An Automated Meal

Today, 2016’s automation resolution takes a step forward… in the kitchen! My friend Spencer was visiting from LA and I wanted to flex my cooking muscle. Turns out, I didn’t have to do much work myself because the meal was prepared mostly automatically with the rather impressive collection of kitchen appliances!

An easy, delicious, automated meal!

• Sous vide takes the guesswork out of cooking steaks and produces reliable and delicious meat. I like to use a soy sauce-based marinade which imbues the tender steaks with a nice flavor profile. My sous vide setup is documented in this post.
• Rice cookers make preparing rice a piece of (rice) cake. The rice pictured above is Japanese brown rice prepared in a Zojirushi NS-TSC10. I like Japanese brown rice because it has a more flavor and texture compared to regular brown rice.
• A fresh loaf of bread is one of the greatest things in the world and bread machines pump out fresh loaves like nobody’s business. My Conair Cuisinart CBK-100 is like a brother to me. The loaf I served at this meal is a cheesy variation on the Whole Wheat Bread Recipe from King Arthur Flour.
• Those aren’t Cheetos; they’re baby carrots that spent 20 minutes in a steamer! With a Hamilton Beach Steamer and a drizzle of olive oil, you can take a bag of cold baby carrots and turn them into a delicious, fiber-filled side dish. It is worth mentioning that this steamer’s primary directive is to steam frozen dumplings, which it does amazingly well!

And it’s that easy! In 2016, you can really have it all: a fresh home-cooked meal with little work and – most importantly – very little opportunity for screwing up! Bom apetite!