[whysonot]

Basically the same concept as the sous-vide (precision cooking) without the water bath, right? I like it a lot in theory because I cook several meals a week with sous vide and bet that Cinder will produce a slightly different cook with for the same time/temperature.

$500 is a tough sell though if you can get roughly the same thing with a sous vide for <$200.

[InternetofJim]

Precision cooking is the same, but this goes way beyond sous vide, because we can go above boiling, which is where all the fun reactions happen.

Caramelization, browning, and similar reactions are what produce the really great, complex, flavors in the best food. It's not just about searing steak -- we can take apples and convert them into apple pie filling with no added sugar. We can make butternut squash sweet and eggplant creamy. We can perfectly brown cheese without burning it, so you can have a grilled cheese where the cheese inside is browned, like the stuff that sticks to the grill.

We have a test chef who is coming up with new ways to use this all the time, and we're going to share them through the app so everyone can play.

[crygin]

This definitely seems complementary to rather than a replacement for sous vide cooking (especially in terms of e.g. gelatinizing collagen in rare meat, since you'd get oxidative off-flavors over the duration necessary using your device).

I'd be very interested in hearing more comparisons between your device's caramelization abilities and e.g. pressure-cooker caramelization with or without added alkaline agents. My experiments doing temp-controlled caramelization in ambient air (rather than the hydrating environment of a pressure cooker) have had mixed results.

Will you have any physical demos in the bay area?

[InternetofJim]

We really haven't noticed any significant oxidation over cook times of up to 4 hours; We have not yet tested something like a 72 hour recipe.

We do plan to have public demos from time to time (we've already done a few at various meetups and other events -- we're based here in SoMa). If you'd like, email info >>at<< cindercooks.com, and we can add you to our mailing list so you could be notified of these events.

[bkeene12]

Yes! The sooner you can upload some recipe ideas the quicker you'll pick up a pre-order from someone like me. Sous vide is a pretty popular concept right now- I'd hitch your product to "enhancing" its use (eg. Post and Pre sears). I'm incredibly curious in seeing the applications of this product.

[InternetofJim]

Good suggestion. We plan to do that. There are already two early examples in our blog at blog.cindercooks.com: The grilled cheese grilled sandwich (the cheese is browned inside the sandwich) and an example of testing salmon recipes 4 different ways. But lots more to come...

[scott_karana]

Have you considered making this part of your ad copy?

It's exactly the information I'm looking for, and I suspect I'm in your target audience. ;)

[InternetofJim]

Check out my blog post, which covers a bunch of this at http://blog.cindercooks.com/cinder/2015/3/4/hot-tips. We'll keep talking there about what we can do and soliciting ideas on new creative ways to use it.

[whysonot]

Oh man that sounds pretty freaking amazing... look forward to following your progress!