I really hate electric cooking-hobs, but this touch-sensitive concept has even me wanting to try it. Yes, a touch-sensitive, touch-controlled cooker. But first, what’s wrong with electricity?
Gas tells you just how high is its heat with the size of its flame. You switch it off and it is off. You adjust it and it is adjusted, immediately. Electricity, unless you use an induction-hob, lags terribly making it hard to control the heat.
Gas also cuts out the middle-man, where fossil-fuels are burned to make heat, converted to electricity and then – in your home – turned back into heat.
The William doesn’t fix this, but it does a whole lot of cool stuff. The surface is covered with a honeycomb of over 1,500 cells. When you put a pot on the stovetop, it is detected and the precise shape and size of heating area fires up. With more than one pot (and you can squeeze them in thanks to not having just four fixed rings) you can see a numbered plan view on the front screen, linked to numbered touch-controls for regulating the temperature.
And since there’s a computer in there already, you can also set it to, say, slowly drop the temperature to zero over 20 minutes, or to switch off the heat a minute after you remove the pan. The design is pretty ingenious, but I’d like just one more feature: the internet. A net connection would let you download recipes and automatically adjust cook-times depending on the weight of the food (I did say it measures weight, too, right?)
Is it enough to make me give up gas? No. But if I did have to use one of these, at least I wouldn’t hate it.
The Willam Stove [YouTube via Reddit and Serious Eats]
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