Can AI make cooking easier without replacing us? Yes – but not in the way you think

There are plenty of universal experiences in this world, but one of the biggest has to be standing in front of the fridge, staring inside absent-mindedly with absolutely no idea what to make for dinner. More often than not, it ends with ordering a last-minute takeaway or making pesto pasta for the third time that week.

It’s exactly this kind of everyday dilemma that different brands are trying to solve, with many focusing on how smart technology can act as a personal kitchen companion. After being invited to an event hosted by Siemens last week, the question has been firmly on my mind: should we be using AI in our everyday cooking, or should creating food remain a human-led process?

Interestingly, it was Siemens itself that conducted research into this very issue. The brand found that six in ten Brits struggle at least once a week to decide what to cook, with one in five facing that dilemma every single day. This is how Siemens decided on hosting its Chef’s TAIble event at its London showroom – an intimate dining experience designed to demonstrate how AI and smart appliances can work together in practice.

Before the event, guests were asked to select a few ingredients and flavour preferences. AI then generated a bespoke four-course menu in real time, which was brought to life by chef Jozef Youssef using a range of Siemens’ smart appliances.

There was something undeniably special about telling a computer what flavours you enjoy, what foods you like or dislike, and watching it produce a menu tailored entirely to your own taste buds. From a practical perspective, it makes a lot of sense. After all, coming up with something new to cook every single day can be difficult, and when an AI generator tells you what to cook, it starts to feel like a pretty logical step forward.

However, will AI recipe generators and smart chefs eventually take over our kitchen creativity? Probably not just yet… and here’s why.

Despite everything it can do, it’s easy to forget that AI is, at the end of the day, still just a computer. Things like patchy Wi-Fi, limited inputs and the tendency to repeat similar ideas are still very real limitations. In fact, some of this became clear during the event itself.

After the event, I then spoke with Jesse Kempner, Head Chef at Mindful Chef, and our conversation reminded me that not all professional chefs enjoy the influence of AI.

She explained that "In recipe development, things like balance, texture, seasonality and how ingredients behave when cooked are critical. Those nuances still come from the experience of chefs actually testing and tasting dishes in the kitchen. When I create recipes with the team, the process is about those random, spontaneous moments of creativity that only come from the joy that experimenting in the kitchen unlocks.”

That comment got me thinking. If we had simply sat down and described our flavour preferences directly to Jozef himself, and left him to create the menu without AI, would the results have been different? Most likely yes, and perhaps even a little more varied.

Recipe services like Mindful Chef are also designed to tackle the exact same problem Siemens is trying to solve – the question of what to cook. In some ways, a curated recipe box might still be the simpler solution for many people.

That said, what I find most exciting about Siemens’ approach isn’t necessarily AI telling you what to cook, but rather how to cook it. By connecting smart appliances to an AI system that can guide you through the cooking process step by step, it helps people get far more out of the appliances they already own, especially if they’ve invested a lot of money in them.

Helping people understand their appliances better and achieve better results in the kitchen feels like a much more practical use of AI to me. It’s a subtle shift, but one that makes a lot of sense, and it could quietly become one of the most useful ways AI finds its place in our kitchens.