Pod Insights The Vergecast A very smart Vergecast Thanksgiving About this episode Today on the flagship podcast of connected meat thermometers:
It’s Thanksgiving week, so we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to make Thanksgiving dinner! Jen Pattison Tuohy, The Verge’s smart home reviewer and reporter, is also an excellent cook. So she’s at home in South Carolina, and she’s going to make us a meal and tell us all about the state and future of the smart home and kitchen gadgets. This episode, fair warning, will make you very hungry. I’m sorry in advance.
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Transcript 15,359 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Connected Meat Thermometers. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am at Trader Joe's two days before Thanksgiving. Pray for me, honestly. All the turkeys are gone. There's like 95,000 people in this grocery store right now. And it feels a little like what I imagine it would feel like if they just came on and announced that the apocalypse was happening in two hours, if that makes sense. But I need stuffing, so here we are. Anyway, we have a great show for you coming up today. It's Thanksgiving week, so we're going to do something a little different than a normal Vergecast episode. We're going to make Thanksgiving dinner. Jen Patterson Tuohy, The Verge's smart home reviewer and reporter, is also an excellent cook. So she's at home in South Carolina and she's going to make us a meal and tell us all about the state
0:47 David Pierce? and future of the smart kitchen and the smart home in general. This episode, fair warning, is going to make you really, really hungry. So I'm sorry in advance about that. All that's coming up right after the break, but I just found the stuffing aisle and I think I'm going to have to fistfight somebody to get it before it's gone. So wish me luck and please come bail me out of jail. This is The Vergecast. See you in a sec.
1:10 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:55 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:41 David Pierce? Welcome back. So, we had other plans for this episode. We recorded a bunch of stuff. We had big ideas about stories we want to do. We'll get to all of those later. But we ended up just wanting to spend all of this time talking about the smart home. It's an interesting time in the smart home with Matter and a bunch of new gadgets coming out that all promise to make the smart home make a lot more sense. But also, it's Thanksgiving week. And all I can think about is Thanksgiving food and stuffing and cranberry sauce and all of these other things. So, we ended up just spending like a really long time hanging out with Jen Toohey and recording and talking about the smart home and smart gadgets. And we made a Vergecast Cooking Show without even really meaning to.
3:21 David Pierce? So, that's what this episode is now. This is the Vergecast Cooking Show. It's Thanksgiving week. Like I said before, Jen is in her kitchen in South Carolina. She's been cooking like for hours, it seems. I think, if I remember correctly, we're like mid-Turkey. That's what seems to be going on here. So, let's just dive in. Let's see what's going on.
3:39 David Pierce? Hi, Jen.
3:40 Speaker 02 Hey, David.
3:41 David Pierce? Happy Thanksgiving. Happy almost Thanksgiving.
3:43 Speaker 02 Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. It's not always my favorite holiday because I spend it all in the kitchen. But I have a great smart kitchen, so I get to play with my gadgets. So, that's always fun.
3:55 David Pierce? You do a lot of smart home reviewing for us, which means your house is, I would say, like, a chaotically smart home, which is that you don't get to have things that, like, make sense and work well together. You just have all the things, and then you get to figure it out. Is that fair?
4:10 Speaker 02 That is fair, yes. I have dual, competing, I don't have dualing, I have competing voice assistants in my kitchen. I have four, because I actually have Bixby built into my fridge.
4:20 David Pierce? I'm so sorry.
4:21 Speaker 02 As well as Siri and Google and Alexa, they're all gonna go off now. And that is one of the downsides of being a smart home reviewer. Everyone says to me, "Oh, you know, your house must be so smart." Like, eh. It is, but I'm always changing things up and breaking things, so troubleshooting things. But the kitchen is the one space that I do actually try very hard to keep, you know, operational. Whereas, you know, the lights might not go in on the bathroom every time you walk in, but I want my kitchen to work because I want to be able to feed my family.
4:53 David Pierce? That's fair.
4:54 Speaker 02 And there aren't actually that many great smart home gadgets for the kitchen yet. I like to say the reason is probably because the kitchen is already one of the most technologically advanced rooms in your house, right? You've already got a robot that washes your dishes. You've got a fridge and an oven that does its job very well, doesn't really need an internet connection to do what it does well. So I tend to limit my smart gadgets in the kitchen, but I do have one or two that I really like.
5:21 David Pierce? Yeah, give me a quick tour. Let's just do kind of a whip around the Jen Smart Kitchen here. The first thing I see is this enormous screen on your fridge behind you. So let's, let's start there. What do we, what do we have here?
5:32 Speaker 02 So this is a Samsung Smart Fridge. It's an older model. It does have some hiccups because of that built-in Android screen. I did try and order the turkey and everything through Instacart on the fridge, and it kept crashing, so I had to use my phone. So that was a bit of a disappointment. I'd never done that before, because normally I'd just go to the grocery store. But yeah, so the Smart Fridge, the main thing I use it for is watching TV.
5:57 David Pierce? Sure.
5:59 Speaker 02 I mean, I have a TV not too far away, but you know, if my family's watching something in the in the living room, it has the Samsung TV Plus app in it. And I get like a little screen and I can watch some tennis.
6:10 David Pierce? Nice, okay.
6:11 Speaker 02 So it's my kitchen TV primarily. And the fridge itself is great, though. It's a great fridge, plenty of room. It has cameras in it, so if I am at the grocery store and can't remember if I've got something, you can look on the app on your phone and see what what you've got. It also has recipes and a number of other things you can do with it. It's a smart things hub, so I can technically control smart devices from it. But in the kitchen, I like to be hands-free, so I have my voice assistants. And I have to say, the Amazon is the one that I use the most in the kitchen. It has some of the better features. I really like its timer feature. I also like the Echo Show 10 because it moves with you.
6:53 Speaker 02 So when if you're trying to follow a recipe and you're walking around the kitchen, it kind of follows you. It's a bit creepy, but it's handy.
7:01 David Pierce? I do feel like you're like one small step away from being like, and here is my tiny robot that follows me around my house and is my sous chef all like this. This is coming for you. You know this, right?
7:11 Speaker 02 It is. Well, I had the Astro here for a while. He would have actually, it would have been very helpful as a sous chef, but we, we, yes. My favorite sous chef, though, is the Thermomix, which many people listening may not be familiar with.
7:24 David Pierce? I'm certainly not.
7:25 Speaker 02 It's a fantastic kitchen gadget. I mentioned, not a big gadget fan in general. I like things that just do one thing good and don't necessarily mean that I have to clean a ton of parts afterwards or, you know, read a manual to figure out how to use it. I want something that's just gonna cook my dinner, help me cook my dinner. The biggest thing is not have to clean up. So many gadgets who spend half the time pulling them apart and cleaning them. This thing cleans itself, which is like the number one thing you need to know about it. So you don't have any wash to do afterwards, and you can also stick the whole thing in the dishwasher.
7:57 David Pierce? Oh, I love that.
7:58 Speaker 02 But to explain what a Thermomix is, it's a company that's been around for a really long time. European listeners will probably be familiar with it. It started as a blender company, and now they've come out, well, this has been around for a few years. The Thermomix is a blender that cooks. So that's kind of the easiest way to explain it. So I just made, before we got on air, mashed potatoes. In my blender or in the Thermomix and they came out perfectly. And now I'm going to make pumpkin pie cheesecake in my blender.
8:28 David Pierce? Is it like a slow cooker in that you just like dump a bunch of stuff in and like? Stuff happens and then it's done, but it does it for like other kinds of food?
8:34 Speaker 02 So actually it can be a slow cooker. It can be multiple things. It can be a pressure cooker, a slow cooker, it can boil eggs. I mean, it it does hundreds of things. It's it's pretty neat. But what I use it for is, as I said, is like a sous chef. So it does little jobs for me. So for example, I'm going to make pumpkin pie with a cookie crumb crust. So instead of getting out the rolling pin and a plastic Ziploc bag and sticking the graham crackers in and smashing away, although that is really fun. I can just throw the graham crackers into the Thermomix. And it has a little recipe, so it has a screen, a little Android touchscreen. And you follow along on the recipes on there.
9:15 Speaker 02 And it will blend the crumbs for me and then it will melt the butter and cook them so then I can just pour the pie base into my pie pan. And then I give it a rinse and then I can put all the ingredients for the pie filling. And it'll mix them for me. So it's a bit like a like KitchenAid.
9:34 David Pierce? Yeah.
