Best Gadgets for Home Cooks

"Sous vide" is a process in which you vacuum-seal something — say, a steak — in a plastic bag, then immerse it in a hot water bath for a long time. This low-and-slow cooking method results in amazingly tender and juicy meat. Anova's Precision Cooker takes the guesswork out by connecting to your smartphone via an app, and alerting you when your food is ready. Plus, the app has recipes and tips from Serious Eats, one of the better cooking sites online. The Bluetooth version of the Anova is $149, while a Wi-Fi model, which lets you monitor its progress even when you're not at home, is $199.

How do you know if the Thanksgiving turkey is done? You could keep opening the oven and sticking a thermometer in (hint: 165 degrees Fahrenheit), but what if you could simply sit back and watch the football game and get an alert on your smartphone when the bird is cooked? That's where the iGrill Mini comes in handy. The probe, which can withstand temperatures of up to 572 degrees Fahrenheit, connects to a small module that sends a signal to your phone via Bluetooth. The app also has recommended temperatures for all sorts of meats and doneness levels (rare, medium rare, etc.), which takes out all the guesswork.

If you don't use exact measurements when baking, your pie or cake could turn out to be a disaster, which is why a kitchen scale is essential. Drop's connected scale makes baking easy for newbies, guiding you through recipes on your iPhone or iPad, ingredient by ingredient. If you want to double the recipe, a clever feature in the app will automatically change the amount of ingredients proportionally.

Brewing your own beer can be a messy and inexact process. The PicoBrew looks to make doing so as easy as pressing a button. All that you need to do with this Kickstarter-backed device is insert packets of hops, yeast and grain, and the machine does the rest. A few weeks later, and you've got 5 liters of beer. PicoBrew also partnered with more than 50 breweries, so you can replicate that awesome IPA that you can't find in any store.

Char Broil's connected grill lets you attach two sensor probes to whatever's cooking, and will alert your smartphone when they're ready to eat. Char Broil's app is loaded with cooking and temperature guides, as well as recipes, and lets you control the grill temperature. The grill has a 420-square inch cooking area, porcelain-coated cast iron grates, and three burners, plus a 13,000 BTU side burner.

The one thing that will mess up a brisket, or any smoked meat, are spikes in temperature inside the smoker. CyberQ Cloud is a Wi-Fi-enabled device that not only monitors, but regulates the temperature inside your smoker. You can also monitor and control the temperature of your smoke using an app, or with CyberQ's Alexa skill.The CyberQ can be purchased individually through BBQ Guru's site, or as part of a temperature control kit that includes a fan and adaptor to fit a wide range of smokers such as the Big Green Egg.

It's not the first refrigerator with a door that you can see through, nor is it the first to have a touchscreen. However, LG's newest InstaView fridge combines the two in a novel way. Knock twice on the panel, and you can peer inside; knock again, and you get both Windows 10 and LG's webOS interface, from which you can order groceries, play music, leave and send notes to family members, and more. Cameras on the inside let you check to see if you need more milk--while you're at the store. And, did we mention this fridge is Alexa-enabled? Pricing and availability have yet to be announced, but we estimate that it will cost more than $8,000 when it's released this year.

The Wallflower won't help you cook better, but it will let you know if you've accidentally left the stove on. Plug your electric range into the Wallflower (a version for gas stoves is coming next year) and connect the Wallflower to a smartphone app, and it will send you an alert if you leave your house and forgot to turn the stove off. The Wallflower also learns your behavior and will notify you if your stove has been left on for longer than usual. It supports multiple users and stoves, but unfortunately won't turn your stove off for you.