Anyone else fantasize about an AI kitchen assistant that just… knows when your food is actually done?
Not gonna lie, I’m a pretty mediocre cook. Eating out is too expensive though, so I end up cooking at home more than I’d like, and it’s always a bit of a gamble. Half the time my food comes out either bland, weirdly undercooked, or overcooked. I follow…
Not gonna lie, I’m a pretty mediocre cook. Eating out is too expensive though, so I end up cooking at home more than I’d like, and it’s always a bit of a gamble. Half the time my food comes out either bland, weirdly undercooked, or overcooked. I follow recipes and somehow still don’t get what the picture promised. And honestly, the whole “stop, check the recipe, go back to cooking” cycle is just… tedious. Cooking can be fun when I’m in the mood, but on a regular weeknight after work it’s mostly a chore. So after a long day, standing in the kitchen (sometimes with barely anything in the fridge because I forgot to grocery shop, lol), I catch myself wishing there was some kind of AI agent built into my kitchen that could just handle the annoying parts. Like, the oven automatically figuring out the right temp/time for whatever casserole I threw in, or something telling me “flip it now” while I’m cooking meat on the induction stove. I haven’t really thought through what this would look like in detail, just the general “please stop me from messing this up” fantasy. Anyone else think about this? Curious what other kitchen-disaster people out there imagine an AI kitchen agent could actually do for them.
Collected discussion
yeah totally agree with you there. AI can’t solve everything, that’s fair (even though I’ve literally been working with Claude all day today lol)
It's timers all the way down
I don't want AI to do my art so I have time for my chores. I want AI to do my chores so I have time for my art. I enjoy cooking. Don't take that from me.
yeah exactly. AI can’t replace the actual joy of cooking either.
Hahaha, I think you and I have a very different view of what the joy of cooking is! I think you have a market in people who don't like to cook. "check the recipe". You use a recipe? That's your problem! Hahaha "please stop me from messing this up". But, messing up is the fun part! What about an app that helps you move from it being a chore to a joy? Something that explains _why_ the recipe says to do it that way? Like, when the recipe says "fold in the cheese", why not just mix it? For example, I gave Gemini this prompt. It seemed to do an okay job, but the prompt could use some tweaking. I bet, with some work, you could turn it into an app that would help that "newbie to confident" phase. I'm a beginning cook and I want to try something difficult. Look at this recipe foir a souffle - https://www.seriouseats.com/savory-cheese-souffle - and tell me anything that I, as a new cook, might need to know. For example, in step 2, it says to use a bechamel - what is a bechamel? Please look for anything that might confuse a beginner like me
Buy a food thermometer. Helped out a lot. Now I can cook my food to the desired level of overcooked the way I like it.
Yeah there are so many AI bros trying to think of the next AI integration whereas common sense seems to die out. What are those people going to do when there is a power outage and their kitchen-AI won't tell them what to do anymore?
It’s you. Remembering to get groceries and being able to follow the directions in a recipe are such basic skills. Ai isn’t gonna solve your problems.
I think the current batch of LLMs may lack training data on these sorts of things. Apparently it's the same hurdle for humanoid robots - they simply don't have enough data to make them work. Things like image generation, coding or general knowledge has a vast corpus of training data so they are relatively effective. But there isn't a massive amount of data showing what different foods look like at different levels of cooked-ness. You could ask a multi-modal LLM like gemini if some food looks cooked, and it would probably tell you *something*. But I doubt it would be reliable. There are companies trying to make "AI cooking robots" e.g. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noshone/noshone-ai-robo-chef-get-fresh-and-healthy-meals-effortlessly?ref=profile_created&category_id=338 But I suppose it's mostly using timers to add ingredients and the AI part is a gimmick.
Try Epicurious channel on Youtube, their educational videos really brought my skillset to a whole new level. You don't do stop, check the recipe, go back to cooking You watch how they do the same recipe at 3 different levels (amateur, learner, pro), select parts that you like for yourself and make your own version. As for "food is actually done"... Most frequent reason for under/overcooking the food is uneven piece sizes. So either train yourself to cut ingredients evenly or buy machines that would do it for you (it's like $50 for one). And get yourself a couple thermometers (one infrared to check surfaces, one meat) and kitchen scales.