It’s late summer, and chefs, the media and influencers from around the globe have been invited to Berlin, Germany, to witness the unveiling of a revolutionary cooking appliance by Miele. Everything was kept under wraps until the day of the special showcase on Aug 29, 2017.
We are ushered to a secret location for the launch of the ground-breaking product that would, in the near future, reinvent cooking. Miele’s high tech equipment is set up within the lofty ceilings and exposed brick walls of the historic Bolle Festsale building, once a production hall for dairy products, and a cinema and theatre.
In the ballroom’s foyer, some of Miele’s products of yesteryear, such as the first electric dishwasher (launched in 1929), are displayed. Since 1899, the successful business by the Miele and the Zinkann families has morphed from a humble one manufacturing 19th-century hand-operated butter churns and wooden washing machines into one offering 21st-century intelligent household appliances.
Guests are shown to their seats after the welcome speech by executive directors and co-proprietors, Markus Miele and Reinhard Zinkann. At each table, there is a personal chef presenting the cooking demonstration. The spotlight shines on the sleek Miele Dialog ovens mounted on the walls. The appearance of a Dialog oven is identical to that of a conventional oven; yet on the inside, this revolutionary appliance offers a whole new world in terms of cooking, baking and roasting.
Revolutionary cooking
The chefs kick off the event and demonstrate the smart technology of the Dialog oven by baking pieces of fish placed inside blocks of ice. With the touch of a few buttons, and minutes later, the cooking process is complete. What wows the audience is that the fish has been cooked perfectly while the ice remained frozen.
If you were to put a frozen cake into the Dialog oven, it would be nicely defrosted, unlike in a standard microwave that would possibly melt and deform parts of the cake. If you were to roast a slab of beef along with spuds and vegetables, in one large tray, everything would be cooked uniformly. The meat would retain its juices, and the accompaniments would be perfectly cooked.
Even as far back as the Stone Age, the science of cooking has generally involved heating food from the outside in. Preparing food is also often based on general approximation. So, when the centre of an ingredient such as meat or fish is done, the outer layers are often already overcooked. But Miele’s Dialog oven works by cooking dishes in their entirety. This takes the guesswork out of cooking as it uses technology that intuits how much oven time your food needs.
Essentially, Miele’s M Chef technology features high-tech sensors that monitor the cooking process. The technology enables the Dialog oven to keep tabs simultaneously on a range of dishes – so different ingredients can be cooked in parallel, according to their texture. That means they can be baked, roasted or warmed to perfection.
In comparison with microwave ovens, the sophisticated Dialog oven uses much lower electromagnetic waves at changing frequencies – that are gentler and more precise on the food that’s being prepared. Furthermore, the oven cooks 70 per cent faster than conventional appliances in the market. So there’s no need to wait a long time for your pork belly to be ready.
When asked how this new technology will change the future of cooking and eating, Dr Markus says: “Cooking will become simpler and faster. Experienced chefs and ambitious hobby cooks alike can achieve excellent reproducible results with our Dialog oven, allowing them more time during the food preparation process to look after their guests and to devote to other activities. Furthermore, the oven offers a whole range of food preparation options which are possible only with this machine. I imagine that more and more people will turn to cooking with passion, as we have made the entry to the world of fine cuisine less daunting.”
“I still vividly remember the time when the engineers from our Oelde production plant first reported on how electro-magnetic waves can produce quite astonishing baking, roasting and cooking results. Between that point and the product presentation at IFA 2017, almost seven years had passed. During that time, we had to do a great deal of research, which involved much trial and error. I have followed this process very intensively and am naturally pleased that we are the first manufacturer to bring this technology to market maturity,” adds the great-grandson of Carl Miele, who founded the brand with business partner Reinhard Zinkann 118 years ago.
You can also browse recipes on a specially designed Miele app and send instructions to the oven via Wi-Fi. The recipe feature included in the Miele@mobile app represents an ideal starting point for experimenting and trying out new ideas, as it offers users numerous automatic programmes developed for this new product. Alongside food preparation videos and shopping lists, the app allows the parameters of a recipe to be transferred directly to the machine. This function puts users in direct contact with Miele’s laboratory kitchens as recipes are immediately available as downloads.
In a nutshell, the Dialog oven is faster and more versatile than any other cooking appliance and delivers excellent results. The Dialog oven will be launched in Europe first, and is available in Singapore only in 2019. “Experienced cooks will quickly feel at ease with this new technology, as experience in the preparation of food is naturally useful when using a Dialog oven. Furthermore, in Germany and Austria, the countries where the product will first be launched, we are already offering many cooking events at which the technology is explained. In future, we would like to launch the Dialog oven worldwide. So be prepared for a new dimension of cooking innovation, culinary excellence, speed and simplicity,” adds Dr Markus.
For more information, visit: https://revolutionaryexcellence.miele.com/en/innovation
