You don’t need to be a chef to put these connected gadgets to great use in the kitchen. They won’t cook dinner for you, but they help make it a little easier. These items offer a small (and affordable) taste of what connected gadgets can do–both for your cooking skills, and for your peace of mind when you’ve left the kitchen.
Smart Outlet
Photo: Belkin
Control almost anything in your kitchen with one simple addition: a smart outlet. Smart outlets work by simply turning on or off power to a device. They allow you to control that power remotely, through the app. You can control the power manually to instantly switch a smart outlet on and off, or set timers for when a device would get power.
A smart outlet in the kitchen could turn on a water kettle in the morning, turn off a slow cooker when time is up, or even just disconnect devices like microwaves while they aren’t being used. The possibilities are endless.
Google Home
Google Home’s recipe feature makes it an ideal smart speaker for the kitchen. In addition to running timers, it can do unit conversions for you. It even has a vast repository of recipes that it can recite to you as you cook.
Google Home will walk you step by step through the ingredients and the steps. Along the way, if you miss a step or get lost, you can ask a Google Home to repeat or go back a step. Google Home can also continue working as it normally would—playing music, setting timers, etc.
Amazon Echo Show
One of Amazon’s latest smart speaker models, the Echo Show is the smart cooking companion. The Echo Show is the first Amazon Echo with a screen, allowing you to both listen to a recipe or watch a video about it to get the visual experience. It’s limited to recipes available on AllRecipes.com, but if you’re a fan of both audio and visual modes while cooking and want to do it hands-free, it’s an ideal choice.
Drop Scale
Start using a Drop Scale to get ingredient measurements perfect each time. Plus, you won’t have a million dirty cups after a day in the kitchen. This scale pairs with an iOS device and reflects the weight on the scale. It will even show you recipes and guide you through cooking. The scale can only use the recipes in the app, but the Drop also works as a regular scale without an in-app recipe.
