Ina Garten, Alton Brown, and Martha Stewart Will Answer Your Cooking Questions via Food Network's New Streaming Service
Imagine Food Network’s impressive lineup of celebrity chefs cooking live in your kitchen. Yes, in the real world, it would be crowded, but with the forthcoming Food Network Kitchen app, all those big names—and their incredible cooking knowledge—can fit inside your Amazon devices.
Among its laundry list of features, Food Network Kitchen—which will arrive in October and costs $6.99 per month of $59.99 per year—promises to offer 30 live and interactive cooking classes every week (25 on weekdays and five on the weekend) from a mind-boggling list of Food Network stars (deep breath): Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart, Ted Allen, Sunny Anderson, Alton Brown, Kardea Brown, Valerie Bertinelli, Anne Burrell, Daniel Boulud, Maneet Chauhan, Scott Conant, Giada De Laurentiis, Ree Drummond, Guy Fieri, Amanda Freitag, Ina Garten, Alex Guarnaschelli, Carla Hall, Eddie Jackson, JJ Johnson, Katie Lee, Jeff Mauro, Marc Murphy, Chris Santos, Nancy Silverton, Michael Symon, Jet Tila, Buddy Valastro, Jonathan Waxman, Molly Yeh, Zac Young, Geoffrey Zakarian, and Andrew Zimmern.
"For the first time, customers will be able to stream live cooking classes with two-way interaction allowing users and chefs to communicate in real-time," the announcement states. Sadly, no, it appears you won’t be able to say things like, "Alexa, ask Ina Garten what I should with this garlic!" Instead, the LA Times clarifies that subscribers can text their questions to chefs through the app and then hope for a response. Still, that’s a lot better chance than you have screaming at Alton Brown on your TV.
Beyond the live lessons, Food Network Kitchen will also include an ever-expanding selection of on-demand cooking classes (launching with 800 choices) and 3,000 instructional videos, not to mention access to tens of thousands of Food Network recipes and a curated selection of the channel’s cooking shows. Everything will be integrated across Amazon devices, meaning users can do things like "start watching a Food Network show on Fire TV, save recipes from the episode and ask Alexa to open the recipe on their Echo Show in the kitchen when they're ready to make it."
And that’s just the start: Amazon can provide home delivery of ingredients from the recipes and, starting in 2020, offer one-touch purchasing of the equipment the chefs are using, too. And speaking of 2020, next year, Food Network Kitchen will add "24/7 Live Culinary Support" with "friendly expert cooks…available to answer questions and provide suggestions and tips." Basically, if you can think of something you’d want happening for you in your kitchen, Food Network Kitchen and Amazon have tried to already think of it for you.
"Food Network Kitchen brings the top chefs in the world directly to consumers’ kitchens through first-of-its-kind live interactive cooking classes, seamless e-commerce transactions, and the richest culinary media ecosystem in the world," David Zaslav, president and CEO of Food Network’s parent company Discovery, Inc, stated. "No one needs to be alone in the kitchen again."
Alexa, will Guy Fieri give me a hug?
