Imagine a world in which a single kitchen device could take care of your chopping, mixing, steaming, kneading, emulsifying, weighing, and cooking--- you'd never need to step foot inside a kitchen again.

Oh right, yeah, the washing up…

Joking aside, the new Julia smart cooking machine from CookingPal promises to revolutionize the way we go about meal preparation. It combines cutting edge functionality, video-guided cooking, and AI food recognition into a single, sleek unit.

cookingpal ces2020

The gadget has picked up one of the coveted CES 2020 Best of Innovation awards in the Home Appliances sector and has been named as an Honoree in the Smart Home category.

Control of the machine is done via the accompanying smartphone app or the dedicated smart kitchen hub tablet. The tablet is touch-enabled and has both Alexa and Google Assistant support. There's also a dial if you prefer haptic feedback.

The app/tablet has more than 500 chef-created recipes to choose from, though the list is steadily growing and is likely to be considerably more extensive by the time Julia hits the shelves in the third quarter of 2020.

During discussions on the show floor, we discovered that the company ultimately aims to allow users to add to the list of recipes. It's not clear whether that's a good thing; it runs the risk of diluting the quality of the available dishes. Hopefully, a robust quality control system will be put in place.

cookingpal ces2020

If you select a recipe and are missing an ingredient, Julia will give you a heads up and order the item on Amazon Fresh. The app also has smart food recognition; you can scan what's in your fridge and pantry, and Julia will make meal suggestions based on what's available. The food recognition software can also help to track the nutritional value of whatever you're whipping up, thus helping to eat more healthily.

Over time, Julia will even learn about your food preferences and suggest customized recipes and shopping items accordingly.

The device itself has a cooking vessel and steaming racks, allowing you to cook multiple ingredients of a dish in different ways at the same time.

Later in the year, CookingPal will also introduce a smart grill and pressure cooker---all of which will be controlled via the tablet hub.

The final price tag of Julia is not yet confirmed, but Martin Ruge, the managing director of CookingPal, confirmed it would retail for less than $1,000.