Jenn-Air Culinary Center helps usher in new age of cooking

The cookbook has evolved from handwritten or printed collections of recipes into software programs, online forums, blogs or recipe apps for smartphones. Yet only one luxury appliance maker, Jenn-Air, has integrated an image-driven gourmet guide within the oven itself — adding interactivity so cooks can create perfect dishes with guidance for up to 50 food options, from meats and vegetables to breads and desserts.  On select wall ovens, the Jenn-Air Culinary Center is giving us a window into the new age of cooking.

It relies on dynamic touch-screen technology — the same as in the best smart-phones — to operate an innovative, image-enabled cooking guide. The oven’s 7-inch, glass screen features a touch-anywhere, full-color LCD display. More importantly, it brings into your kitchen the same instincts as a classically trained chef — instincts so refined it knows intuitively how to cook every dish to perfection.

CNET, the premier on-line destination for tech product reviews, has called the Jenn-Air Culinary Center “the coolest thing in cooking.” Let me tell you what’s really cool about this.  Say, you’re serving prime rib, and your guests like it rare. Select “prime rib,” then “rare” on the Jenn-Air® Culinary Center, and you’ll see a cookbook-quality photo of how your prime rib will look when finished. Rare, according to the gourmet guide, has a “cool, red center.” When the beef’s center is warm and red, according to the guide, that’s medium rare! And, for your guests, that wouldn’t be cool! But the Culinary Center takes care of such details so you don’t have to. It customizes cooking based on inputs including food category, food type, desired done-ness, proper time and temperature — even the type and color of pan you’re using. There’s no guesswork! How cool is that?

By using a sophisticated system of thermal sensors, computer processors and chef-tested cooking programs, the Jenn-Air Culinary Center serves as a phenomenal resource, offering menu-specific cooking tips. You’ll find out how long to rest meat after cooking and where to arrange oven racks for the perfect results for each item. Innovations like this are what you’d expect from Jenn-Air, which introduced the first self-ventilated cooktop and continues to transform the kitchen itself and the way we cook and entertain.