of a hibachi grill in their own homes. It’s modeled after the same professional grills typically seen in Japanese steakhouses, and is designed to help the user prepare the same kind of meals associated with such restaurants.

Categories
Cooking Robots/Drones

No cooks needed in the kitchen with OneCook auto multi-cooker

Depending on who it is, cooking can either be a fulfilling experience or an absolute chore. Usually, what makes it the latter is a chronic lack of time due to the busy, demanding lifestyles that are prevalent today.

OneCook is a godsend for students, full-time workers — basically, anyone without time. By outsourcing the entire cooking process to the fully automated multi-cooker, people can step away from the kitchen at the touch of a button, avoiding minor injuries and never whipping up a tasteless chicken parm again.

Categories
Food and Beverage

Miito is a mighty quick and energy-efficient way to heat liquids

The standard method used to heat liquids including water has been with a kettle or pot. But that traditional system often leads to a lot of waste of water and other liquids because people tend to heat more than they actually use. The traditional heating method also requires a lot of energy.

Miito is a device designed to solve those issues. It is made up of a small, circular induction base unit that the user places a cup or any other vessel on and a heating rod that then gets placed inside the vessel and quickly brings the water, soup or almost any other liquid to a boil. Miito will cost about $100 when it ships in April 2016. Its makers set a Kickstarter goal of raising $167,383 by June 14.

Categories
Cooking

GoSun Grill captures sun’s rays to char your burger even at night

Grilling is one of the preferred ways to cook, especially in the summertime. Most require propane or charcoal to work, however, making them less than convenient at times.

patent-claimedThe GoSun Grill changes all of that with its solar technology. Fold out the reflectors in the sunshine for two hours and enjoy hours of cooking time. The thermal battery stores the solar charge and lets the grill be used at any time, even at night. This grill can roast, boil, steam, or bake anything you want. It doesn’t require any dirty fuel and is completely portable. The grill cooks anything evenly from 360 degrees for delicious, cleanly-made food.

The GoSun Grill certainly changes the game of grilling. Not only does it display awesome potential for cooking, but also demonstrates the power of developing solar technology. For one, backers will need to fork over $399 with delivery in September 2015. GoSun hopes to raise $140,000 with the help of Kickstarter.

Categories
Camping Cooking

GoBQ Grill uses fireproof fabric to tote grill around

Summertime is coming, which means grilling time is coming. There’s nothing like a dinner prepared on a grill. Not only is it delicious, but it also carries the added bonus of cooking outside. Most grills, however, are hefty and can’t easily be moved around.

patent-claimedThe GoBQ Grill is a different kind of grill. Not only does it burn charcoal and produce delicious food (according to its campaign), but it’s also completely portable. The grill itself can easily fold up into a duffel-like bag. Notably, the metal is flexible and the fabric of the bag is completely fireproof. The grill comes complete with a foldable stand so that you’re not stuck cooking on the ground.

The GoBQ Grill takes portable camping grills like Campfire in a Can and ups the ante. With the ultra convenience of portability and foldability, the GoBQ Grill makes camping all the more delicious, easy, and enticing. One will cost backers $120 for delivery in August. This product is looking to raise $30,000 in funding on Indiegogo by May 2.

Categories
Connected Objects Cooking

Babs connected kitchen assistant helps keep both your gadgets and grub clean

A kitchen is only pristine when it isn’t being used to whip up a delicious breakfast, lunch, or dinner. When food preparation is on the agenda, kitchens can get real messy real quick, making it onerous to both cook and simultaenously reference resources like cookbooks and internet recipes.

Salted Wire’s Babs smart kitchen assistant is here to help out in that regard. The Bags smart kitchen is exactly what people need to prevent their recipe books from getting soaked with water and their iPad screens from becoming grease-laden cesspools. Bats utilizes voice controls, thereby allowing users to ask Babs for anything as varied as dinner ideas tailored to specific dietary needs to suggestions on making a current recipe better. To make up for its lack of a display, the device is capable of interfacing with Chromecast, Android devices, and iOS devices. As a result, users can send whatever information they’d like to smartphones, tablets, and TVs to truly provide for a hands-off experience.

Categories
Cooking Features

Out There: SteamerWiener cooks hotdogs on a special stick, produces giggles all around

Out There is a feature that highlights weird, wacky or woeful projects.

