Upgrade Your Kitchen To The Future

Thanks to the Internet of Things (i.e., any device with a Wi-Fi connection), Tomorrowland-inspired kitchen upgrades are coming faster than you thought. Appliance developers are taking advantage of our smartphone addictions to make cooking just a little easier, designing ovens that let us check on dinner even when we're not home and coffeemakers that brew our morning cups while we're still hitting the snooze button.

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And though you can shell out big bucks for a refrigerator that spits out daily weather reports, these seven countertop gadgets let you bring your kitchen into the future without cashing out your 401(k). 

The Orenda, which would fit right in at a modern art museum, has mechanics that control water temperature and extraction power among a myriad of other factors needed to brew the perfect cup of coffee. After you savor your morning mug, use the companion app to adjust your preferred bitterness, strength and texture, and Orenda will recalibrate its settings for tomorrow's brew. Before you delete your phone's Starbucks Rewards app, though, just know this uber-intelligent machine won't be available until later this year.

This reimagined countertop grill involves a complex set of sensors and monitors that solve sous vide's biggest drawback: still having to brown your food after it's reached its final temperature. The Cinder Grill's precisely controlled heat output offers the precision of a sous-vide machine with the ease of a George Foreman-type grill, meaning you get a golden rib eye cooked internally to a perfect medium rare without the hassle of water baths and vacuum sealer sleeves.  

This svelte smart scale not only weighs your food, it also gives easy-to-follow cooking instructions via its companion app's illustrated recipes. The app guides you through each step  component by component, and will even resize the entire ingredient list if you find out you're short a tablespoon of butter.

An innocuous-looking frying pan, Pantelligent is the ultimate hero for people who need a little confidence boost in the kitchen. Built-in sensors wirelessly connected to your phone and alert you when it's time to flip your salmon fillet or move on to the next step of a specified recipe.

An internal camera and built-in scale help this sleek smart oven recognize what it's cooking, allowing it to calculate exact temperatures and times. Be on the lookout for competing ovens later this year, including one by Anova Culinary. 

Everyone's favorite weeknight dinner wizard gets a serious upgrade with WeMo, the smart home automation app. Got called into a last-minute meeting? A few clicks can extend or delay your chili's cooking time, keeping it from bubbling over or going cold before you're ready to eat.

After docking this modern, cafeteria-style plate on its base, take an overhead picture of your meal and SmartPlate will identify the food you're eating and calculate your dinner's exact nutritional value and calorie count. Sticking to that diet has never been easier (now if only we had a self-locking Ben & Jerry's lid . . .).