9:34 Speaker 02 As well, except for if you're cooking something like the the pie base, it will cook it for you. Cooked my mashed potatoes. I also did the stuffing in it this morning. Cooked the onions and the sausage before they went in the turkey. So it's a really handy sort of extra pair of hands. Don't have to do as much chopping, although, you know, still have to do some because you can't put like a whole potato in it. Cause it would kind of vibrate and explode. So you do have to chop the potato up before you put it in. And as I mentioned, it also cleans itself. So all you have to do is put a little bit of water, soap, press clean button and it goes and comes out clean and then you do the next stage. I know some people will have two or three of its. So it has like a blender, a stainless steel blender, that's what heats up.
10:17 Speaker 02 And you can have multiple of those so that you can rotate and cook different things. It also steams, so I'm going to do the green beans at the end of the cooking process. Has what's called a varoma dish that you put on the top. And it heats up from the blender and steams the food for you. So you could do fish in there as well. And I'm gonna do green beans.
10:37 David Pierce? This is also like perfectly speaking my kitchen gadget language. Cause to me, it's like, I don't mind figuring out what temperature something needs to be. And I don't really mind just like setting a timer and checking it. But if you can prevent me from needing to chop things or do dishes, I'm all in. Like all in.
10:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
10:55 David Pierce? That sounds wonderful to me.
10:56 Speaker 02 It is, although the downside, oh, hang on, the turkey timer is going off. All right, time to get the turkey out of the oven before it overcooks.
11:04 David Pierce? There we go.
11:05 Speaker 02 Alexa, stop turkey timer.
11:09 Speaker 02 All right, sorry about that. Didn't mean to interrupt you, David. You're right, it is a great gadget. It does cost quite a bit, though. As kitchen gadgets are want to do, unfortunately. It's $1,500 for the whole sort of package. And then there's lots of add-ons that you can, that you can buy. Basically, I like to say it can make everything but the turkey.
11:30 David Pierce? How's the turkey looking, speaking of?
11:32 Speaker 02 The turkey is, is looking really good. Let's have a look. I'm looking at my probes. It looks like we are right on. We have the right temperature, but the little red thing is still saying that we don't. But I'm not putting it back in there. I'm not coming out with charcoal turkey.
11:47 David Pierce? Yeah.
11:48 Speaker 02 I think we're good. I'm just gonna let this sit now. I think it can sit an hour or more. So we've got our mashed potatoes. We've got our turkey. The green beans I'm gonna do at the end. My foil. And then I thought, seeing as we've got a little party here, it might be a good time to make a cocktail. Cause that's kind of the best part of Thanksgiving.
12:07 David Pierce? I agree with that.
12:08 Speaker 02 I mentioned I have the Echo Show 10, which I will use sometime for recipes. But I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to recipes. And unfortunately, the ones that come up on the Echo aren't always great. So my go-to is actually my iPad mini.
12:23 Speaker 02 This is the best sort of kitchen companion for cooking, I find.
12:27 David Pierce? I totally agree.
12:28 Speaker 02 Do you do a lot of cooking, David?
12:30 David Pierce? So I like to cook. My wife doesn't really let me cook because she's a control freak is essentially what it is. She'll never hear this podcast, so it's okay. I can say all this stuff that I want. I like to cook and I agree. I experimented with a million different kitchen gadgets. Tried all the different, you know, echoes with the screen and the Nest stuff. And also landed on an iPad and it's like what I do is I watch a show on the iPad with the recipe in the slide overview and it is, it is perfect. It solves all my problems. I love it.
13:00 Speaker 02 Well, my favorite thing about the iPad is actually the New York Times Cooking App, which is my favorite cooking app.
13:05 David Pierce? It's very good.
13:06 Speaker 02 Some really good recipes on there. And then my other favorite thing is, she doesn't have an app sadly, but is Delia Smith, who's England's version of Martha Stewart. She's the woman that taught me how to cook and she doesn't have an app. She's not tech like that, but I can just pull up her website. She is who I am following for my turkey. I've always, always gone to Delia. So yes, use the iPad. That's sort of key for me. And then I also, I love having the Alexa because it has, I have this fun routine setup where when I start running water, it will start playing music for me, which I've turned off for today because I didn't want to interrupt our recording. But every time I turn the tap on, it'll start the radio for me. So just, you know, when you get in the kitchen, you start cooking, sometimes you forget to put music on.
13:50 Speaker 02 And it's a nice, nice little feature. Speaking of water, my absolute favorite gadget in my kitchen, alongside the Thermomix, is my hands-free, voice-activated Moen Smart faucet.
14:02 David Pierce? Okay, that is so many words that I've never heard people use next to faucet. Is it one of the ones you like wave in front of when your arms are dirty? Is that the kind of stuff we're talking about? Okay.
14:12 Speaker 02 So yes, that's the sort of main function and you don't need to connect it to the internet for that. You can just wave your hand in front, starts the water and then wave again and it stops. And then it has a handle for hot and cold. But if you want to get fancy and when, you know, when you're cooking, your hands are always busy or covered in turkey or sausage. Or you may be a little ways away and you want it to be hot when you get over there. So I can say, and I can do a little demo for you now if you like.
14:40 David Pierce? Please.
14:40 Speaker 02 Alexa, tell Moen to dispense two cups of warm water.
14:46 Speaker 03 First, I will run the water to temperature. Wait for the water to stop. When the light is solid, you can wave over sensor for two cups of water at 105 degrees.
14:57 Speaker 02 So as a soon to be father, congratulations, by the way.
15:01 David Pierce? Thank you.
15:01 Speaker 02 I haven't had a chance to send my congratulations yet, but this is great. Okay, so now the radio is playing because the water is running.
15:18 Speaker 02 Okay, sorry.
15:19 David Pierce? This is an unbelievably good idea. I'm now all in on the every time I turn on the water, it should. I thought that was crazy until you did it. And now I'm like, this is the best idea I've ever heard.
15:28 Speaker 02 It was fun, you see, it gets a little, you know, festive in the kitchen. So it's now running the water to temperature. And as I say, as a soon to be father, it's great for baby bottles because you can get the exact temperature you need.
15:41 David Pierce? Totally.
15:42 Speaker 02 For your baby bottle. I'm beyond that stage. So right now I'm running the water to get hot enough for the pie. Once it shows me that it's at the right temperature, it's flashing right now and it's getting hot. Takes a while because I have a tankless hot water heater, which is very efficient, but also very slow. And then once I go over to it now, I'll stop it from running and then I wave again and it will dispense exactly two cups into my bowl for me.
16:09 David Pierce? Oh, I love that.
16:10 Speaker 02 So I'm gonna, I will do that now. Just gonna grab my bowl. Oh, it stopped. And now.
16:20 Speaker 02 And I got my two cups of water. 104 degrees. I don't have a thermometer handy that's not in a turkey to test, but it feels warm.
16:29 David Pierce? You know, the thing where you walk over to the faucet with like the tablespoon or whatever, and you turn on the water too hard and it just like explodes the water all over your entire kitchen? This solves that problem. This is like, this is what you're talking about. This is like an actual thing that you do in the kitchen that this makes better. And that makes me happy.
16:44 Speaker 02 Yes, it is. It's very handy. I mean, to be honest, the main thing I use is the waving. But when I'm full on cooking a big dinner, it definitely is is very helpful.
16:54 David Pierce? And it's fewer dishes. I hate washing measuring cups. I don't know why. I just hate it. And for little things like that, like I guess this one's just water, so you don't need to wash it anyway, but like.
17:02 Speaker 02 But you got it wet. You have to put it on the drying rack.
17:04 David Pierce? Yeah, it's a whole thing.
17:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, actually, that's another thing that's really fun about the Thermomix, just to go back to it. But it's at the top of the Thermomix, its lid is a built in measuring cup. So it's very well thought out. But yes, so I've got my smart faucet, I've got my smart fridge, got my semi smart oven, my Thermomix, my smart voice assistants. What else? Oh, I have an indoor air quality monitor.
17:29 David Pierce? Okay.
17:30 Speaker 02 Amazon's indoor air quality monitor. And that doesn't have a ton of use. But I do like that when I, if I've forgotten or one of my other smart devices have failed me, it will send an alert through one of my smart speakers if the indoor air quality is turned to poor, which often happens when you're cooking on a gas stove, which is what I have, and might alert me that something's burning.
17:54 David Pierce? Well, I was gonna say, isn't the answer to that, this is, you know, what what we here in in America have smoke alarms for? I don't know if you're aware of this.
18:01 Speaker 02 It gets you there a little bit before the smoke alarm.
18:04 David Pierce? Fair enough. The gas thing actually makes sense that you're like, if I leave a burner on, it'll tell me before my house explodes. Like,
18:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:10 David Pierce? That's fair.
18:12 Speaker 02 It gives me a little heads up, reminds me. But yes, by the time it, you know, things start to burn, yeah, I do have some smoke alarms around.
