Smart Kitchen: Useful Features and Clever Routines for Smart Kitchen Designs

The latest in the kitchen today is the smart home kitchen. Smart fridges, stoves, coffee makers, and microwaves all offer you opportunities to "automate" your kitchen. Of course, you can't actually automate a kitchen (yet). 

Your mixer can't crack and separate the eggs for you. Your oven can't actually set your cakes on the cooling trays. But there are some pretty cool ways you can automate your home cooking.

Futuristic smart kitchens are all well and good, but let's take a realistic look at what you can really do with the technology available today.

The Smart Kitchen Features that Matter

• Video Monitoring
• Preheating
• Scheduled Functions
• Select Smart Alerts
• Smart Lights
• Trigger Events

The most important thing to know about your smart kitchen appliances is their most useful features. The built-in tablet and talking ice dispenser may not be super useful, but some features are. The most useful feature for many smart appliances is video monitoring. You can look inside the oven (from your phone on the couch)  to see your cupcakes rise and puff nicely. You can watch steak sizzle or wait for the cheese to melt with a digital window. You can check how many eggs are in the fridge, or whether your toast is done in the toaster.

Preheating and other scheduled functions allow you to get some of the cooking time started before you're actually in the kitchen. You can start the oven while finishing your after-work shower upstairs. Or you can schedule the oven to start preheating at 6 so it's ready to warm a lasagna by the time you're home at 7.

If you have smart light bulbs or strips in the kitchen, voice control can be a blessing in the day and nighttime. And you can even use trigger events like doors opening and closing to set off other routines and features. Like an alarm, if the fridge opens between midnight and six AM.

Remote Control Smart Kitchen Perks

Ever want to start coffee from bed, or get the oven preheating while you're finishing your bath? Ever want to peek on a long roast or turn out the kitchen lights from the couch? A smart kitchen installation opens up the next step to the ultimate kitchen smart routines: remote control. Practice controlling your entire house - every element of it - through your smart home app(s). 

Explore your options. Try out different commands and device settings. The more you know what your devices can do, the more you can do with them.

Building Routines that Make Smart-Cooking Easier

Routines, however, are the single coolest way to make your kitchen useful to you without giving an endless sequence of voice commands. Who wants to ask for the lights, music, and preheat temperature one at a time when you could tell your AI to "Start cooking" and have it all done for you? The right routine can transform your kitchen experience and even make more complex recipes easier to achieve. While your smart home may not be able to baste the turkey, she can change the oven temperature automatically at just the right time.

In a family setting, there are actually plenty of kitchen routines you might want to build and try to make your daily life more enjoyable. Here are just a few of our favorite kitchen routines you can try for yourself.

Morning Wakeup

• Sunrise the lights
• Start the coffee brewing
• Start uplifting music
• Warm the heated floor

Cooking Mode

• Turn on all kitchen lights to 100% warm white
• Turn smart appliances on and standby
• Play your favorite cooking music station

Kitchen Nightlight Mode

• Dim all kitchen lights
• Set kitchen lights to your favorite color
• Turn off all smart appliances
• Play soft white noise

Slow Roasting Mode

• Schedule oven temperature changes
• Display oven window
• Timed reminders to baste or add ingredients
• Play your favorite cooking music or podcast

Throw a Party

• Temporarily color-strobe the lights
• Play a burst of silly music
• Return to normal

Recipe Doom Timer

• Set a cooking timer
• At the end of that timer, sound the claxons
• Flash the lights red
• Announce food-based emergency 

Each of these routines uses features that are actually useful in away that can be helpful or fun to your cooking process. Have more cool or clever ideas for smart kitchens? Is this something that interests you?  Let us know! Contact us today to plan your own smart kitchen upgrade or join the discussion on the possibilities of what it all can do.