How to create a smart kitchen

You can now order your shopping with the touch of a button, start cooking while still at work, and control every aspect of your kitchen from lights and doors to fire alarms and the thermostat. With this in mind, this is our guide to bringing your kitchen into the 21^st century.

Virtual personal assistants are getting more intelligent every year and can now easily be integrated into any room in the form of the Amazon Echo and Google Home speaker systems. These devices are becoming the hub of any smart home, allowing you to do all sorts of useful things using nothing but voice commands.

Ideal for use in the kitchen, these devices allow you to play music, set alarms, create to-do lists, stream podcasts, and provide information such as weather, recipes, and unit conversion, without the use of your hands —perfect for when you're cooking or doing the dishes.

The Apple slogan "there's an app for that" has never been truer. These days everything seems to have its own custom-built app — and cooking appliances are no different. Cooker specialist Stoves has a new range of smart ovens that can be operated from your phone via the Zeus™ app. Your connected phone acts as a remote control, allow you to keep track of your oven from anywhere in the house.

That's right, you now don't have to go into the kitchen to adjust your cooking time - using your phone you can do it from anywhere in the house. You can even save your favourite cooking times in the app as pre-sets for next time you cook the same thing. 

Always looking for ways to change the way we shop; Amazon's Dash buttons aim to make restocking your household essentials a breeze. Put simply, Dash buttons are battery-powered internet-connected buttons that, when pressed, automatically order the associated item from Amazon.

All you have to do is stick the button next to where you keep the product and press it when stocks are getting low. While they cost £4.99, Dash buttons are essentially free as you get the equivalent discount off your first purchase. Check out the Amazon website to find out which companies offer Dash buttons.

It's not just your appliances that can be app-operated. You can now control your home's temperature, hot water, lighting, and even doors with ease from your phone. The Honeywell evoHome thermostat, for example, lets you control the individual temperature of each room in your house.

You can hook up your hot water to this system too, meaning it will always be available when you need it. Other products, such as the Philips Hue, can control the lighting in your kitchen using special bulbs that can be brightened, dimmed, and changed to a range of colours.

It really is mind blowing to see how just about every aspect of our kitchens can be brought into the digital era. Follow our advice and you'll be on your way to a cooking experience fit for the modern age.

As technology gets more and more advanced, it's only a matter of time before there is a 'smart' version of just about everything. A whole new range of appliances and apps are changing the way that we use our homes, and the kitchen is no different.

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