18:19 David Pierce? I will say, though, the thing that occurs to me as you're talking is that you have an enormous number of screens in your kitchen, and yet you just do everything on your iPad mini. This feels very telling to me about how all of these screens actually do their jobs.
18:31 Speaker 02 Yes, I have a Google Nest Hub Max right here, too, which also has a big screen. And yeah, they're just not designed well enough yet. The interface isn't good for kitchen use. It's fine for playing a video, you know, or watching TV or music. I mean, I use, and the timers are the main thing I use it for. The nice thing about the Nest Hub Timer is it will show in like really big numbers, the timer counting down. But actually, the Echo that I'm using that you heard just recently, it's the Echo Dot with Clock. So that also has the little LED screen that shows the timer counting down. So rather than having to constantly ask how long is left on my timer, I can just glance and have a look.
19:14 Speaker 02 The stove also has a timer on it, but that's not as convenient because it's not at eye level. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the Google Nest tablet that's gonna be
19:23 David Pierce? Yes.
19:23 Speaker 02 It's gonna mount to the speaker. Because I feel like the tablet experience is what you really need in the kitchen. The smart displays just aren't at that level. And this tablet built into the fridge is just a little outdated. It's not fast enough. It's an older Android tablet. It crashes. So I don't find that one as useful. So yes, the mini, the iPad, the way to go.
19:46 David Pierce? Yeah, no, there are a bunch of things you've described here that I think are like very good, very smart ideas. I continue to think smart fridges might just be a terrible idea. Like, my fridge is some unknowable number of years old, but like it keeps my food cold. And until it doesn't keep my food cold, I'm good. But like, to worry about like the the security updates to the Android operating system on my fridge is just like not a thing I need in my life. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick to my old ass fridge and an iPad and it's gonna serve me just fine.
20:13 Speaker 02 I mean, smart fridges had such great promise when they first came on the the scene. And the idea, the thing that I really liked, the concept I was looking forward to. And Samsung made some good strides here, but it hasn't really capitalized yet, is telling you when you're low on something and automatically reordering it for you. It does have food recognition based in using the camera. And it will tell you what products you have in your fridge. And then it can say you're running low on this, you might want to order more. But it's so unreliable. It misses things. So they're working on it. And I think once we got to a point where a fridge could really do that, maybe with sensors, you know, to see how much weight you had left. So your milk carton weighed, you know, 50% less this morning than yesterday. So you probably need to order milk.
20:57 Speaker 02 Those kind of things will be useful, especially if they reorder for you automatically. The one thing my fridge constantly wants me to do, though, is reorder my water filter.
21:05 Speaker 03 At every morning, it says, "Your water filter expired. Would you like to reorder it?" No, I don't want to spend $100 on a water filter. I'm just going to use my tap. Thank you very much.
21:15 David Pierce? Those are the things that make you realize, like, I had a Brita for a long time, and it was like, there would be the thing that would, like, the red light that would say, you know, you're supposed to change your filter. And it was like, oh, I'm supposed to change this thing like 10 times more often than I actually change this thing, which is just like, once every two years when I think about it while I'm at Target, is how often I replace it. So yeah, I just, I don't need to know all that stuff, I guess.
21:40 David Pierce? All right, we need to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about a bunch of stuff I've seen in your kitchen as we're moving around. I see a bunch of beverage things. So we're going to talk about smart beverages, because this is a thing that is near and dear to my heart. And we're going to check on that turkey. We'll be right back.
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22:35 Nilay Patel? Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how CloudFlare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.
22:57 Speaker 06 We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that, you know, it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.
23:21 Nilay Patel? This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.
23:34 Speaker 07 This series is presented by EY.
23:39 David Pierce? All right, we're back with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. Jen, I have two gadget questions for you, and they're both about beverages. One, have we solved coffee in the smart home? Do you have anything? Have you tested anything? Is there anything that's good? Because that's the one. I want to wake up to perfect coffee every morning. It doesn't seem to exist yet.
23:58 Speaker 02 Well, I have here a GE Cafe Smart Espresso Maker. This is the Afeeto Automatic Espresso Machine. So, I mean, you know, coffee is very subjective. So I don't know what your perfect cup is. But my husband loves this thing because it's one of the ones where you just press a button and it dispenses an espresso for you. So you can connect it to an app and then you can dial in your exact like grind time, brew strength, how many ounces you want your espresso to be. You can do long expressos, you could do double expressos. And all you do is press this one button, it's called My Cup, in the morning and then it'll just dispense that for you, which is pretty handy.
24:43 Speaker 02 It's nice because, I mean, there's lots of automatic espresso machines out there. They're all quite expensive. This one is too. I want to say it's around $700. But this one has, because the app connection gives you that customization. So it has its regular buttons. You've got espresso, americano, and then My Cup. And the My Cup is the one you can customize. And then it also has the milk frother, which is not automatic. Obviously, you just still have to stand there with your little pot.
25:11 David Pierce? Who has the time, Jen?
25:13 Speaker 02 Who has the time for that?
25:14 David Pierce? Thermomix should do that for you. You should just be able to pour your coffee into the Thermomix and it'll froth it for you.
25:19 Speaker 02 But he drinks black coffee, so it doesn't bother him. But it's been great for eggnog lattes this, so far this season.
25:26 David Pierce? So it sounds like the hybrid of like an espresso and an actual fancy espresso machine.
25:31 Speaker 02 Yes, and it's not like huge either. It's nice and compact.
25:36 David Pierce? Oh, nice, okay.
25:36 Speaker 02 Because those big fancy espresso machines like take up half your kitchen counter.
25:40 David Pierce? Oh yeah, they're nuts. I have tried many times to buy one and my wife who doesn't drink coffee is just straight up. I'm always like, that would be a cool present for you to get me sometime. And she's just like, absolutely not. Like, I have to look at that thing all day and never use it? Absolutely not.
25:53 Speaker 02 Oh, this one's quite pretty, actually. It's white with rose gold accent, so she might like it.
25:58 David Pierce? All right. Um, okay, so then the other one is another beverage thing that I'm very curious about, which is like a, I want something that is like better and more automatic than a SodaStream for like making my own fizzy stuff. I've like gone down the road of like, should I drill a faucet into my, like, I drink like an inappropriate amount of seltzer and I'm like, I just want a tap in my house where I can just make seltzer. Does this exist? Do you have the answer for me?
26:27 Speaker 02 I do, I do. I'm excited you, this is something you wanted, because it's not something I'd ever really considered, but.
26:32 David Pierce? This is my dream, like literally, like a better than SodaStream semi-smart way to just make sparkling water all day is like, there's a terrifying amount of money and effort that I would spend to do this.
26:44 Speaker 02 Um, a hundred and thirty dollars?
26:45 David Pierce? Sold. Literally, yes, done. Tell me the website, I'm there.
26:49 Speaker 02 So have you used SodaStreams? Because I've never used a SodaStream. Like, I never really got the thing. It was so big in my childhood. But the big selling point of this one, it's called, it's called the Sparkle, and it's also, I believe, German.
27:02 David Pierce? Okay.
27:02 Speaker 02 Is you don't need the carbonator, you don't need the like canister, I guess, is what you need to use in a SodaStream. Okay.
27:08 David Pierce? And the problem was, just to tell you why SodaStream sucks, there was a whole big controversy about SodaStream that I never really understood, so I didn't worry about that. But the real problem was, you have to go like take your canister to get it replaced at like Target or a handful of places, and they're always out and nobody ever has any stock, so you just have to like go to Target every day and be like, do you have any SodaStreams? And they say, no, and then you leave. And it's like, it's a nightmare. And so I eventually just gave up. And this is why I'm like, I want a thing that lasts longer at my home that would solve this problem for me.
27:36 Speaker 02 Well, so this machine is, as I said, it's called the Sparkle, but it has a little umlaut thing on the E because it's German. And it uses. It uses sachets.
27:47 David Pierce? Oh.
27:47 Speaker 02 Carbonator sachets. So, I mean, not so environmentally friendly because there's lots of little pieces of plastic. But as opposed to these big carbonated pressured canisters, perhaps, um, I would have to do the the green work there. But so there's two sachets that come wrapped together and the sparkle came with a ton of them, like a big bag of them. So you use one every time you have a drink. You just snip the top off and you pour it into a little canister at the back. And then it's a very kind of space aging machine. I can actually, I will do one right now if you like.
28:20 David Pierce? Do it.
28:20 Speaker 02 We can hear it. You can make anything. You could just do yourselves for water if you wanted. Or you could do like a mimosa.
28:27 David Pierce? Oh, yeah, you were gonna make us a cocktail.
28:28 Speaker 02 For today, I was gonna make us a Thanksgiving themed pineapple and sage cocktail. How does that sound?
28:35 David Pierce? Sold.