Hotdogs are one of those foods that are fun and delicious to eat. Not just because they’re made out of mystery meat, but because they’re, well, phallic-shaped.

Now there’s a way to cook hotdogs the way they should be prepared. SteamerWiener looks like a little man with a long, sharp prong protruding from his crotch. To use, stick that hotdog on there and you’ve got yourself one funny sight. It looks like a little metal man cooking his own hotdog on a barbecue! Interestingly enough, this product actually uses a steam engine to rotate the wiener for an even cooking experience.

SteamerWiener is one of those products that would do well in the initiation packet of any fraternity. Beyond that, it’s useful only for cheap giggles from men who still delight in the sight of penises in unusual places. One of the big ones, oh yea, can be had for a donation of $69 (yes, really) for delivery in July 2015. SteamerWiener is looking to raise $60,000 in funding.

Categories
Connected Objects Food and Beverage

Neo Smart Jar puts a lid on foods, whips up recipes for whatever’s around

If the crowdfunding world has taught us anything, it’s that everything deserves Bluetooth. The Neo Smart Jar demonstrates how even an everyday object can be completely transformed with Bluetooth connectivity.

Pantries everywhere are filled with foods and ingredients whose quantity and freshness are easily and quickly forgotten. The Neo Smart Jar steps in to help by using Bluetooth to communicate pertinent food information to a companion iOS or Android app. The Neo Smart Jar not only keeps track of food quantity and nutrition in real time, but it can also sync that information with paired fitness devices. Additionally the Neo Smart Jar can send out freshness alerts and create consumption trends of foods and ingredients over time.

What’s more, Neo can even make cooking easier: the app suggests recipes based on what’s available, and adjusts both the quantities needed and portion size depending on the number of guests at the table. Lastly ,the jar’s companion app can dynamically update shopping lists, even going so far as to automatically place orders for required items via Amazon (additional partner stores are in the works).

Each jar charges wirelessly and can runs for several months off a single charge, thus making the Neo Smart Jar a truly modern update to the humble glass jar of yore. A single Neo goes for $54, two can be had for $99, and a set of six can be picked up for $299. The $50,000 campaign is looking to ship the connected piece of kitchenware by November 2015.

Given the sheer variety of available helpful crowdfunded products for the kitchen, including the Pantelligent, ChefBot and the CookStarta, it seems like the cooking process itself may now be the hardest part of the cooking equation. While other products may tack on Bluetooth as an afterthought, the Neo Smart Jar implements it intelligently, and it shows.

Categories
Cooking

Carson Rodizio BBQ Kit will never meat with defeat

Those who have survived Brazilian barbecues tell tale of endless skewers of perfectly grilled meats that make for an experience nearly impossible to duplicate at home.

The Carson Rodizio BBQ Kit is aiming for the next level in one-of-a-kind culinary delights by converting a conventional BBQ grill into a skewer driven rotisserie machine. The pieces just snap and fit together without apparent need for tools.

The six adjustable stainless steel skewers with aluminum handles offer bi-level cooking with searing shelves, and a third tier for resting and roasting. The product has commercial-grade high heat insulated wiring for safety and a city bus windshield wiper motor driving the spindles that can easily whirl as much as 30 pounds of food at an adjustable speed.

The Rodizio kit is sure to create a differentiated experience for those used to the same old hot dogs, burgers and steaks. This campaign seeks to raise $200,000 by March 24, 2015. Early bird backers get one product for $250 with an expected delivery of May 2015.

Categories
Camping

Back to the Backers: Campfire in a Can comes roaring back to life

For those who thought that Campfire in a Can was a great idea the first time around and were disappointed when that campaign goal wasn’t met, the heat is on this time. The results are looking good.

Campfire in a Can allows the user to be able to start a cooking fire outdoors without having to rely on finding wood. While wood is an option, the product also works with charcoal and propane. The really nice thing here is that it’s all contained in one canister so that it transports easily to one’s favorite campsite or picnic area. Even in times of burning bans outside, Campfire in a Can can still be used because the design is classified as a contained fire.

Great product? Or potential lawsuit? Campfire in a Can is designed with safety in mind and the perfect addition to any campsite. This campaign seeks to raise $48,000 by March 6. For $144, backers get one product (including propane-burning capability) with an expected delivery in June of this year.