Four Kitchen Gadgets That'll Make Next Thanksgiving Easier

Thanksgiving: there's festivities and friends and football, and if you're fortunate, lots and lots of food. Someone has to cook that food, though, and that someone is probably getting really tired of being inside a kitchen right about now. Fortunately, we live in the modern age and the modern age includes appliances as smart as they are efficient. There are many to choose form, such as these five lifesavers that'll make next Thanksgiving's prep work much easier.

It's the small things that make a big difference. With an ordinary (read: dumb) thermometer, you have to flick the glass with your nail and tweak it a few times and figure out the average of the three different readings it gives you. Plus, you know, avoid getting a blast of steam in the face. Enter the Range Thermometer, a precision smart thermometer that works with Android smartphones and iPhones.

You can use Range to spot-check food, or you can leave it in place as the dish cooks.

You probably have at least one dish that needs to cook for a few hours, and that's the perfect excuse to buy a smart slow cooker, such as the Smart Crock-Pot. With a smart slow cooker, maintenance is offset to your smartphone, where you can monitor temperature and cooking time, and schedule things like automatic shutoffs and simmers.

This odd machine will be the talk of the kitchen, and it'll help you do a variety of things using ultrasonic sound waves. Says the maker, the device can be used to "extract, infused, homogenize, emulsify, suspend, de-gas, or even rapidly create barrel-aged flavor."

This means you could use the Sonicprep to infuse cocktails, marinate meat, increase flavor in delicate meats, boost the flavor of cheap wine, and more. This is truly a novelty device, though, and it doesn't come cheap at $4,999 USD.

Go big or go home, right? If you're really keen on making your kitchen life easier, consider replacing your oven with a smart one. With a smart oven, you're able to do all sorts of fun things — control the temperature and status with your smartphone, for example, and take a peek at the food as it cooks through an integrated camera. The features vary based on model, but any of them are better than nothing at all.

There are a few different models to choose from, but one of the better known names — at least when it comes to kitchen appliances — is Jenn-Air, which introduced its own smart oven in recent months.