28:36 Speaker 02 Okay. Okay, so it's quite the machine. It has this bottle that you fill up with your desired ingredients. And the kind of the selling point here is that you can use anything that's in your home, like a fresh juice, you can put sage in it, like fresh sage. You could also, I did one with some rosemary sprigs from my garden. It's like an infuser. So as well as doing the carbonating, also kind of infuses your water with flavors. So you could put cucumber or lemon, anything you like. And I believe all I need to put in this one for my pineapple surprise is pieces of pineapple, which I've got here. So I'm gonna put in a few chunks. And then some sage, which I also have because I had a little leftover from stuffing my turkey.
29:22 Speaker 02 So we're gonna pop in pineapple chunks, a little bit of sage and some water. And it says vodka. I'm not a big vodka fan, so we're gonna put some gin in instead.
29:35 David Pierce? I support this.
29:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:38 Speaker 02 We'll put some pineapple juice.
29:41 Speaker 02 And then you just fill it up with water, depending on how, how big a drink you like. So one bottle here would make probably three adult drinks. And then I'm using the, the smart fridge because it, the colder the water is, the better for the sparkle, for some reason. I think it's the way the chemicals, or are they chemicals? Okay, so it uses sodium bicarbonate and granulated citric acid. So, once you've got your ingredients together and you find the lid. Pro tip, you have to make sure this thing is on really tight. Because I sparkled my kitchen floor yesterday.
30:21 David Pierce? Oh no.
30:21 Speaker 02 Trying to make a apples fizz. And I was like, oh, that's making a loud noise. And I went over and there was, it was everywhere. That was not fun. But then I called the robot mop over to clean it, so.
30:32 David Pierce? Problem solved.
30:33 Speaker 02 Okay, so popping the machine in, there's a little slot at the back here that you lift up and you put your powders in, both at the same time. I guess if you mix them together, they do something. I'm not, I wasn't very big at science, so. And then I'm going to push this big handle down. It'll make a big thud. And then can you hear that making its little sparkle noise?
30:59 David Pierce? Mm-hmm.
31:00 Speaker 02 And then I've got one through five here. This is the level of carbonation that you can choose. So if you want it super fizzy, you choose five. And we'll probably go for four here. And then you press the sparkle button. And then, here it goes. And it, it takes a couple of minutes. But yeah, it'll come out with carbonated water. As I said, I did a mimosa the other day. It was pomegranate and orange juice with white wine.
31:24 David Pierce? You just found my Christmas present for myself this year. That's very exciting.
31:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, I was, I'm quite impressed. I don't know how many of those sachets. I mean, if you drink two or three bottles a, a day of, of sparkling water, you'd be getting through some sachets, but you'd have to kind of weigh that with the SodaStream debacle.
31:41 David Pierce? Well, or in my case, just the number of cans I crush and throw into the recycling, which is bad news.
31:46 Speaker 02 Yeah. This much better, much better for the environment than that, yes.
31:49 David Pierce? I think so. Alright, so let's talk through a couple of, of Thanksgiving things, just to, just to get a, a feel for how this works. So like, let's, let's do turkey first. We're at like the end of the turkey process. You've successfully turked. Congratulations. But like, you you come home with a with a frozen turkey. You throw it in the smart fridge. Then what? Walk me through the process.
32:11 Speaker 02 Um, OK, so according to Delia, who is my queen of the kitchen, you want to get your turkey out the night before because you want the turkey to be at sort of room temperature or below before it goes in the oven because that helps it cook more evenly. Because it's so hard to get the balance right between crisping the turkey and making sure it's cooked nicely inside. So yeah, bring it up. Oh, sparkle has stopped sparkling.
32:35 David Pierce? We are sparkled?
32:36 Speaker 02 We are sparkled. Whoa, it's like a spaceship taking off.
32:40 David Pierce? Yeah, that was quite the noise. That's a sparkly, sparkly sounding thing right there.
32:44 Speaker 02 And it might be a little early for gin. But yeah, here's my. There we go. It's um, steamy. It's like a witch's brew.
32:51 David Pierce? Yeah, wow.
32:52 Speaker 02 I guess I should have had the cup ready to go. So yeah, oh, that's got some, that's got some kick. The nice thing about this machine is you could like leave it out on your counter when your guests arrive and they could each make themselves their own, their own Thanksgiving cocktail.
33:06 David Pierce? That is nice. That's a good looking drink. Well done, cheers. Next year, I just want this on record. I'm coming to your house and we're doing this. We're doing this in person next year.
33:14 Speaker 02 Oh, that's good. OK, sorry. Turkey out the night before and then in the morning, and I did this this morning, which was kind of cheeky. But it was kind of early. You do have to get the turkey in the oven kind of before dawn if you're going to eat around lunchtime. So I was able to whip out the phone and open the the Home Connect app, which is the Thermador app. Thermador is owned by Bosch and that's Bosch's main smart home app, which actually works with quite a few different manufacturers and it works with Alexa and Google. So you've got voice control. But yeah, so I whipped out the app and I was able to set the temperature that I wanted the oven at.
33:52 Speaker 03 Can you say that again?
33:54 Speaker 02 Sorry.
33:56 Speaker 02 Alexa is talking to me from my fridge. Um, and showing me a polar bear for some reason. Okay. So then I was able to set the oven from the comfort of my bed and didn't need to get out of bed for an extra forty five minutes while the oven heated up. And then use the Thermomix to make the stuffing. So we did onions, sage, some other herbs. Popped it in the Thermomix, gave it a little whiz for about three or four seconds. And then it cooked for about ten minutes. So it kind of helps with the flavors, put a little bit of butter in there too. Then mix that in with some sausage and some breadcrumbs, stuffed it in the turkey, popped all the probes in. The three probes I had for the turkey today, including, well, the four probes.
34:40 Speaker 02 And then went in the oven at four hundred degrees for forty minutes. That's my favorite trick because you wanna blast it with heat to start with. And then cook, I think it's like twelve to fifteen minutes per pound. So depending on how big your turkey is, and then it'll cook like that for the rest of the cooking time. And that's kind of the extent of the smart part for me because then from that point, I just keep an eye on the probe temperature. Have an alert on my phone that I can check if I'm not in the kitchen. And then the nice thing about the Weber or Weber, I'm not sure how they pronounce it. Grilling hub is that it shows it in nice big numbers on the display, which is outside the oven.
35:19 David Pierce? Got it.
35:20 Speaker 02 So you can just keep an eye on that. And then basting, key part of turkey making. Once you get through the main cooking part, then every sort of ten minutes for the last hour, you wanna baste. Now it's gonna sit for about, I think they recommend sort of sixty minutes because you want all the juices to sort of reabsorb so that you have nice juicy turkey breast. And so I will transfer the turkey out of the roasting pan and use the pan to make some gravy.
35:51 David Pierce? I have two thoughts about this. One is that it feels very much like we're like one Jetson style robot arm away from this being just like completely. All I want is the thing that just like opens your fridge or like your Samsung fridge should like catapult the turkey out of the fridge and into the oven.
36:08 Speaker 02 Would you really want it to do that though?
36:09 David Pierce? Yes, if I'm being honest, yes, I really, really would. I don't know if this is a good idea, but I do want that to be a thing that I can do very badly. And then the other part is I'm trying to decide like, there's still a bunch of like steps in the process. It's definitely fewer. And part of me is like, is the future for the smart oven that you just like hit a button that says turkey? And then hours later, it does all the temperature, it does all the cooking, it does the waiting for 60 minutes for you. It has like a tin foil dispenser at the top that it puts down at the right time. And then it's just like, turkey accomplished. And you like go and take it out and eat it. And that's like, I feel like where a lot of these companies want to go, but it kind of comes back to the same like, I still sort of want to do the cooking here.
36:50 David Pierce? I don't know. Like, is that, does it feel like the right balance for you of like it doing stuff for you versus kind of making you do some of the steps?
36:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. And you know, it depends on your level of comfort in the kitchen too. I like to cook. My grandmother was a cook. That was her job, not a chef. She was a cook, a good old English cook. And I loved cooking with her in the kitchen. I like having my daughter help me cook in the kitchen. My son just baked me brownies last night, so I'm passing on the, on the gene. So, you know, cooking for me is a sort of experience that I enjoy. It's the way I kind of wind down as well. So I really love it. And I show my love to my family through food. So I love to present them with a lovely dish, even though it's just the four of us for Thanksgiving this year. My husband and my two children, and they don't eat turkey. So I'm going to be eating a lot of leftovers.
37:40 Speaker 02 So for me, this level right now is a good level because it's helping me, but it's not overbearing. It's not getting in the way, which like a robot arm, I feel like might feel a little overbearing. I did see at CES, I think last year and the year before, you know, they had the kitchen arms that Samsung was demoing that will kind of come down from your hood and chop things. And I could imagine that could in theory lift a turkey up and put it in the oven for you.
