Technology has impacted every facet of our lives, with the kitchen being no exception. The last decade has seen mind-blowing advances in everything from cooking appliances through to the advent of the smartphone, which completely changed the way we engage with food. We live in an era where you can brew a pot of coffee by simply pressing a button on your smartphone. This makes you wonder what kind of developments we’ll see over the next decade. Here, we look at five ways that technology has transformed cooking and food in the everyday kitchen:
Induction Cooking
Induction cooktops produce an electromagnetic field that causes your cookware to become the heating element while the cooktop itself stays cool. When used in conjunction with an induction cookware set, this method allows you to reap the benefits of incredibly fast and even heating, an immediate response to a change in temperature settings, superior energy-saving properties and easy maintenance. The stove’s cool-to-touch technology is also a fantastic solution for the clumsier cook – no more burned fingers on the gas hob.
Admit it; there have been occasions where you’ve spent a few minutes angling your iPhone above your smashed avocado at brunch before digging in. The advent of Instagram has entirely revolutionized the way that we cook, with many people opting to spend more time on the presentation of a meal. From rainbow bagels to unicorn-themed drinks, plenty of restaurants and cafes are now conscious of including Insta-friendly offerings on their menus. Likewise, Instagram has played a huge role in popularizing health food, with many happy snappers sharing their Buddha bowls and extolling the virtues of #kale and #quinoa. As a result, people are more aware of healthier food options that they can incorporate into their cooking at home.
Sous Vide
While professional chefs have been using sous vide as a cooking technique for years, it’s recently become popular in homes with the invention of affordable sous vide precision cooking equipment. In French, sous vide means “under vacuum”, and is the process of vacuum-sealing food in a bag and cooking it in a water bath. Because of this method’s second-to-none heat and temperature control, sous vide cooking ensures perfectly done, flavorful food every time with minimal effort.
Apps
Thanks to the Internet, today’s consumers are more educated about what they’re putting into their bodies than ever before. Apps like Fooducate allow users to scan the barcode of products at the supermarket to find nutritional and ingredient information. Furthermore, anyone to access thousands of recipes through a quick Google search and collate them using a recipe manager app like Paprika. With hundreds of meal planning and grocery shopping apps available, making healthy, informed choices about what we eat and how we eat it has never been easier.
Food Delivery
For those nights when you’re too tired to cook or have some crucial TV business to catch up on, you can whip out your smartphone and have food delivered to your door in under an hour. To further reduce delivery times, several countries have even introduced drone food delivery. It’s expected that this technology will truly take off (pardon the pun) in the next several years, reducing the emissions released by delivery vehicles and getting food to hungry customers faster than ever.
Innovations like these have helped make cooking more convenient than ever for the everyday consumer. Perhaps it’s not too far-fetched to hope for a robo-chef that takes care of dinner and does the dishes afterwards in the not-too-distant future!
