The Hestan Cue Smart Cooking System Wants to Take the Guesswork out of Cooking

Cooking can be an immensely enjoyable experience. It gives you the freedom of eating what you actually want, provides nutritional benefit and it’ll even boost your self esteem when you’ve finished preparing a dish. That’s assuming it all goes well; there’s a fair amount of guesswork and practice involved in cooking, which can lead to disasters. Hestan, well known for its cooking appliances, aims to solve such issues.

The firm has recently launched Hestan Cue, a video-guided cooking system that connects a smart pan, induction burner and recipe app, all via Bluetooth. The technology means you’ll always have perfectly cooked meals, even if you’re a total novice in the kitchen. The system will automatically adjust the temperature and timings to ensure you have a great meal, every time.

The app comes stocked with professional chef techniques, tips and videos, along with more than 100 recipes created by Michelin Star chefs such as The French Laundry’s Phillip Tessier. Customizable basics are catered for here, like perfectly cooked salmon, but there’s also information on more detailed dishes such as Chorizo Stuffed Calamari with Piquillo Pepper Vinaigrette.

We talked to Christoph Milz, Hestan Cue’s Managing Director, to find out more.

“Cue was developed to create a seamless, enjoyable and precise cooking experience in the kitchen,” he says. “The initial concept was born out of the realization that no device in the kitchen could measure time and temperature for cookware like pots and pans.”

As Milz points out, most people don’t know what temperature they should use for a skillet or other pans. Unlike an oven that’s able to maintain a temperature while you walk away, other forms of cookware can’t do that. Cue aims to change that.

”[It] evolved from a system that would automatically control time and temperature to a system that would equip users with cooking techniques through step-by-step guidance to ensure a perfect meal, every time.”

Hestan Cue isn’t just about maintaining the correct temperature though— it’s also a way to empower novice cooks through its plethora of recipe ideas. The app offers some extensive help for those looking for more impressive meals, with a side dish of plenty of assistance.

“Our mission is to provide anybody— experienced or not —with the ability to cook an elegant meal, that they would normally experience in a restaurant, in the comfort of their own home,” explains Milz. “We have a team of highly accomplished chefs who have incorporated their favorite signature dishes into the Hestan Cue app. Additionally, we researched the simple, everyday dishes most people like to cook and incorporated those as well.”

That means there’s something for everyone here, whether you’re cooking for a weekday meal or preparing a dinner party for six.

Milz’s expectation is that such automation will continue within the kitchen over the coming years. Expecting devices of the future to “bring more precision and efficiency,” Milz believes that there’ll be an abundance of “support, augmentation and artificial intelligence” to help people and educate them about the cooking process.

“I think 10 years from now, [we’ll] look back and wonder how we cooked in the kitchen without any guidance, just like we take today’s GPS and Google Maps for granted,” he says.

Hestan intends to keep ahead of such technology. The current plan for Hestan Cue is to learn from it and to engage with the home cooks that use it. “People already told us that they really like the guided cooking and the fact that they can just cook a recipe they’d never dared to cook before,” explains Milz. From that feedback, the team has also learned where they can improve.

Things like the addition of other cooking vessels, and connecting to other kitchen appliances have all been cited, leading Hestan to work on including such features in the future.

Tying into one fast growing trend within cooking, there’s also been a lot of interest in Hestan recipes being available as an ingredient kit, or being able to support certain meal kit recipes. With a lot going on with the field, Milz is keen to see what the future brings. As he put it, “it’s exciting for us to think about the partnerships we can build over time to make cooking a very seamless and stress-free experience— without taking the fun part out of it.”

The Hestan Cue is available from the official website for an early bird price of $549.95 with that price rising to $649.95 at a later date. For the price, you gain one 11-inch Hestan Cue frying pan, portable induction burner, and the app to connect it all together.