38:08 David Pierce? Totally.
38:08 Speaker 02 But GE has, last year they released a turkey mode, which does what you were just describing. So if you have one of their ovens, they're connected smart ovens. They have a number of different modes where you just press a button. Say you're cooking a pot roast, or you're cooking a turkey, or some other sort of dish that needs varying temperatures and has different sort of levels as you go through the process of cooking. And the turkey mode just, which GE showed me a demo. They had their turkey with lots of probes and they had, you know, done all the calculations to get the exact temperatures based on the size of your turkey and the exact cooking process. And all you had to do is press a button and it comes out perfectly done at the end.
38:53 Speaker 02 And when it's finished, it, the oven goes gobble gobble. So, you know, just for that extra little piece of flair, I don't want my turkey to gobble because that's kind of a bit disturbing, actually.
39:06 David Pierce? Yeah, that's true.
39:07 Speaker 02 Well past that point.
39:09 David Pierce? It should gobble at the beginning and then at the end it should just be like bleak silence. It's just like, don't. This is, this is just like Darth Vader music at the end.
39:18 Speaker 02 But yeah, for people who aren't comfortable in the kitchen, I think that's a great feature. You know, you just go buy turkey, stick in the oven, press a button and out comes a great turkey. I am not saying that that is what happens, I've never done it myself. If anyone out there has ever done that, I would love to know how good the turkey mode is. My Thermador doesn't do that. My Thermador is much more, lets me be in control.
39:38 David Pierce? Yeah.
39:39 Speaker 02 Which is how I want it in the kitchen, to be fair. Other than, you know, for mashing the potatoes, I'm happy to have someone else do that for me.
39:47 David Pierce? Right. Yeah, I think you're right that the right answer is probably that there should kind of be a whole spectrum of stuff. And even that your oven should be able to give you lots of options, right? Because there's probably some days where you're just like, I need this to be made and I don't have time to make it. And you should be able to just like open a door, shove some stuff in and have it be made. And then there's other times where it's like, I want to be part of the process. It's like, it makes me think about self-driving cars, right? Like there will be times you don't want to drive yourself and times you do. And both of those things should be possible and allowed.
40:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, and you know, there are, I mentioned earlier the June oven, which I tested a while back, and I loved some of the features of that where you could just put a dish in or a piece of meat and just say, you know, press a button and it would do the whole process for you. And what I really liked, which I would like in this oven, I miss not having, is the camera. Because I like to be able to look inside the oven without opening it because as any chef will tell you, every time you open the oven. You're messing up the cooking process and being able to look with a camera in at how your turkey's browning or whatever it is that you're cooking is in there, how it's doing. That's useful. That's something I would definitely would like to be able to do with my smart oven.
40:57 Speaker 02 But unfortunately Thermador isn't at that stage. There's also like the air fryers and smart toaster ovens which have these presets. And I think it's nice to have the option to be able to, yeah, just press a button and you know, the chicken nuggets are done and I can focus on the beef bourguignon for me and my kids can eat their nuggets.
41:17 David Pierce? Do all these things talk to each other at all? Obviously you have four voice assistants, which is just absolute chaos. And that sounds like a total insane nightmare. But like, are they integrated in any meaningful way, all these different gadgets? Or are you the connective tissue of all this stuff?
41:33 Speaker 02 So this has been a part of the smart kitchen that has been very slow to evolve. And it was an area I think we thought voice assistants would be able to help with. For example, yes, my oven can be controlled by the two voice assistants here, the Amazons and Googles. If I had a smart Samsung oven, then the fridge and oven would talk to each other. And I did not want a Samsung smart oven because I wanted my Thermador. I'm not, I won't go, I won't go further. Samsung ovens don't have a great reputation. But the problem is all of the individual.
42:06 Speaker 03 Air quality in your home recently changed to poor.
42:09 David Pierce? Uh oh.
42:09 Speaker 02 Did you hear that?
42:10 David Pierce? What are we burning?
42:11 Speaker 02 I think I'm burning my bacon. Oh yeah. Ooh, it's crispy. Ooh, I like crispy bacon.
42:18 David Pierce? There we go.
42:19 Speaker 02 So this was on top of the turkey to keep it moist. I forgot that, to tell you about that step. So yes, the next step in the smart kitchen is this integration. And there's been a recent development because the problem is most people have different brands in their kitchen. So I have different smart fridge for my oven and a different brand for my microwave and a different brand for my dishwasher. Sometimes you'll buy all your pieces and parts from one brand, but not that often. And then when one thing breaks, you might want to get a different one. So even if you did have all the same pieces, it doesn't necessarily help you with communicating with everything in your home too. For example, my TV can connect to my fridge. So when my fridge
43:03 Speaker 02 is telling me the door's open, I get an alert on my TV. But what I'd really like is an alert on my TV that my oven had reached the right temperature. But Thermador, actually Thermador does work with smart things. So it's beginning. We're getting these connections. What's happened that's made a big difference, and I think will make a big difference probably in the next 12 to 18 months, is a new organization called the Home Connectivity Alliance. And this is similar to, and I can't believe we've gotten through this much of a smart home, Vergecast have not mentioned the word Matter.
43:34 David Pierce? I blame you. This is all your fault. I'm outraged it took you this long.
43:37 Speaker 02 This is similar to the Matter Alliance, which is where a lot of the big companies in the space have got together and are working on a common protocol and communication method. But the difference between Matter and the Home Connectivity Alliance is the Home Connectivity Alliance will be entirely cloud-based. So it's basically a way for all the appliance manufacturers to connect their appliances on the backend. And so LG, GE, which is HEA, Samsung, a number of large HVAC manufacturers are all on board. I think there's even more, like they've been announcing new members. This launched about a year, year and a half ago. John, one of our reporters at IFA, saw a demo of how these devices will work together. And basically,
44:22 Speaker 02 you can use Samsung's app, LG's app, to control any appliance that's part of this Home Connectivity Alliance. So that is a beginning to be, you know, a point where when our appliances talk to each other, then maybe you could start to see some artificial intelligence layers being built on top. That could help you get to a more useful smart kitchen in terms of like reordering food, or sending recipes from the fridge to the oven, telling the dishwasher it needs to do an extra hard load because, you know, you used the deep fat fryer. But at the moment, I just don't see a lot of really useful, compelling use cases for consumers.
45:04 Speaker 02 I think the appliance manufacturers need to kind of get that connectivity layer sorted, and then maybe start building some good experiences on top of that.
45:13 David Pierce? Okay, I like it. We're making progress. This is what I like to hear. All right, Jen, we're gonna leave you for a few minutes. You need to cook, you need to finish some stuff. We're gonna do the cooking show magic where you just put something in the oven, go to a commercial break, come back, and it's finished. We have to talk about dessert. We have a lot more to do. We'll be right back.
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46:58 David Pierce? We're back. Okay, Jen, last we left you, you were checking on the turkey. We didn't burn the house down with the bacon. This is all very good. Catch me up. It's been a couple of hours. Tell me what's been going on. What have you been working on?
47:09 Speaker 02 So, yes, it has been quiet time just while the turkey rested. Well, I have two things left to do. One that we're gonna go through now. And then my final thing is the green beans, because we want those done last, so they're nice and crisp and Tasty with the turkey. So I did do some gravy. So I got the turkey out of the pan and I did pan gravy, which is my favorite way to do gravy. Didn't need any gadgets for that, just a whisk. But now it's time for pie, which is my favorite part of Thanksgiving. Again, I'm coming back to my trusty Thermomix.
47:41 David Pierce? And this is, we're doing smart pie, right?
47:43 Speaker 02 No, ordinary pie. And just to make it, you know, take it up a notch in skill level, we're doing pumpkin cheesecake. Not just pumpkin pie.
47:51 David Pierce? Fancy.
47:52 Speaker 02 So I have my springform pan, which is what you need for a cheesecake. And now my Thermomix is gonna do most of the work for me. So it's pretty straightforward. As I described before, it has a little Android screen, Android-powered screen built into the Thermomix. And once you power it on, this is the one thing I find it's a little slow.
48:14 David Pierce? I was just about to say, as soon as you said Android-powered screen, I get, I get nervous, like.
48:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a little laggy once it's up and running.
48:23 David Pierce? What kind of icons are we talking about here? How, how, like, what, give me a design review of the Thermomix interface here.
48:30 Speaker 02 It's actually pretty nice. It's very much custom. It's not something you would recognize. The keyboard, you would definitely recognize, just like on any other Android interface. So it's a little laggy. And I just managed to spell cheesecake wrong, so it's not able to find my recipe. But it gives you the option to save. So like before you start Thanksgiving dinner, you can go through and like save all the recipes that you want in a little recipe book. So it's really easy to just pull them up and tap them. So you don't have to go through the whole laggy Android tablet process.
