Gluttonatious gourmet, greedy Gretchen, fancy foodie, or cutting-edge cordon bleu chef, we’re always hungry for high-tech hybrids that can help satiate the belly better. A saucepan you can plug into your car for fried eggs on the road, breakfast toast with “I love you” messages browned on it, a fridge that stashes handily under the kitchen counter top, an e-book reader that can be tortured with turmeric, a cake knife that sings, a saucepan that reads recipe cards...

Life in the kitchen, it would seem, gets cooler by the minute. So, from the mad to the mundane, here are some of the most canny, out-of-the-lab, in-the-cookhouse culinary contrivances that you can chomp on.

Electrolux Cocoon Cooker

www.electrolux.com
Price: To be announced

By the look of this gadget it appears that the microwave as we know it is soon going to be pickled in a museum. The upcoming Electrolux Cocoon is designed to use radio frequencies on any piece of fish or chicken not only to calculate the perfect cooking time but also “grow it”! Which means that, the special meat cell pouches (akin to microwaveable popcorn kernel sachets) when bunged into the Cocoon, enlarge and expand in proportion while cooking. The contraption employs RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) signals to discern the type of fish or meat cells (yes, cells, not pieces of the butchered animal’s flesh) that have been placed inside. Then, the meat’s muscle cells, along with nutrients and oxygen, are heated for a pre-set time and edible meat is born.

Kalorik Tabletop Wine Chiller

www.amazon.com
Price: $99 (Rs 4,470 approx.)

Serve whites like Chenin Blancs, Rieslings, Sauvignon Blancs and regular Chardonnays at 7°C. Anything cooler, and the aromas and flavours are diluted. It’s 10°C for the fuller bodied whites like the Sauternes and light reds (Beaujolais). What about reds that are supposed to be served at room temperature? By “room” here actually means wine cellar temperature (generally 13°C to 14°C). So that’s the temperature you need for your Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz or Zinfandel. To get such precision for the palate, Mr Connoisseur, what you need is the Kalorik Wine Cooler. Plonk your poison into this cooler; set the temperature on the built-in, backlit LCD screen and thermo-electrics does the rest. It has two wireless temperature probes that are designed to insert into uncorked wine bottles in order to send accurate temperature readings of the wine itself to LCDs on the chiller. And both chambers can be set to different temperatures.

iTouchless TM002 TowelMatic Sensor Dispenser Paper Towel Holder

http://is.gd/iDXQG
Price: $90 (Rs 4,064 approx.)

Ain’t it galling when you end up unravelling reams and reams of tissue off a kitchen tissue paper roll with every quick, careless tug? And ain’t it even more galling (not to mention, tedious and time-consuming) having to roll the extra lengths back — even when you are not in a hurry? Well, this TowelMatic promises to consign all that wasteful effort to history. Equipped with a built-in optical scanner that identifies the perforations on the paper towel, it stops precisely at the perforated line, making tearing towel sheets easy. It can be pre-set for any brand of paper and/ or dispensing length. If you don’t want to periodically change the four batteries (rated to last up to one year or 100 rolls of standard 80-sheet towels) that power its operation, you can buy the optionally available AC adaptor. The TowelMatic can used on a counter/ table top or mounted on a wall.

SmartShopper Shopping List Organiser

www.smartshopperusa.com
Price: $60 (Rs 2,700 approx.)

Here’s something that takes the pain out of putting together and then writing out your household and grocery shopping list. It listens to its master’s or mistress’ voice. Literally. A look-ma-no-hands gizmo, it allows you to create, organise and print grocery lists, using your voice to input each item that needs to be bought. There are as many as 2,50,000 of them already pre-programmed into it to make things easy. So, you simply need to vocally articulate what you need to buy and then print out a neatly categorised shopping list. Anyone in the family can use it. And you can even flag items that have special offers or coupons.

RFIQ Bitakurafuto Pan Set

http://is.gd/iDYFy
Price: ¥89,705 (Rs 48,228 approx.)

Robotic cookware for dummies! Believe it or not, this dumb looking RFIQ tin-pan set is actually an induction-powered hot plate capable of scanning special recipe cards via an RFID reader built into the handle. It comes with 100 recipes on three RFID recipe cards. The culinary challenged can wave (literally!) a recipe at this super chef, the information sets the cooking temperature and you get step-by-step audio instructions for the selected recipe. The pan self-actuates the water in a circular motion so muttonheads need not stir the khaana either. And there’s little chance of burning your brinjal as the handle also communicates with the induction heater to monitor the food 16 times per second.

Motorised Ice Cream Cone Holder

http://is.gd/ix82R
Price: $10 (Rs 450 approx.)

Life is uncertain. So, they say, you should always eat your dessert first. For sweet-toothed (and maybe ludicrously lazy) folk out there, this motorised ice cream cone holder could be one cool thingamajig. Plop some scoops of ice cream into the cone holder, push a little button on the device, stick out your tongue and savour the delight as it auto-rotates in front of your greedy jaws. Sculpt the frozen confection as it goes along for some playful, creative fun as the cone spins or even vibrates and agitates. Available in orange, pink, green or purple, the holder requires two AA batteries to function.

Demy Kitchen Safe Reader

www.mydemy.com
Price: $200 (Rs 9,030 approx.)

Now here’s something that could possibly ensure the health and well-being of your laptop. Or at least save its keyboard from colourful condiments, spice showers and splashes of solvents. A grease and waterproof touchscreen e-reader specifically for the kitchen, it can store up to 2,500 recipes. You keep your recipe selection on your www.keyingredient.com account and sync your Demy with it by plugging it into the USB port of your PC. Not just that, it has three built-in timers to notify you of cooking times and a conversion tool to convert your portions from one measurement to another — ounces to grams, quarts to litres etc. You can even plan meals for special occasions by adding recipes to a short list ready reckoner. Screen font too small? Enlarge it. Missing an ingredient? Look up the provided substitution list to salvage your dish.

Black & Decker Lids Off Jar Opener

www.amazon.com
Price: $27 (Rs 1,220 approx.)

Quit struggling to open that new jar of jam. This Black & Decker is going to wipe the ugly, contorted grimace off your face forever. As the name aptly describes, the handy contraption can open any sized jar. And it does it at the mere press of a button once the jar has been placed in the appropriate position. The adjustable height makes it convenient to open various sizes of jars and the collapsible design makes it fairly easy to store as well.

Kenwood Cooking Chef

www.kenwoodworld.com
Price: $1,500 (Rs 67,700 approx.)

It may look like a plain vanilla food processor-blender-mixer but as is often said, appearances can be very deceptive. This 1,500-watt Kenwood mixer works in sync with an in-built temperature controlled 1,100-watt induction burner that makes for cooking to happen while being constantly stirred in the 6.7-litre cooking bowl. So, not only does it chop, slice, dice, mix, knead and blend — it also prepares, steams and cooks food for you. Apart from various stirring attachments and accessories for the mixer, the temperature of the bowl can be varied from 20°C to 140°C. A hot gadget with a price tag that will turn you stone cold!

Musical Cake Slicer

http://is.gd/ixf1j
Price: £9.99 (Rs 710 approx.)

This changes the icing on the cake. And quite audibly, at that. Perfect complement for those who are too shy, slothful, or too tuneless to sing at a birthday celebration, this musical cake slicer gives you the background score to sing along with. Why just birthdays, it will also belt out Jingle Bells, the Wedding March as well as For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow at the press of an appropriate button. It has a stainless steel blade with one serrated and one flat edge. The audio is powered by two AA batteries which fit into a removable compartment that can be detached while cleansing the slicer.

www.twitter.com/ashishone