Connected indoor grill ensures your meals are always cooked to perfection

Why it matters to you

This smart grill advances the trend toward kitchen appliances that have the capability to act as our partners in food preparation.

In September of 2014, we dubbed the Cinder Sensing Cooker a George Foreman Grill “on steroids.” Back then, it was called Palate and debuted at TechCrunch’s Disrupt event. It was also labeled a “smart grill,” and while it’s still app-controlled, its creators now deem it a “sensing cooker.”

What that means, according to Cinder, is that you can cook food at a precise temperature, then sear it all in the cooker, simply by setting a few parameters on the accompanying iOS app or by turning the Cinder’s dial. The beautiful device’s two aluminum non-stick plates have embedded sensors that regulate the temperature to within a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit.

It can caramelize onions, grill a Panini, and sear a steak. You can even cook a frozen chicken breast in it. If you’re in the middle of draining pasta when the chicken’s done, the Cinder can go into “holding” mode for up to two hours, maintaining the food’s temperature. The machine can go as high as 550 degrees Fahrenheit, and its sear function can take as little as 45 seconds.

Using the app, you can scroll through a range of foods until you find the one you want. You can pick how pink you want your steak, for example, and the Cinder does the rest. The creators compare it to sous vide, though without any need for water, because it uses a similar, temperature-precise method. Indeed, each of the grill plates’ heating nodes is electronically controlled hundreds of times every second within a single degree of your set temperature.

And we finally have good news to share when it comes to actually getting your hands on a Cinder Grill (and thereby “cooking to restaurant perfection”). The team has launched an Indiegogo campaign to bring the kitchen appliance to market, and with a month left, has already raised nearly $40,000. You can pre-order one for the early bird price of $329 with an expected shipment date of October 2017 (to the U.S. and Canada).

Article originally published in March 2015. Updated on 04-25-2017 by Lulu Chang: Added news that the Cinder Grill is now available on Indiegogo.