A robot cooked me a tasty Kung Pao chicken

Las Vegas — Someday, a robot will cook you dinner and, if you're lucky, it'll be Chinese food.

That's the promise of OneCook, a new robotic chef that can blend and cook ingredients and serve you a finished meal.

Developed by TNL Corp., OneCook isn't much to look at. The working prototype is a large, round, white device that, coincidentally, resembles a rice cooker. The team had a sleeker, non-working version at CES 2016's Eureka Park (where CES houses all the startups), but they directed me to the back of the conference hall where the TNL Corp. team was about to use OneCook to prepare a meal.

TNL Corp. founder and inventor Hanlin Hong told me that the whole process should take five or six minutes. So I parked myself and waited to taste some robot cooking.

Hong explained that the device works with an app that has meal options supplied by the company. You order what you want to cook and the 4.5-liter, pre-packaged ingredients arrive at your home. Each pack costs between $8 and $10. For the purposes of this demonstration, they would make Kong Pao chicken and use a small pack of chopped red and yellow peppers, peanuts, parboiled chicken pieces and sauce.

I watched as they put each ingredient into its own metal container, lifted the big lid on the OneCook and then carefully placed each one inside. The Wi-Fi in the hall was abysmal and it took some doing to upload the recipe to the robot. Soon, though, Hong closed the lid and announced that the cooking process had begun. An LED timer on top indicated that I’d have to wait approximately five-and-a-half minutes.

Hong opened the lid to show me that the robot was already heating and stirring the peppers and sauce. The speed and heat can all be adjusted through the connected app. Soon the OneCook robot had dropped in the chicken and then, finally, the peanuts. It smelled good.

When the cooking process was finished (after exactly 5 minutes and 30 seconds), Hong opened the front of the robot and pulled out what looked like a steaming hot aluminum pot. Then he ladled the finished meal onto a plate. Each ingredient pack can, depending on the meal, serve as many as four people.

Hong passed out toothpicks and encouraged us to dig in. I skewered a piece of chicken and some red pepper. The food was hot, spicy and pretty tasty, though I would say the chicken was a little over-cooked.

All-in-all pretty impressive. OneCook is not the first robot cooking device I’ve seen. Two years ago, I tried out the Rotimatic, robotic naan maker. The difference between the two devices is that Rotimatic can only make Roti, while OneCook can handle pretty much any ingredients you put into it, as long as it has the recipe program.


When OneCook finally goes on sale it will cost between $200 and $400, though Hong promised a pre-sale deal of $99 to $199.
Honestly, the Kung Pao was good enough that I’d be in for $199.