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Dining with the electric fork that could save lives
This prototype fork can help you eat less salt and could save lives. It sends a gentle electric current to your tongue as you eat, fooling tastebuds into experiencing a salty, (sometimes sour) taste -- even when there's little to no salt in the food itself. Despite the awkward notion of willingly putting an electric current into your mouth, the "electro-fork" can potentially tackle some legitimate health issues. According to the World Health Organization, we consume 10 grams of salt a day -- double the amount it recommends. This increases one's chances of hypertension, heart disease, strokes and more. So, in the interest of my health (and morbid curiosity), I went for a taste test.
This machine makes cold brew coffee in less than 10 minutes
Cold brew coffee is delicious. It's about two-thirds less acidic than coffee brewed with hot water, which results in a cleaner, smoother and less bitter taste. Unfortunately, making cold brew coffee is a pain. You typically have to let the grounds steep for 12 to 24 hours, which requires a lot of planning ahead. This is not something you want to do when it's a hot summer's day and you want that cold brew coffee ASAP. Fortunately, however, there is now a solution. Say hello to the Pique, a coffee machine that can make cold brew coffee in less than 10 minutes. And, based on the sample I had, it tastes amazing.
IBM Watson can customize your canned granola
Don't worry: IBM's Watson didn't whip up a bunch of needlessly complicated granola recipes for a cookbook that you must make (for science!). No, we're talking about its partnership with Kellogg's subsidiary Bear Naked, which is the first consumer brand to sell Chef Watson-inspired food. The partnership made it possible for Bear Naked to launch a website where granola enthusiasts can make custom blends. After you select a base -- cacao + cashew butter, chocolate or honey -- Watson looks through thousands of possible flavors to find ingredients it can suggest. It's a very simple process, and we wish Watson can customize each can of granola even further. But this could just be the beginning of services powered by IBM's AI that can personalize canned goods and other foodstuffs.
Genetically modified mushrooms cleared by the USDA
While the ethical debate rages on about genetically modified human embryos, the United States Department of Agriculture has cleared its first CRISPR-modified organism. CRISPR, in case you've forgotten, is an editing technique that can alter the genome of almost any organism pretty easily. Penn State University's agriculture department used the method on white button mushrooms to include an anti-browning phenotype that reduced the polyphenol oxidase enzyme (turns produce brown when exposed to air) down to about 70 percent effectiveness. Popular Science notes that because CRISPR doesn't use bacteria or viruses to affect the DNA like previous methods have, these 'shrooms aren't considered "plant pests."
Taco Bell wants you to order food from a chat bot
We've seen some clever ways to order food online in our day, but this one is decidedly off the wall. Taco Bell is testing TacoBot, a chat AI that helps you order (what else?) tacos in a Slack conversation. Think of it as a tasty text adventure -- you can ask questions about the menu, customize your order and check your cart. It's only in a private beta with a few companies at the moment, but you can sign up for a waiting list to have your Slack team give TacoBot a try. Just think -- you could have tacos sent your way while you're stuck in a planning session.
Yelpers are getting a show on The Food Network
The Food Network is teaming up with Yelp for a new show, according to Forbes, and it's aptly entitled 12 Hungry Yelpers. Forbes says it will use Yelp reviews to "help restaurants discover and fix their problems" and will focus on one restaurant per episode. The network hasn't released any details yet, but an executive from its parent company told Eater that it will be hosted by MasterChef season three finalist Monti Carlo. We don't know why restaurateurs would listen to Yelpers, but we're guessing their most hilarious, entertaining and snarky reviews make for a better show than critics' commentaries. We're just hoping that none of them turn out to be fake.
Watson made a simple apple pie complicated
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. As part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. When given the opportunity to prepare a recipe for our Cooking With Watson series, I picked Baltic apple pie because, hey, it's apple pie. You mix up some filling, dump it into a tin lined with dough, bake for 40 minutes and voila, you have a delicious dessert that you can even put ice cream on. Oh, the Baltic apple pie has pork in it? OK, forget the ice cream. But, a savory meat pie can't be that hard, right?
Postmates adds 'free delivery' subscription for $10 a month
Attempting to bring the delivery fight to Amazon, Postmates is launching Plus Unlimited, a delivery subscription service that costs ten bucks a month and gives both customers and companies using it free delivery on all orders over $30. The delivery startup is also celebrating 1 million deliveries a month -- so there's definitely some demand. There's no service fee if you're paying monthly, and the company is promising no surge charging when all of a sudden, everyone in your neighborhood wants a burger.
Xiaomi's 'Mi Ecosystem' starts with a smart rice cooker
With its air purifiers, water purifiers, security sensors and other home appliances on the Chinese market, it's no secret that Xiaomi has an ambition to not only own the smartphone space, but to also litter its brand around our living space. A bit like Ikea and Muji, for the latter part: Cheap, but with good design and quality. Hence the launch of the Mi Induction Heating Pressure Rice Cooker today, because what better way than to enter every Chinese household with an affordable yet high performance rice cooker, let alone one that works with an app? Priced at just 999 yuan or about $150, this rice cooker is scarily cheap -- about four to five times cheaper than its Japanese rivals like Zojirushi, Toshiba and Tiger.
Cooking app maker wants a standard for smart kitchen devices
There are plenty of smart cooking devices to help you bring masterpieces to the table. However, they don't usually talk to each other -- your sous vide tool doesn't know the weight of the ingredients you measured on a scale just a couple of feet away. SideChef wants to fix that. The cooking app developer is building a platform that lets kitchen gadgets work in unison. Once you pick a recipe, every device would know what to do. Your oven would start pre-heating, for instance, while your mixer would run at just the right speed to blend everything together.
