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Figo's connected sous vide promises to chill, seal and cook your meals

It's just $149, but crowdfunded sous vide devices have a patchy history.

Figo

A company called Eat Figo has started crowdfunding for the Figo, an all-in-one connected sous vide that promises to vacuum-seal, refrigerate and cook your food. The idea is that you can prepare and season your meals, vacuum seal them and drop them into the device in the device ahead of time. You set the cooking level and start time with your smartphone, and when you get home from work, your meal is ready to go.

This might sound a lot like the Mellow, a crowdfunded sous vide device that failed in part because it didn’t cool food quickly enough before it was ready to cook. However, unlike the water-cooled Mellow, the Figo uses dry cold storage and supposedly chills food to 37 degrees F in less than two hours — in accordance with FDA guidelines.

When the programmed cooking time arrives, water moves in from an external tank and heats the food up evenly thanks to a propeller circulator. It uses temperature sensors to cook at the temperature you set, plus or minus 1 degree F. At the end of the cooking cycle, the water is pumped back out of the cooking chamber to preserve food texture and prevent mushiness. If needed, the meal is then chilled again to preserve it until you get back.

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The Figo is WiFi connected, so you can schedule and change cooking times and schedules wherever you are using the iOS and Android compatible app. You also get over 20 “chef-curated” recipes with varying degrees of difficulty.

The early-bird $139 price (or $149 with the vacuum seal) sounds like a deal compared to other sous vide devices. As with all crowdfunded projects, though, your money will only buy you the promise of a sous vide, as numerous things can go wrong before manufacturing and the Figo might never actually be built. The campaign is off to a good start, however, as Eat Figo has already hit 125 percent of its $20,000 goal after just a day.