49:01 David Pierce? Does this connect to some like outside service that you can do the recipes? Like, I want this to like integrate with the New York Times Cooking App.
49:07 Speaker 02 That would be great. No. Actually, this is a key point that I didn't mention before. It integrates with its own cooking app, which is called Cookie Do.
49:15 David Pierce? I hate that.
49:19 Speaker 02 You have to pay, I did forget to mention that. And that is actually one of the frustrating things about using the device. It's not too expensive, I wanna say it's twenty three dollars a year. But without the Cookie Do subscription, it does all the basic functions that you expect. It doesn't take away the functionality, but it's just not as easy. Because it's much easier when you're following a recipe. And it's all there for you to just hit the button rather than having to figure it out as you go. But yeah, so the Cookie Do app, you can download that onto your smartphone. So you can go in and like add everything, get your recipes ready. You don't have to stand in front of the device to get it all set up.
49:56 David Pierce? Is there an app for your Samsung Smart Fridge, though? That's the real question.
50:00 Speaker 02 No, and they don't, it doesn't integrate at all. There's that whole, going back to the whole, the smart kitchen just doesn't really talk to itself yet. There's not enough integration there. Although, to be fair, I'm not entirely sure what I would use it for. I was kinda disappointed when I first started using this, that it didn't have integrations. But as I've used it, I haven't really found like I needed them. What I do when I'm sometimes going through, working with this is would, you know, add something to my shopping list, which I can do with voice on the Samsung Smart Fridge, which has Alexa built in as well as Bixby, and I do tend to use Alexa.
50:35 David Pierce? For obvious reasons.
50:37 Speaker 02 It's fun to do Bixby occasionally.
50:39 David Pierce? Is it?
50:40 Speaker 02 I feel like someone should use it. It's, it's out there.
50:44 David Pierce? It's just a lonely dog butler with shoes, just waiting for you to ask it to do something. I get it.
50:49 Speaker 02 So my Thermomix is telling me the first step in my pumpkin cheesecake is to preheat my oven. So it's like, it gives you all the steps, it's not just what you're doing on the device, which is nice. And then you're gonna grease your pan, which is my spring form pan. And you know, in the grand tradition of all cooking shows, I should have done this earlier. So we're gonna put our unsalted butter cubed into the Thermomix. And I'm just gonna grab my knife, so we can chop away. So as I mentioned, this doesn't really chop, because it's a blender. So if you don't chop things up, it gets a bit stuck. So I've added in my butter, and then this is the fun part. It uses this thing called a simmering basket.
51:33 Speaker 02 So like, you can use it to make rice, it's a rice cooker as well. I don't think I mentioned that. I kind of lose track of all the different things this can do.
51:41 David Pierce? Well, yeah, I'm kind of, I'm at the point now where like it does so many things that it's like, can it possibly do all of these things well? But it kind of seems like it does.
51:50 Speaker 02 The one thing it doesn't do that well is chop, as I mentioned. Like, it's good if you want a puree. So if you want whipped mashed potatoes, but if you want lumpy mashed potatoes, which you know is a choice, it doesn't do that well because it'll chop and whip things like a blender.
52:05 David Pierce? I see.
52:06 Speaker 02 Again, so if you want like nice little cubes in your stew or something, or if you're doing carrots with your turkey and you want nice little cube carrots, then you might want to crack out the Cuisinart food processor for that.
52:18 David Pierce? Okay.
52:19 Speaker 02 If you've got the time and energy. Okay, so now I've got my butter in here and it's the little Android screen, which is quite handy. It has, it's showing me how long it's going to cook, what temperature it's going to cook to. And then I turn the dial for the speed. And so the slower speed won't turn everything into mush. Whereas if I do full speed, it's a blender and then, you know, I'd get a smoothie. So you probably just heard it then. It has two arms on either side that clamp the lid down so that you can't accidentally pull it off while it's cooking. And then it's going to go ahead and cook, it's melting the butter for me, which, you know, I could do in the microwave, but then I have to get another bowl out and I have to put in the microwave and I have to check every couple of seconds
53:02 Speaker 02 to make sure it's melted enough and I haven't burnt the butter, which I always do. So that's melting away and then I'm getting my cookies out because my cookies are going to be our base. Rather than using graham crackers, which is the tradition, I'm going with ginger snaps just to give a little extra flavor.
53:20 David Pierce? I like that idea. What does your family think of your smart kitchen insanity? Like, do they, are they hopelessly intimidated by trying to cook in your kitchen now? Do they love it?
53:29 Speaker 02 So my husband's a bit like you. He loves to cook, but I don't let him do it.
53:35 Speaker 02 So he's actually a fireman, so he cooks a lot on shift. So he'll cook for his fire crew. So he gets to do the cooking there. And quite often he'll ask me for recipes and stuff. But no, I don't let him actually cook in this kitchen ever.
53:48 David Pierce? Fair enough. What is this very charming noise we're hearing right now, by the way?
53:51 Speaker 02 So this is the Thermomix. It is done with the melting of the butter.
53:56 David Pierce? It's a nice noise. We've heard some hideous noises from this gadget so far, but that was a nice one. I like that one.
54:01 Speaker 02 This is a gentle one. The downside is it will not stop until you come and press the button. So if it's done and you don't, you know, you don't want to mess with it, you have to get up and shut it up. That's the one thing that annoys me about it. Okay, so now I'm going to put in my ginger snap cookies. And I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but this is a built-in scale. So I don't need to get the scales out to weigh how many ginger snap cookies I need. I just pour it in and it shows me on the screen what quantity I'll add in. So, ooh, love the smell of ginger snaps. I think it's just gonna be the whole bag. Yep.
54:38 David Pierce? There we go.
54:38 Speaker 02 So the whole bag goes in. This will be noisy.
54:41 David Pierce? So now we have basically all the ingredients of your pie crust in there.
54:46 Speaker 02 Oh, and sugar. I forgot the sugar. So one ounce of sugar.
54:49 David Pierce? Do you have to do all the measurement conversion in your head? The difference between like an ounce and a gram and a tablespoon? Does it show you all the different measurements all at the same time?
54:59 Speaker 02 So you can choose in the settings what measurements you want. If you want to use imperial or metric.
55:05 David Pierce? Okay.
55:05 Speaker 02 And then the, on the screen, as I add it, it's showing me the weight. So it showed me when I added, I've added 1.2 ounces of sugar, which, you know, I don't need to be exact. And then if you want, like I mentioned, it's also got this cup measure up here. So if you're adding liquid, you can just measure that. It can weigh or measure. So you've got lots of options, which is nice. Because again, I don't, I've cooked this whole meal and I haven't got a cup or a tablespoon thing out once.
55:36 David Pierce? It's pretty great. Yeah.
55:38 Speaker 02 Which I really like. I've got my ingredients for the crust in and it's telling me it's gonna take five seconds and it's gonna heat it up to 160 degrees for five seconds and go really fast. So this is gonna be noisy.
55:50 David Pierce? Okay.
55:53 Speaker 02 It's not too noisy, actually. Oh, nope. Rev it up.
56:02 David Pierce? That's it? It did it all. That was so fast.
56:05 Speaker 02 Yep, that was really quick. So the device comes with a spatula. So it's asking me to scrape down the sides. Because obviously, when you blend something in a blender, it all kind of goes up, up the sides.
56:17 David Pierce? Is this like a special spatula?
56:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, it comes with it. It's very neat. It's actually designed to use, it has a little hook in it. And it hooks onto the simmering basket. So like, say you're doing rice or boiled eggs or something. It can just lift the simmering basket out for you without you getting, burning your hands on the steam. And because it boils, you can boil eggs in this as well.
56:39 David Pierce? Of course you can.
56:40 Speaker 02 I, I literally haven't found anything it can't do yet. Okay, so now we're gonna blend again. 10 more seconds.
56:49 Speaker 02 That was faster.
56:50 David Pierce? Yeah.
56:52 Speaker 02 Oh, and of course.
56:55 Speaker 02 Let's try it.
56:59 Speaker 02 Okay.
56:59 David Pierce? Okay, I've, I've changed my mind about that noise, by the way. If it does that noise until you make it stop every single time, that's a lot of that sound.
57:07 Speaker 02 It is. And yeah, and I can't like, stop it remotely or anything with the app. So yeah, that's definitely a downside. I would like, I'd like a bit more control there.
57:17 David Pierce? I also just feel like it should play like 3 seconds of, of a song. Or like, tell you a joke. Or just like something different when it's done.
57:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, because it does get quite repetitive. So now I've got my crumb base. So I'm gonna put that in my pie filling, spring form pie pan, which is what you need for a cheesecake. If you're not familiar with cheesecake cooking. Okay, I will make that into a pie just by sort of pressing it down with the spatula. So like into a crust, sorry. Graham cracker crusts are normally on cheesecakes, yeah?
57:51 David Pierce? Yeah, usually.
57:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, so that's what this is a lot like. So I'm gonna just tap that down and then it tells me to just put it in the fridge so that it chills while I'm making the filling. And now I've got nice gingerbread hands. And now. I can go over to my smart faucet and wash them without getting my faucet all covered in gingerbread crumbs because it's motion activated.
58:11 David Pierce? I was gonna say, you can wash your hands without touching anything. Do you have like a temperature you use to wash your hands now? Like, how crazy has this sink made you?
58:19 Speaker 02 I probably should have, shouldn't I? This is better to do it when you're, to do it with warm water. But I'm, I'm more about speed, especially as it's just some butter. But it does have a hand washing feature, so I can say, hey, voice assistant, start my hand washing preset. And then it would dispense the water at a certain temperature. So yeah, maybe I'll try and do that.
58:41 David Pierce? All right.
58:41 Speaker 02 I just, you know, sometimes there's only so much smart you need. Okay, so I'm just rinsing out the Thermomix bowl, I guess is what you call it. Now we're gonna make the filling. So you can, as I mentioned before, it will self-clean. But for efficiency at this stage, it's just quicker to rinse it out. And it's not like I'm doing meat and then the pie. It's just got gingerbread crumbs in it, so a little contamination wouldn't be a problem.
59:09 David Pierce? I'm definitely starting to see why people would buy several of the, of the container thing to be able to just sort of hot swap them in and out as you're cooking.
59:16 Speaker 02 If I had my druthers, I would have at least two. Okay, cream cheese, the best part of any pie or cake filling. So again, have to cube it. It doesn't, it doesn't want me to put it in whole. So there is a little bit of manual labor. And then I'm gonna pop the cubed cream cheese into the bowl. It's not cooking this, obviously, because the oven will cook it. But like when I was, I did the mashed potato before, it cooked a mashed potato in the bowl for 30 minutes before we blended it. So it's nice to be able to have that function of doing both.
59:52 David Pierce? Yeah, although it's, it's an interesting thing because like in doing that, you're in a good position because you're kind of doing everything in one place. That's very handy. But it's also kind of like you have a whole kitchen with only one bowl. And it's, you know what I mean? And that thing is now like monopolized for 30 minutes. And it is like the main thing you're using to do your cooking. So it's yet another reason that it would be better if this stuff was like well-integrated and everything sort of made sense together. It feels like we need like a universal standard for kitchen gadgets that you can just sort of drop new things into new places. And it's like, you keep it in the bowl, but you move it between devices and that's how it works. That seems like it would be a much cleaner system than a lot of the stuff we've been doing where it's just kind of one all-in-one system.
1:00:31 Speaker 02 Exactly. Yeah, that's the biggest issue I have with this device. And it was entirely designed as a self-contained system, other than, you know, using your oven. But yeah, it doesn't integrate with anything else in my house, although it wasn't sort of designed to be a smart device, which generally is when you find gadgets become actually useful, when, you know, someone didn't think, oh, I can make this smart, what can I then make it do? They thought, oh, I have this function I need and actually adding connectivity would make this function work better, you know? And I like that approach.
1:01:06 David Pierce? Totally.
1:01:06 Speaker 02 There's too much, let's add Wi-Fi to this and then figure out why that might be useful later. And that happens in the kitchen a lot.
1:01:14 David Pierce? Yeah, and by the time you're building a whole Android tablet into your device, like you kind of have no excuse but to make some of this stuff work.
1:01:20 Speaker 02 Exactly. And, you know, obviously the connectivity, the best feature of connectivity, I would say, in the kitchen at the moment is software updates, you know? This has had like new recipes appear every week with a new software update. And my fridge gets new functions with software updates. So, you know, from that perspective, I think adding the connectivity does, you know, add usefulness. But now I've put sour cream and cream cheese in here, so this is going to be very decadent, which I suppose that's just the way cheesecakes are. Okay, so three and a half ounces of sugar. Again, gonna add the eggs. Again, you have to do this manually. It's not going to crack the egg for you.
1:02:01 David Pierce? So this is one of the things I've been thinking as you've been doing this is like in the kitchen world, there is like an infinite selection of super random little gadgets, right? Like, are we going to get the equivalent of that but with Bluetooth next? And this is just going to be the whole new world that we live in? I both hope so and hope not simultaneously.
1:02:19 Speaker 02 I just can't see what value there would be, but someone will come up with it. And one of the things that we really aren't showcasing here, because you know, when you cook your Thanksgiving dinner, you're in the kitchen all day. But one of the biggest benefits, I would say, of the smart kitchen to date is remote control and remote monitoring. So if you're out, you know, you can put your turkey in the oven and go out for the day and check in on your thermometer from a distance to make sure that everything's going well. Um, you know, having that kind of remote control or insight into what's happening at home. If you're in the garden or had to go do some shopping, that's a benefit. Um, unfortunately, I had to get out the teaspoons. Because I know.
1:03:01 David Pierce? Technology has failed us.
1:03:03 Speaker 02 Using my teaspoon, so there's one thing I'm gonna have to wash.
1:03:07 David Pierce? I'm assuming you also have like a smart dishwasher lying around.
1:03:10 Speaker 02 I do have a smart dishwasher.
1:03:12 David Pierce? Of course you do. I didn't even know that was a thing. And I just said that and was like, if this exists, Jen has it.
1:03:17 Speaker 02 So like the oven, though, it's just smart in that I can monitor it. I can like change the program. It does tell me how much rinse aid I have and that kind of stuff. It doesn't do anything special in terms of cleaning. It just cleans like a regular dishwasher. But a dishwasher is a pretty smart gadget to begin with.
1:03:33 David Pierce? That's true.
1:03:34 Speaker 02 It's a robot that is washing your dishes for you. You don't need to mess with that too much. Okay, we're gonna mix our filling for 10 seconds.
1:03:54 Speaker 02 There's the noise. Wants a little bit of scraping and you could hear the little robot arms coming off there. Cause it won't let you in. Sometimes you have to sort of stand here for a few seconds to wait for it to let you in, which can be a little frustrating. Okay, we're gonna mix again and then we're almost at the end.
1:04:14 David Pierce? I'm officially out on this noise. Just in the time we've been standing here doing this, I'm out on the noise.
1:04:20 Speaker 02 I know, but it's quite loud, but it's not too jarring.
1:04:24 David Pierce? And it is definitely true. At least we've moved past the just like loud truck reversing beeping noises.
1:04:30 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:04:30 David Pierce? So that's something. It's progress.
1:04:33 Speaker 02 OK, so it asked me to pour 2/3 of the mixture over the pie base. And now we get to the exciting bit, which is the pumpkin. And no, I did not go hand scrape a pumpkin for you guys. I went and bought some canned stuff and some brown sugar. So this one is definitely the messiest part of the meal. And then we need to add some pumpkin spice. That should be it.
1:05:04 Speaker 02 OK.
1:05:04 David Pierce? And every single part of this has happened in this one Thermomix.
1:05:08 Speaker 02 Yep, other than obviously the pie crust is now in the pie pan.
1:05:12 David Pierce? Are there other devices like this? Like, is the Thermomix one of like a whole genre? Or is it just kind of the one thing?
1:05:18 Speaker 02 It's just the one thing as far as I'm aware. I have not come across another gadget like it. As I said, it's pretty popular in Europe, but I haven't seen it much in the States yet. Like I said, there are so many gadgets for the kitchen that I think a lot of people are like, oh, do I need another one? You know, I've already got the cuisinart.
1:05:37 Speaker 02 Sorry.
1:05:37 David Pierce? It's just a nice noise. It's just a nice noise. It just sounds like cooking. I appreciate that.
1:05:43 Speaker 02 Are you getting hungry?
1:05:44 David Pierce? Yes, this is the absolute worst part. I feel bad for everyone listening to this, but I especially feel bad for me because I'm just starving now. If you're listening to this in your car on the way to Thanksgiving, just know that I'm sorry and I feel your pain.
1:05:56 Speaker 02 All right, and so now we're done. So I'm just going to pour that onto the top of the pie and then it'll go in the oven for two hours in total. 10 minutes to start and then an hour and 50 minutes to finish it off. And then you have to let it sit for a long time. Cheesecakes take a long time to chill.
1:06:12 David Pierce? So the connectivity piece of this, if you were to just like buy all Samsung everything, would all of this be even easier? Because all these companies now are trying to like build out whole ecosystems, right? Like, is it?