Necklace helps your diet by listening to your eating
Forget using image recognition or the honor system to count calories -- if University at Buffalo researchers have their way, you'll just need to wear a necklace to watch what you eat. Their recently developed AutoDietary device gauges caloric intake by listening to the chewing and swallowing sounds you make when consuming different foods. It's easy to tell when you're munching on an apple versus a cookie, for example. The current system sends data to a smartphone and recommends improvements, such as cutting back on snacks or slowing down if you tend to rush through dinner.
Roccbox portable stone bake oven can cook pizza in minutes
Roccbox's Indiegogo campaign page says the lightweight stone bake oven can cook almost anything, from fish to fluffy breads. More important, it says the oven can bake Neapolitan pizza in just 90 seconds -- and who wouldn't want to eat their pizza ASAP, am I right? That kind of speedy baking is possible because Roccbox can reach temperatures up to 930 degrees F in under 15 minutes. You can even choose to cook using wood, if you want that distinct wood-baked flavor, or using gas as fuel.
Uber's food delivery service gets a dedicated app in US cities
You no longer have to head to Canada to make full use of Uber's food delivery service from your smartphone. The UberEats app is now available on Android and iOS in a handful of US cities, starting with Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. More cities are also on tap in the near future, including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, New York, Seattle and Washington in the US as well as Melbourne and Paris. Wherever you are, the experience remains the same: you're ordering food from partner restaurants with an emphasis on speed (Instant Delivery items show up in less than 10 minutes) and simplicity. If delivery rivals like GrubHub aren't cutting it, there's a good chance that you'll have an alternative soon.
YouTube veterans want you to livestream cooking
There are plenty of cooking shows in the internet era, but they tend to be pre-recorded, passive affairs. The results are predictable, and you probably won't get to ask questions about the recipe. That's where YouTube veterans Steve Chen (who co-founded the company) and Vijay Karunamurthy think they can help. They've launched Nom, a service that's all about livestreams for cooking and eating. Think of it as a specialized, gastronomical take on Periscope. Individuals and whole teams can broadcast live video from PCs or iOS devices, take input from viewers (including images and videos), and schedule shows. They can even use two live cameras, if the budget allows.
Panasonic makes the first countertop induction oven
Induction cooking is great for budding chefs: it rarely needs preheating, it's energy-efficient and it's safer than conventional burners. Getting it has usually meant going for a full-size oven or a cooktop, however, which isn't always practical if you're in an apartment or otherwise can't justify tearing out your existing appliances. That's where Panasonic thinks it can help. It just introduced the first-ever countertop induction oven, giving you all the benefits of the technology in a relatively tiny, enclosed space. If you want to grill a barbecue-grade steak, you can do it with a device that's roughly the size of your microwave.
Brita's smart water pitcher orders its filters from Amazon
Amazon's automatic Dash refills are reaching all kinds of devices... and now, that includes the gadgets in your fridge. Brita has launched the Infinity water pitcher, a WiFi-equipped container that automatically orders replacement filters whenever your current purifier is near its limit. It's not cheap at $45, and that's not including the $6 you'll pay every time you need a new filter. However, it might be just the ticket if you can't imagine drinking from the tap (or heading to the store) for even a brief moment.
BioLite's latest gear includes a stove, lamp and a pair of solar panels
The smell of burning wood from pot belly stoves and fireplaces is noticeable in some Brooklyn neighborhoods during the winter, but down underneath the Manhattan Bridge overpass at BioLite headquarters it's business as usual. The company's been hard at work updating last year's line of off-the-grid power and cooking gear. That means plenty of design, testing and the occasional conflagration in its "burn lab" to perfect its products. The result of all this sweat and ash includes a new CookStove, PowerLight Mini and a pair of solar panels, which you can pick up at BioLite's website.
Foursquare wants you to order food from its phone app
Foursquare doesn't just want to help you find nearby restaurants these days... it wants to bring the food to you. It's partnering with Delivery.com to let you order food, groceries and even alcohol through its mobile app. It's technically kicking you over to Delivery.com's app to finish the order, but that's almost beside the point -- you can have that new Indian restaurant deliver some food rather than remind yourself to check it out later.
Machine turns your Twitter posts into tasty cocktails
Ever wondered what your tweets would taste like if you could distill them into a drink? Probably not, but there's now a way to find out. Clément Gault and Koi Koi Design have whipped up Data Cocktail, an Arduino-powered machine that creates a drink based on Twitter updates. In its current incarnation, it looks for the five latest tweets mentioning keywords linked to ingredients, and fills the glass accordingly. The result is an original, spur-of-the-moment mix -- it'll even print out the 'recipe' (really, a ratio of the keywords) and thank the users who unwittingly contributed to the beverage.
Wendy's looks into claims of a credit card data breach
If you grabbed a bite to eat at a Wendy's (you know, the other other big burger chain) using a credit or debit card, you might want to check your financial statements. The restaurant tells security guru Brian Krebs that it's investigating reports of a possible card data breach that let fraudsters go on spending sprees. It's not clear just how far-reaching the incident might have been, but Wendy's says that it did get reports of "unusual activity" on cards that had recently been used at "some" of its locations. Let's just hope the damage is limited -- the last thing Americans need is yet another large-scale intrusion that leaves millions of people vulnerable. [Image credit: AP Photo/Michael Dwyer]
