Cooking is interactive and requires a certain degree of flexibility.

Things don't always go as planned in the kitchen and even when they do, the necessity to be able to hop from one thing to the next is something that is as natural as stirring the sauce while keeping one eye on the meat.

Dealing with variables is a fact of life in the kitchen and the Thermador Freedom Induction Cooktop can accommodate. The new cooktop for home kitchens is designed to allow cookware of any size to be placed anywhere on its surface.

A series of 48 individual … Read more

Food (and wine) storage requires a commitment. The big appliances that house our food and drink often do so with little regard for their surroundings. Considering that these appliances dominate the kitchen landscape, it should be easy to make them act and look like we want them too. The Thermador 2012 Freedom Collection would agree.

The ability to customize the kitchen according to how we see fit is an achievable goal thanks to the modular styling of the collection. The built-in appliances include customizable refrigerators, freezers, and wine-storage units with a host of improvements that have been applied to the … Read more

Ah, the toaster: the ubiquitous appliance that has been found in varies guises on kitchen countertops for generations. Styles may have changed through the years, but the basic idea has always been the same and that is to make bread more delicious by browning it. That includes the ones that toast differently.

There a few things we have come to expect out of toasters and one of those things is a lever to lift the finished product out of the appliance. Sure, there are toasters galore with motorized lifts, but usually when it comes right down to it, we can … Read more

A home full of "smart" devices that can communicate still needs apps to give people a reason to use them.

Grid upstart Tendril today opened up a developer site to encourage the creation of applications that do something interesting with energy-related information. Tendril had already published some of the APIs for its cloud-based platform in a closed beta, but it is now opening up the service to more developers and adding documentation.

The Tendril Connect platform provides some of the plumbing to collect energy consumption data and present it back to consumers on different devices, such as computers, … Read more

Kitchens are a place of surprises. It is not uncommon to uncover an unfamiliar appliance or gadget and wonder exactly what it may be used for. Sometimes, however, it is even the familiar ones that leave us asking questions.

There is usually very little mystery surrounding the utility of the oven; even at its most basic level the concept is easy to grasp: turn it on, put food in, and take out cooked food. While how to cook food is a question worthy of asking, everyday equipment like an oven usually doesn't require much consideration. Assuming one can find … Read more

Hot-air popcorn poppers are not delicate pieces of engineering that require precise manufacturing to achieve popping perfection. And this shouldn't come as much of a surprise; the appliances are more akin to hair dryers than to any other device or gadget found in the kitchen.

Regardless of the provenance of hot-air popcorn poppers in general, for the most part they all look the same. Operation is simple: pour in some kernels and turn it on. The hot air circulates around the kernels, pushing them about until they pop and emerge out of some chutelike contrivance. It's a basic, … Read more

The area on the kitchen counter traditionally reserved for the toaster no longer has that reservation as it has been deservedly overtaken by more-productive toaster ovens. This is to be expected as heating up a slice of pizza in an upright toaster is clearly not a good idea. What is a good idea, though, is using the same area on the counter to cook rotisserie chicken.

Of course, trying to cook rotisserie chicken in a regular toaster oven isn't a very good idea either, but luckily there is a solution. The Wolfgang Puck Dual Convection Oven with Rotisserie & Baking Drawer … Read more

Kitchen appliances don't usually offer much to excite the ear. At best, when a task is completed, they signal with a simple "beep."

And it's not to be unexpected; all it is meant to do is alert the user that something is ready.

There may not be a plethora of information available and tech specs seem to be non-existent, but the Argentinian company, BGH, is producing a microwave that cooks to a different tune. The BGH Quick Chef Music incorporates a USB port that lets users upload a song to be played instead of the all-too-familiar … Read more

Ugh. There's no worse first-world problem than having to wait for your food to come out of the microwave.

Thanks to a group of young developers, you can now watch YouTube videos on your microwave while you're waiting for those delicious little White Castle burgers. Mmmm.

The uWave is basically an HP TouchPad connected to a microwave, but its functionality is so much more than that.… Read more