Multi award-winning product design: The Cuisine Machine

WORKING alongside private inventor, Subina Shami, Warrington-based design agency 4D products has designed an automated kitchen appliance to help people cook homemade meals more easily.

The company has taken the ultimate in automated home cooking project from concept to design, right through to a working prototype of an automated pressure cooker.

Building on their success at the European Product Design Awards earlier in the year, they ended 2021 with a bang, having further secured multiple awards from The Good Design Awards and The British Invention Show (BIS).

Co-founder of 4D Products, James Bell said: “We were thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Subina on this invention. Our team were able to make her vision a reality, and we are so proud to see the Cuisine Machine being highly recognised not just in the product design industry, but across the world too.”

The Future of Walk-Away Cooking

The ‘Cuisine Machine’ is a countertop kitchen device, with a vision to have people easily download programmable recipes and their lists of ingredients onto the memory card, ready to insert into the appliance, when it’s time to cook.

“Millions of people don’t have the time or necessary skills anymore to make a homecooked meal, especially with fresh ingredients to ideally leave a healthier lifestyle” explains Subina, who came up with the initial idea. “So, I’ve created an intelligent appliance that solves these problems.”

But What Makes This Product Different?

Steamers and slow cookers are popular cooking appliances, particularly amongst those with families or busy lifestyles. There are so many automated appliances out there on the market, but none of them have the ability to be programmed to add ingredients separately during when cooking.

The Cuisine Machine’s recipe card contains programmed cooking instructions, controls temperature changes and automatically releases individual ingredients at different stages during the cooking process from their containers to the cooking bowl at timed intervals, to ensure each one is cooked thoroughly before the next is added.

This amazing appliance is safe enough to cook in a pressurised environment, reduces cooking time by 2/3’s and retains all the ingredients nutrients in the cooking bowl, essential for a healthier and more balanced diet. Not only that, but as its target audience have limited time, it’s been designed to be easily cleaned and convenient to use.

Everything you need to serve a quick, fresh and healthy meal effortlessly every time.

How was it made and what were the challenges?

Subina presented 4D products with the challenge to design an electrical countertop appliance that was a similar size to current household multi cookers on the market, but with the added complexity of having an ingredient delivery system to kept the ingredients airtight until it was time to eject them into the cooking bowl.

This meant a completely new and innovative design was created to make the containers out of silicone, which also needed to have a none stick surface and be soft enough to easily invert and inject the ingredients. This appliance needed to be as user-friendly as possible so the user can just load the pods, switch on the appliance and walks away.