1:06:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:24 David Pierce? If you went all in on one company, would it work?
1:06:27 Speaker 02 So in terms of what you were asking about this device, like if it talks to anyone else, the Thermomix, would it be more useful? So what Samsung's sort of angle is for the smart fridge and the smart oven right now is, you know, you order your groceries on your fridge, you choose your recipes on your fridge, you can follow along on the recipes on the fridge, although that's not that useful unless, because your fridge is not right in front of you when you're cooking. But then it would know what you were cooking. So the fridge would know I was cooking a pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, and it would send the correct settings to the oven. And, you know, if this device could communicate with the oven, I think that would be an extra
1:07:07 Speaker 02 useful step because right now it's saying, turn the temperature of your oven to 250 degrees for 20 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 225 and bake for another hour and a half. So that means I'm going to have to come back in 20 minutes and adjust it. But if it could send that to the oven and automatically adjust the oven in 20 minutes down to 225 and to continue cooking at one for an hour and a half, then I wouldn't have to worry about it. So that would be a useful, you know, if there was some connectivity in the background here between these appliances, which could happen if I was using Samsung oven, it could have, and the Samsung fridge to do the recipe, it could have talked to each other. But it's a
1:07:49 Speaker 02 small thing at this stage, you know, changing the temperature isn't that hard.
1:07:54 David Pierce? True.
1:07:54 Speaker 02 And I can do it from my app on the oven. But, you know, if we're trying to make the smart kitchen a more viable and appealing solution to people, those kind of small but sort of simple steps, taking that out of our brains and having to worry about when we're cooking other things would help, I think.
1:08:13 David Pierce? That's where it goes back to the question of like having your family cook with you, right? This is part of the problem with with smart homes in general, is you have to learn so many specific things about exactly how it works and what the name of that lamp is and how to refer to your faucet. And it's like, you know, what's great about a light switch is they look pretty much the same everywhere. And right? And it's like, the thing on the oven that you turn to the right to turn the oven on. Is like pretty self explanatory most of the time. And I feel like with a lot of this stuff, it's so handy, but so non obvious how it works that it's like, you have to like build a manual for how to use your kitchen. Little things like the thermomix seem like they push in the right direction where it's just like, here is a screen. Touch the screen, we'll figure this out together.
1:08:55 David Pierce? But so much of this stuff is also like behind the scenes and opaque and just impossible to figure out. So if I like walked into your kitchen, I would not know how to do anything.
1:09:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, you would not know how to turn the tap on.
1:09:06 David Pierce? Which is a pretty important thing.
1:09:08 Speaker 02 My husband, when I was away a few weeks ago, was making something in the kitchen and I said, oh, we'll use a thermomix. And he's like, I have no idea how to use that. And it is a bit, as you mentioned, a bit more user friendly than some devices. But yes, it's it's foreign, it's different, it's not what he's used to. That's a problem with too many of the gadgets like sous vide is a big thing in the smart kitchen. I have not actually tried it myself, but there, you know, when you try and sort of break the mold and come out with really new ways of doing things in the kitchen, or at least new for the residential kitchen, because it was obviously a big thing for commercial kitchens. That when it gets a little bit harder for the average consumer to say, hey, yes, I definitely want this. The connectivity of devices in the kitchen right now still is a big question mark, like, why do I need to do that?
1:09:52 Speaker 02 I I remember talking to some appliance manufacturers and they say, you know, 90% of their smart appliances never get connected to the internet. So no one's really using that. That might be slightly overestimated, but it was like they rarely do. Or if they do get connected and then one day someone changes their wifi router, no one ever bothers to reconnect it because they just haven't found the value. I think the most useful thing I have found out of connectivity was my LG dishwasher about five years ago stopped working. And I was able to hold up the phone to the device and it played a sound to the LG app, which told the app. What was wrong with the dishwasher? And how I could fix it because it wasn't working. And that saved me a lot of money.
1:10:37 David Pierce? That I like.
1:10:38 Speaker 02 That has got better. This was a while ago. So now you can actually, you know, the app will do proper diagnosis for you. My fridge will diagnose itself. Actually, it did once when it wasn't working properly. And so when the repairman, because it did need to be repaired, when the repairman came here, he knew exactly what he needed to bring, didn't have to come out twice. So that sort of support for appliances, that connectivity is a bonus because, you know, you save money, especially if you don't have to have a repairman come out. And I think that's the most compelling use case right now for regular consumers is if you connect it to the internet, we can tell you why it broke.
1:11:15 David Pierce? That's pretty good. So here's the real question. This is what it all boils down to. Does Matter fix everything? Is Matter, is Matter going to solve everything for us?
1:11:25 Speaker 02 I'll tell you what Matter will fix in my kitchen is the lights.
1:11:29 David Pierce? Oh, okay.
1:11:30 Speaker 02 So we didn't go into this, but in terms of my family using my kitchen, the one sort of smart thing they have got used to is the lights. Because I have a motion sensor that when you walk into the kitchen, it'll turn the lights on. And if no one's been moving in the kitchen for a certain amount of time, they'll turn off. Which is useful because it's, it's an open plan kitchen and we have our living room right here. So when you're watching TV, you don't really want the kitchen lights on. But I also wanted nice lights. I did a big kitchen remodel a couple of years ago. It was kind of my midlife crisis thing. I didn't buy a Corvette. I got a really fancy kitchen.
1:12:02 David Pierce? It works.
1:12:03 Speaker 02 I didn't want like screw in light bulb. I wanted nice light fixtures. So I have like pendant lights and I have a few other kind of fancy light fixtures that aren't smart. So I needed to use smart switches from different brands. And getting them all to work with one motion sensor has been difficult. I have done it, but it's been a bit of a workaround and it's not ideal and it often breaks. So this is the whole point of Matter is. A common language for all your devices. So I should have much and much faster responsiveness too. So occasionally you'll walk into the kitchen and it takes a couple of beats before the lights turn on, which is very frustrating. You want it to be as fast, if not faster than flipping the light switch. I've been here too.
1:12:46 Speaker 02 You know, everyone's very excited in this space about Matter and kind of hyped up for it. But ultimately it's a very simple solution to start with. And I think the easiest way to sum it up is that Matter is going to make smart lights work as well as dumb lights do now.
1:13:04 David Pierce? Okay. I mean, even that is, is a pretty high bar, given kind of where we're coming from with a lot of this stuff.
1:13:10 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:13:10 David Pierce? Like you have to be better than light switches before any of this matters. And I think like, it sounds very small, but it's, I think that's like the real bar. So I'm, I'm, if Matter can get there, that feels like good news.
1:13:20 Speaker 02 That's the hope. My kitchen will be a good test for it once it finally gets here.
1:13:25 David Pierce? Okay. We have tortured people enough. I'm starving. I'm going to go eat. Everyone else, I hope you have made it to wherever you're going for Thanksgiving by the time you have finished this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have an awesome, awesome Thanksgiving or whatever you're doing this weekend. As always, there's lots more on smart home, smart kitchen gadgets, Thanksgiving, technology, everything on theverge.com. You can also follow us on Twitter. Jen is JP2E and I'm Pierce. Who knows if Twitter will be here by the time Thanksgiving is over, but for now it's still around. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Norrie Donovan is our executive producer and Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:14:06 David Pierce? If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, recipes, a long ride home, you can always email [email protected] . We'd love to hear from you. And if you have questions, call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. Send us all your big thoughts and questions about all things tech. We're going to do a bunch of hotline stuff between now and the end of the year. So get your questions in now. We'll be off for the next week, but we'll be back Friday, December 2nd to see whether Twitter still exists. Plus cover some of the biggest news in tech. Have a great week. Rock and roll.
1:14:39 Nilay Patel? Hi, I'm Neelai Patel, editor in chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. This week is part of our special series on the future of business. I talked with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, about how AI bots and agents are remaking the business model of the web, and how Cloudflare is trying to build a new economy around websites getting paid every time an AI crawler shows up.
1:15:00 Speaker 06 We polled all of that data and looked at it and said that it would be the second half of 2027, automated traffic will become larger than human traffic. I was stunned when, just a few months later in May, a team came to me and said, "You won't believe it, but automated traffic is now past human traffic online." And that's just expanding like crazy. And if you extrapolate that out, five years from now, we think that automated traffic will be 1,000 times human traffic online.
1:15:25 Nilay Patel? This was a fascinating conversation, not just about the future of the web, but also about how one of the world's most important software companies is deciding which of its employees it can replace with AI. Listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.
1:15:38 Speaker 07 This series is presented by EY.
1:15:41 Speaker 09 Support for this show comes from CoreWeave. Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible. And at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs. CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI. Ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com/readyforanything.
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