Patent Application
20240392972
Preparing food and gathering together to enjoy a meal is a staple for many households. The ability to ensure food can be prepped and remain hot, as a means to encourage at home eating, can be a challenge as there lacks a compact versatile tool to thoroughly cook and maintain fare temperatures for an extended period of time. There have been no products available as original equipment or as an aftermarket to address this problem.
An apparatus to give flexibility to home cooks to prep and maintain food temperatures for an extended period of time effectively, is not being met by any known device or system at present. There have been no products available as original equipment or as an aftermarket to address this problem either.
The main purpose of the warming/cooling food device is to provide users with a highly-advanced alternative cooking device with cooling and heating capabilities.
A heating and cooling device for food is disclosed, the device including an oven configured to occupy a top part of the device to thaw, heat and to cook the food via a convection, a convection and a microwave component. The disclosure also includes a refrigerator configured to occupy a bottom part of the device and to cool, refrigerate and to freeze the food via an air cooling component. The disclosure further includes a microprocessor circuit configured to rest the food between a partial thawing, a partial cooking and a partial refrigeration of the food to enable a recapture of a natural liquid lost from the food back into the food.
Throughout the description, similar reference numbers may be used to identify similar elements depicted in multiple embodiments. Although specific embodiments of the invention have been described and illustrated, the invention is not to be limited to the specific forms or arrangements of parts so described and illustrated. The scope of the invention is to be defined by the claims appended hereto and their equivalents.
Reference will now be made to exemplary embodiments illustrated in the drawings and specific language will be used herein to describe the same. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the disclosure is thereby intended. Alterations and further modifications of the inventive features illustrated herein and additional applications of the principles of the inventions as illustrated herein, which would occur to one skilled in the relevant art and having possession of this disclosure, are to be considered within the scope of the invention.
Resting time in each of the defrost thawing and the baking gives the natural juices time to be reabsorbed back into the food item, especially helpful for trapping natural juices in cooking meats and frozen vegetables. The microprocessor M comprises state machine circuits of combinatorial logic gates to thaw or cook a meat or a vegetable or any other food item partially and to give a rest to the thawing or to the cooking process before continuing to a full defrost thaw or to a full cooking. Therefore, fewer natural juices are lost and are recaptured into the food for nutritional and for taste value.
How many times a food is rested in the thawing or in the cooking process before full thaw or full cooking is programmable via the digital display screen and carried out via the microprocessor circuits. It is therefore embodied refrigeration circuits and hardware such as compressor, condensor and coils thereof for cooling and resistive heating coils and microwave generation for microwave cooking. The disclosure also includes the final resting of a food product to serve at a predetermined and desired optimal serving temperature which with the disclosure ranges from cold to hot and lukewarm in between.
The disclosure also enables an accelerated resting by moving the food item into cold air from a baking or broiling and back again into hot air or microwaving for continued defrost thawing or continued baking or broiling. The rack track T enables moving the food from the refrigerator R to the oven O and vice versa rather than having a single unit which cycles the respective thermal material and can crack and prematurely age the respective thermal material and seals.
The present disclosed warming/cooling food device, also known as “Cooking Machine”, offers an option able to simplify how food is managed. The Cooking Machine introduces a novel unit, possessing digital display and control features, that relies on AC/DC power to heat food for formal consumption. One would simply lower the tempered glass door and insert vegetables, meats, etc., positioned on the metal rack, into the accessory and select the timing option best suited for their desired results. Once prepared, the user can select cooling or heating options that would ensure the food remains at its ideal temperature for immediate serving, when needed. Designed for use by diverse consumers, the Cooking Machine can benefit everyone in the house, i.e., husband, wife and kids, in addition to being a go-to device to be used by staff in restaurants, truck drivers, and/or factory workers.
Although the operations of the method(s) herein are shown and described in a particular order, the order of the operations of each method may be altered so that certain operations may be performed in an inverse order or so that certain operations may be performed, at least in part, concurrently with other operations. In another embodiment, instructions or sub-operations of distinct operations may be implemented in an intermittent and/or alternating manner.
