Grilling is easy enough with a good indoor electric grill. Cooking steaks so they taste as good as restaurant fare, however, is a whole other matter entirely. The Palate Smart Grill claims it can help you do just that.
Armed with a selection of sensors, the appliance can monitor whatever’s cooking every step of the way, performing precision adjustments on heat and other parameters in real-time. They claim that the technology makes it impossible to overcook or undercook food on the grill, going so far as to ensure “mind-blowingly perfect results every time.”
There’s only one control on the Palate Smart Grill – a large dial in front that lets you manually adjust temperature, which you can use when making non-grilled items, like fried eggs and bacon for breakfast. Everything else needs to be controlled via the accompanying app, where you can tell it what you’re cooking, how well to cook it, and even when you want it to finish (if it cooks early, the appliance will keep it warm), among other settings. Onboard sensors will automatically identify the size, weight, and composition of whatever you have cooking on the grill, making its adjustments to compensate for those factors.
To ensure the best grilled meats, the appliance will first cook it at a precisely-controlled low temperature until the desired level of “doneness” is reached, similar to a sous vide process. After that, it is then grilled or seared (depending on what you specify) to temperatures as high as 600 degrees F.
The Palate Smart Grill is one of the contenders at the recently-concluded TechCrunch SF Disrupt 2014. You can sign up at the website to receive information about future availability.