Of course, kitchen appliances that expedite cooking aren’t a new concept; there are dozens of products that make the experience faster. Our labs regularly test multi-cookers, air fryers, and toaster ovens that help you cook meals with little need for standing over the appliances as they work. Using them may require a bit of prep work (like chopping or blending ingredients), but they can make cooking quicker and easier.
We’ve also tested newer kitchen appliances, like the Suvie Kitchen Robot, which cooks meal kits from the company at programmed times, even when you’re away from the kitchen, and the Tovala Smart Oven, which has its own single-serving meal kits and allows you to cook food with your own ingredients.
While at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, I saw two devices I’d never seen before: the Tineco Chiere One (unavailable in the U.S.) and the Chefrobot Ultracook, which its manufacturer says can do nearly everything.
The complete list of functions listed in the user manual and on the Chefrobot site says it can steam, cook, heat, weigh, knead, mix, whisk, thicken, blend, ferment, slow cook, sous vide, stir-fry, chop, mince, and self-clean. Cooking time, temperature, and the spin speed of the blades inside the appliance’s mixing bowl, where all of the cooking is done, are preset to the ideal settings for each recipe in the device’s app. Considering the limited space in my tiny kitchen, I liked the idea of one appliance that could replace most, if not all, of the appliances I regularly reach for, plus reduce the often tedious tasks of chopping, mincing, and whisking before cooking even begins.
I ordered the Chefrobot Ultracook Max but received the Ultracook instead. Because the model name isn’t listed in the user manual or anywhere on the product packaging, I didn’t notice this error until after I had finished testing it. When reviewing a PDF of the user manual for the Ultracook Max downloaded from the Chefrobot site, I noticed it was a different manual from the physical copy I received. After closely inspecting the model in our lab and comparing it with pictures of the two models from the Chefrobot site, I realized that I had not been cooking on the Max as I originally thought. If you purchase a Chefrobot, make sure you get the product you ordered.
According to a marketing director with Chefrobot, the main differences between the two models are their capacity (it’s 4 liters for the Max and 3.5 liters for the standard model) and their “layout and aesthetics.” But they said the recipes designed for Ultracook were fully compatible with the Ultracook Max.
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