ChefCuisine is a new kitchen gadget that’s all set to revolutionise (read: eliminate) home cooking. Thanks to this offering from Swiss startup Nutresia, pretty much anyone can produce restaurant quality food at the touch of a button!
The machine, inspired by Nestle’s coffee capsule Nespresso machines, is capable of preparing fancy dishes from vacuum packed capsules or sachets. Each sachet contains a microchip that tells ChefCusine the exact cooking time and temperature.
The company is working with three Michelin-star French chef Anne-Sophie Pic to develop recipes for the line of 30 mouthwatering ready-meals consisting of appetizers (5 to 6 euros) and mains (8 to 16 euros). Some of her dishes include foie gras with lemon confit (12 euros), pigeon seared with voatsiperifery pepper and root vegetable dices with well-seasoned cinnamon sauce (16 euros), and beef fillet with soya honey, mungo beans, and ginger and crunchy vegetables (16 euros). These meals obviously aren’t cheap, but they’re a lot less expensive than eating them at a real restaurant.
Users are required to purchase the food capsules online, filled with food pre-cooked according to Pic’s recipes. They are delivered within 24 hours, and need to be reheated using ChefCuisine. Simply insert the capsule into the 199 euro ($215) machine, fill it up with water, and push the button. A plating kit that comes with the machine ensure that you’ll have a great looking gourmet meal to enjoy with close to zero effort involved.
Although the concept of ChefCuisine has been criticized by other French chefs, Pic believes that “gastronomy must adapt to our constantly changing way of life.”
“Nespresso, for example, has helped raise the general quality of the coffee that we drink in France,” she said. “Since it launched, we’ve become a country of coffee shops, whereas previously we weren’t. That then pushed artisans into the market.”
Not everyone is convinced, though. Food critics and experts are warning that the gadget will be the death of the nation’s cooking skills. “This seems to be a very bad idea,” said French food critic Francois-Regis Gaudry. “People are being asked to live in a totally hermetic world where meat comes in a plastic packet. If this continues, we won’t know what a cow looks like in 15 years’ time.” He added that products like ChefCuisine are designed to “externalise restaurants and to give gourmets the impression that they have nothing else to do than to open their mouths.”
Pic, however, believes that her aim with the gadget is to “encourage the French to cook and to democratise cuisine at home.” That does sound rather confusing – doesn’t ChefCuisine do the exact opposite?
Photos: ChefCuisine/Facebook
via Just Hungry
